july 28th-30th, 2006

3 days, boundary to cache bar

blake

andrea, pint, tom, jed

2.18 feet

2279

sunflower, flying b

the "lake" backing up from the lake creek blow out.  similar to rowing up to cramer.  flat water and once you round the corner you encounter a horizon line that you cannot immediately see over.

the blowout forced debris completely across the river.   mud was pushed up the opposite bank at least 10 feet higher than the water line seen here.  obviously these trees did were not in the river channel as they now are.

aerial photos show how much debris came from farther up the canyon.  the tiny amount of washout shown here is nothing by comparison.   the channel we floated is shown here and it borders the edge of the debris fan.   below this point it splits into 3 channels.  the extreme right hand channel is deeper, faster, fairly narrow and has a standing tree near it's end.  the center channel is shallow but without any obstructions.  it generally parallels the right hand channel moving center to right.  the left hand channel looked narrow and shallow, but i didn't scout it too much.  i knew almost immediately that the center channel is the route i would take.

the mud along the banks was a real quagmire to say the least.  the tree above that points into tom's head shows the approximate level of how high mud was forced up the left hand bank.

the right hand and center channels.  hard to see the center channel, but it exists left of the island seen here.  i would say there is about 15 feet of clearance between the standing tree and the island (left of the tree) and about 8 feet of clearance to the right of the tree.

good water depth and speed to push your boat into the tree ;)  boats were taking this route so it was a possibility.  i have since heard of one collision with the tree.  no serious results.

looking upriver from the corner above pistol.  the upriver corner seen here is the first bend below the standing tree.  we tended to stay right and work through the log piles.

taken from the same position as above, but looking downstream towards pistol.  the route we took past this point is out of the photo to the right.  the big log pile seen at the corner forces you to align for pistol either left or right a bit earlier than did the shallow water before the blow out.  left had fewer logs, but it had the hole.  right had logs to work through as can be seen below.

looking closely at the log pile close to the camera you can tell it is hung up on the river right marker rock just above pistol creek rapid.   as i moved between this log pile and the upriver one that is more in river center i managed to stick an oar and get my line all fouled up.  luckily it was captured on video too so i can never forget it ;)  everyone else did great maneuvering through this maze.

this photo needs no explanation.