Climbing and Paddling
Well it’s my last month here before I head back to Prin for the winter quarter and the house is all finished. This has left me with more time to go and play.
So about two weeks ago I was planning on going on a climbing trip with Sune, Ben, Monica, and Natty, but at the last moment I had to go on a two day boat trip. When I got back I looked at the weather forecast for November and realized that it was going to a wet one, so on a whim I decided I would go anyway. As it was going to be solo I realized that I was limited in what I could do, so I jumped in the car and headed for Mt St Helens, which is only 2:30hrs away.
I had a chat with the ranger and he said that it would be an 8-12hr round trip, 6 miles each way, with 5000ft elevation, and some snow and ice. So I got to the trail head at 7am and headed off. It was basically frozen scree to the crater cone. This gave me fantastic views of Mt Rainer, and Mt Baker to the North, and Mt Hood to the South. The crater was steaming away and there was not a cloud in the sky. It was about 25 degrees and blowing about 30 but the sun was great.
The crater rim was not the highest point so I had to traverse about ½ a mile to the west, which would have been easy had it not been for a north facing gully. Here I found about 100 yards of very sketchy ice with a 50 degree run out of about 2000ft. Just as well I had decided to bring my ice axe. It took about 30minutes of very slow going owing to the lack of crampons but once on the other size of the gully in the sun it was cake.
A snow traverse to the summit and I was on top of the world, well not exactly considering every other mountain I could see was higher, but not bad anyway. What about the time, well it took 2:46 hrs, from car to summit, not exactly the 6-8 suggested. So put my big jacket on and my back into the wind and it was very cozy, so nice in fact that I spent an hour on top just contemplating life. Well after working through the ice section again I was back at the car by 12:30.
So anyway I was right about Novembers weather, it started raining the day after that trip and so far we have had 13 inches in 2 weeks, not a lot really, but 8 of those were in one weekend. This has enabled me to spend some good hours out kayaking, because as it turns out what is considered the best white water play hole in the Northwest is 5 minutes from my house. It is an old low head dam beside the salmon hatchery. Now the Naselle River normally runs at about 300cfs, but when it gets to 2500cfs the hole starts to form and just gets bigger and bigger until at 6000cfs you want to seriously think twice, because of how retentive it is.
So anyway the first time I paddled it was the Monday before last at 6150cfs, by myself no less. It was a little scary, I didn’t go into the meat of the hole because there was a 4ft tree limb throwing some sick ends in there and it was still in there when I left an hour later. As it was the first big rain of the winter, all manner of logs were floating through, so I had to keep my eyes open.
The next day the rains had eased off and the river was down to 5000cfs, this is considered the perfect flow. Now there were 3 other guys from Olympia, and the hole was, no joke, 80ft wide with a 4-5ft pile.
Nice and retentive so if you flipped and wanted to stay in you could just roll up in the hole but not so retentive that you couldn’t get out if you didn’t want to. It has two huge eddies on either side which extend 150ft down river, so you couldn’t get much better.
Since then I have paddled it twice more at 3500cfs and 2500cfs, and by 2500cfs it starts to get a bit shallow. Now we all know that I am not the best play boater but to give you an idea of how good it was at the 5000cfs day, 3 of us could be in the hole at one time, and one guy was staying in for over 5 minutes throwing every move that I knew existed and many that I didn’t.
So anyway its suppose to rain again tomorrow, than then again on Sunday, so if you cannot get hold of me that’s were I am.
Well bye for now.
So about two weeks ago I was planning on going on a climbing trip with Sune, Ben, Monica, and Natty, but at the last moment I had to go on a two day boat trip. When I got back I looked at the weather forecast for November and realized that it was going to a wet one, so on a whim I decided I would go anyway. As it was going to be solo I realized that I was limited in what I could do, so I jumped in the car and headed for Mt St Helens, which is only 2:30hrs away.
I had a chat with the ranger and he said that it would be an 8-12hr round trip, 6 miles each way, with 5000ft elevation, and some snow and ice. So I got to the trail head at 7am and headed off. It was basically frozen scree to the crater cone. This gave me fantastic views of Mt Rainer, and Mt Baker to the North, and Mt Hood to the South. The crater was steaming away and there was not a cloud in the sky. It was about 25 degrees and blowing about 30 but the sun was great.
The crater rim was not the highest point so I had to traverse about ½ a mile to the west, which would have been easy had it not been for a north facing gully. Here I found about 100 yards of very sketchy ice with a 50 degree run out of about 2000ft. Just as well I had decided to bring my ice axe. It took about 30minutes of very slow going owing to the lack of crampons but once on the other size of the gully in the sun it was cake.
A snow traverse to the summit and I was on top of the world, well not exactly considering every other mountain I could see was higher, but not bad anyway. What about the time, well it took 2:46 hrs, from car to summit, not exactly the 6-8 suggested. So put my big jacket on and my back into the wind and it was very cozy, so nice in fact that I spent an hour on top just contemplating life. Well after working through the ice section again I was back at the car by 12:30.
So anyway I was right about Novembers weather, it started raining the day after that trip and so far we have had 13 inches in 2 weeks, not a lot really, but 8 of those were in one weekend. This has enabled me to spend some good hours out kayaking, because as it turns out what is considered the best white water play hole in the Northwest is 5 minutes from my house. It is an old low head dam beside the salmon hatchery. Now the Naselle River normally runs at about 300cfs, but when it gets to 2500cfs the hole starts to form and just gets bigger and bigger until at 6000cfs you want to seriously think twice, because of how retentive it is.
So anyway the first time I paddled it was the Monday before last at 6150cfs, by myself no less. It was a little scary, I didn’t go into the meat of the hole because there was a 4ft tree limb throwing some sick ends in there and it was still in there when I left an hour later. As it was the first big rain of the winter, all manner of logs were floating through, so I had to keep my eyes open. The next day the rains had eased off and the river was down to 5000cfs, this is considered the perfect flow. Now there were 3 other guys from Olympia, and the hole was, no joke, 80ft wide with a 4-5ft pile.
Nice and retentive so if you flipped and wanted to stay in you could just roll up in the hole but not so retentive that you couldn’t get out if you didn’t want to. It has two huge eddies on either side which extend 150ft down river, so you couldn’t get much better.Since then I have paddled it twice more at 3500cfs and 2500cfs, and by 2500cfs it starts to get a bit shallow. Now we all know that I am not the best play boater but to give you an idea of how good it was at the 5000cfs day, 3 of us could be in the hole at one time, and one guy was staying in for over 5 minutes throwing every move that I knew existed and many that I didn’t.
So anyway its suppose to rain again tomorrow, than then again on Sunday, so if you cannot get hold of me that’s were I am.
Well bye for now.
posted by Shaun at 5:42 PM
