There were some places where the stream went through trees, or a combination of trees and boulders. We stopped to scout five or six times, both for trees and boulder gardens. We made short potages a couple of times. But if you were willing to scrape some branches, and made the right choices, it probably would be possible to run the whole section without portaging. Other years could be different. This year there had been a lot of flow earlier, which probably cleared out a lot of the vegetation.

The consensus was that this section was class III. I flipped over twice in my RPM kayak but rolled up on my first try each time. One of the times I pushed off the bottom to make the roll because the water was so shallow. There were a couple of other times when I pinned on a boulder and had to lean like mad and fight to get off. Jorge swam twice. His roll is not bad this year, but he said he was in a position where he could not roll. Once he was against a rock, and the other time he was pushed under by a log and said he could not reach the paddle above the surface of the water. Lyle flipped over four times and rolled up each time. He and I both flipped in the same spot in one boulder garden rapid. I saw him do it and then managed to do the same thing. I don’t think Daniel rolled at all.

When I got my phone turned on back at the car it was 1:30 pm. We had not stopped for lunch, but had spent some time scouting. It would be possible to put in 6.5 miles further upstream where the creek goes under highway 87. We chose the section that we did because Lyle thought it would be better from his exploration of the area. All RAPs were 2wd accessible, although you might be able to get a little closer with 4wd.

The forecast had been for 65 and sunny and I was very comfortable in Michelle’s semi dry top, hydroskin shirt, wetsuit pants, splash pants, skull cap, wetsuit socks, and fingerless gloves.