Clearly Clearwater River

With a three day weekend again Dan and I headed up to meet Annie, Denny and some others to run Clearwater River at Clearwater, BC.

Not to be confused with Clearwater Creek in northern Washington State, which is a low volume steep class IV+/V creek, Clearwater River in middle British Columbia is a big water tributary of the Thompson River, which eventually feeds into the Fraser and runs down to the Pacific.

It is a good class III+ run with a few sections on it that I've heard of. It is located in Wells-Gray Provincial Park, which is a waterfall park including the 300ish foot Helmcken falls first of all which in itself is awesome. It is fed by 2 distinct lakes, one of which has a 15ish foot waterfall drop that becomes the river and another falls entering at 'Falls Creek'.

Each lake runs down a distinct run including some good canyons that I'm not clear on the difficulty of into a rapid called 'Sabertooth', after Sabertooth is some easier stuff then a class VI rapid rarely run at low water levels called 'The Kettle'...just below the pinch ending of Kettle is the classic playrun we did. You start right beside the pinch hole ending of kettle in your playboat and run 2 cool rapids '3 fingers' which featured a nice eddy boof and 'the wall' where you run left to right between 2 holes.

After the 2 notable singular rapids are some great catch on the fly and eddy fed surf waves including Tsunami, Little Pink and the star of the show, Pink Mountain, which unfortunately required a bit of a hike. I spent most of my time there running Little Pink, which was an awesome wave that catered more to my level of paddling and barely surfing, it seemed at a perfect level for it as well being right around or just under 2 for the weekend!

Overall it's a great place to go and would be an amazing backyard run, but being 4 hours from Chilliwack makes for a bit of a drive...especially when competing against other big water playruns of similar or less distance and arguably better quality and with better creeks in their respective areas including Wenatchee and Puntledge when it's running...a good place to go though! And the camp spot was amazing..!

A pack of rabid Red Necked Grebes invades our eddy space!

Denny tumbles in on Pink Mountain