Sunday, June 5, 2011

Blue Sky + Warm Temps + Snowmelt = Sweet Boating!


Shayne running the falls

Blue sky, warm temps and snowmelt had me driving from Starthcona Park Lodge to Courtenay for another run down the Alpine section of the Browns River. I met Shayne and Joe at the base of Mt. Washington and we had for an afternoon run. 

With the warm temps we had higher flows which made the run even better. We put-in at but 5/6km up from the take out bridge and started down. 

The first major drop is pretty full-on with the river channelizing creating a 3m falls with a large cave on river right and a rock, at the base on river centre/right..... don't go right! We portaged this last weekend and took a better look at it this time and ran it left of centre. It was sweet! 

Shayne entering the Cave Rapid
Boofing the Cave Rapid

After the cave drop we had some boggy and come to the first double drop which is really fun. Starts with rolling right around a rock with a left boof landing and maybe 4 strokes and boofing the next drop in the centre... so fun! 

Then we floated down to the 7m waterfall! Man this drop is just so fun. The icing on the cake for me is after you boof the heck out of it you have continuous class 4+ 300m then it mellow's out to class3-4 for the rest of the run.

The first 60-100m after the falls
Joe about to boof the heck out of it

After taking some time for photo's at those 3 sections of rapids it was around 4pm and Shayne had to be in Nanaimo to pick up Carrie at Departure Bay Ferry Terminal at 7pm and Joe was suppose to be at the base of Mt. Washington to meet Gill at 5pm ish. So we bombed down the rest of the run, which is the balk of it, in about 20 minutes. When we got to the bottom all 3 of use said "Man we should have a steep creek race down this thing!" Maybe next Puntledge fest. Long story short we got to the base of Mt. Washington at 5:30pm, so not to bad, Shayne made it just in time to get Carrie and we all headed to Joe and Gill's for food and the hockey game....... yeah Canucks!!!

Thanks to Shayne and Joe for the sweet run and for Dave Prothero for scouting this classic a few years ago.

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