Last blast in the northwest for now...

With no job, and no money, I've decided to return to NC to reevaluate my career decisions (apparently newspaper writer isn't a super high paying gig). But before I did, kayaking buddy Leif flew out for one last road trip through the northeast...


I picked Leif up in Spokane and we started our journey across the country, stopping first at the Wenatchee River for some class IV creeking.

The Wenatchee has got some great fun creeky rapids at its low summer flows, and at high flows it is apparently some of the scariest big water in Washington.

As it was when we were there, the river consisted of boulder choked class IV, with some great boofs, pushy rapids and fun stuff all around.

After the Wenatchee we booked it to Seattle for a killer night on the town with paddling buddy Shevy (see out of town booty beer post). After that we booked it to British Columbia because Callaghan Creek was running.


Callaghans has some great drops on it, including this 15 footer that drops into a rollercoaster class IV rapid. But the highlight is this clean 30-footer.


My first lap down it I broke my paddle and swam, but I got two more clean runs on the drop before we left. Although I don't have a picture I took a tequilla beer for this one...

Nate getting it done...

We also performed a little Canada improvement project, cutting out a nasty looking log on a otherwise easy rapid.

Doing work...

Although creeking and river running is my bread and butter in kayaking, No trip to Canada would be complete without a visit to the infamous Skookumchuck Narrows...



Skookumchuck is absolutely one of the most unique places to go kayaking in the world, apart from the fact that it is a world class surfing wave...

There are purple starfish...


and other cool sea creatures like seals and sea anemones,


We spent a while feeding mussels to the sea creatures...



but once 4:30 hit, and the tide came in, we watched the water in the river channel change directions and one of the biggest waves I've ever seen form right in front of our eyes...

The locals that came to playboat there were all throwing HUGE moves, and while the wave itself was a blast it was really cool to see some folks who had it dialed in throwing down in a big way out there.



Wavesport's new prototype carbon playboat was also out at Skookumchuck, getting passed around by some of the local boaters, you can tell how light that boat is because it practically flies off the wave.

After Skookumchuck we barreled back down to Washington for what turned out to be an epic creeking mission on Thunder Creek in Cascadia...

Thunder Creek involved a four mile hike in and paddle out. What we thought would be some manageable class IV -V turned out to be some gnarly high water V. With just myself and Leif most of the adventure turned out to revolve around epic portages and bushwhacking nonsense.

There were some crazy big trees on the hike in

Some of those trees fell across the river...

There were some great drops in there that would have been great to run with a bigger crew to help mitigate the consequences of messing up, but all in all we portaged a lot.

We did get to run a really cool double drop called Dem Sum, but we were super excited to be finally out of the gorge when the time came.


We then took a little playboating trip to Missoula, no pictures but I did manage to swim in a silly little class III rapid, I still can't explain it. No pictures, but I eventually drank my booty beer for that one as well...