Waiting in Toronto.
Our classic car all loaded down.
That evening we gave a quick presentation to a local paddling club then promptly fell asleep. The next morning we made quick work of finding and buying a car, packing it full of our gear and food and began our drive west to find some water.
Finding water became less of an issue once we got here and escaping it became one of great importance. We made camp in the rain, ate in the rain, slept in the rain, and in the morning, hiked in the rain. Of course, we hiked about 6k with 50 pounds of kayak and gear on our shoulders, so we stayed warm.
We had been hoping for a bridge.
The river looked good on our map and had road to road access so we thought it would be a good warm-up for the rest of the trip. We were both a little nervous at the put-in as neither had paddled anything significant for a over a month and Darin was just healing up from a broken collar bone. The run provided little warm-up as we were quickly faced with a scout of a gorge and a couple intimidating horizon lines. It all looked good and we ran down through a simple triple drop leading to the lip of a slightly larger double drop. The double slid down 8 feet with about 80 percent of the water dropping onto an upturned shelf, then dropped of a great 15 footer in to a nice little pool.
After a little more boogie and a couple fun small slides in an ever-growing gorge we ran into a blind corner with something that looked worth scouting. What we found around the corner was intimidating to say the least.
I spent the better part of an hour trying to get a good look at the drop but with no way to the lip and densely vegetated and crumbly cliff walls I could never get a good view. The middle looked good, but the bottom and top were kept mysterious by the dense veg. What I could see was that the drop was about 40-50 feet into a huge room, exiting with another falls in the 15 foot range. With only this info, we decided it was in our best interest to portage up and around the gorge. BC comes to mind when describing the length of the portage, the steep, crumbly walls and dense, sharp growth. We made it to the bottom and checked the pool of the falls and decided that we will take a quick day to get back to this gorge with a bit more water.
