Chilliwack Lake Down

Since early December I've been meaning to hit the first 3 km out of Chilliwack Lake to Post Creek, I'd heard it was a short, challenging run and after hiking the bank along it's length saw why, it's clogged with lots of wood along the shores as logs come out of the lake, and has the hardest drops found on the river.

Kiah, Jordan and I made it up there Saturday following a canyon run and a pool session. It was about 4 o'clock by the time we made it to the put-in (any shore along the lake really) and interesting to see the run with only an inch of snow as compared to the 3-6 inches that were there the previous 2 times I'd been.

As I put on at the shore near the mouth of the lake a fisherman and his son saw Jordan and Kiah heading down to the river and were extremely surprised, saying 'you guys heading to kayak the RIVER!? You kids are crazy! Have fun!'.

After heading down the river (at a low 1.1), we eddied out after a couple drops as there was a river wide log, impassable at the current level, causing our first portage. We took the chance to scout a little further down as well. We ran a few more drops before another river wide log, it looked like you could get under the log, but then river right fed a bit into a big sweeper death-log, so you had to stay river left. Kiah and I portaged while Jordan ran it with us keeping an eye out for safety. Jordan had no problem running it and if I were there again I'd probably run it now, seeing the obvious line.

The rest of the run waas read and runnable with some really fun drops that kindof feed into each other, and it ends so abruptly, one of those short and sweet things! More than anything I'd say, as I'd heard as well, that this is a run where it is important to have good eddy catching skills and be able to ferry well with the changing wood situation. It also really demonstrates the importance of being able to boof constantly as there aren't many pools and some sections are drop after drop where it's more difficult to build up a lot of speed and keep it when you want it. The most fun section of the river there is despite being so short, it feels a lot like Mel's drop of the canyon sometimes the left side, sometimes the right.

We almost missed the takeout when we noticed Post Creek coming in on the right, keep an eye out for it if you run this or you'll find yourself with a long hike out!