Cayoosh Creek

With the chase for anything with water in the area on, Bentley and I headed up to Lillooet to run the classic section of Cayoosh Creek, which at a 3ish hour drive from home seemed reasonable. We met Jen Eddie, Sacha Bordas, Mike Grant and Alison Homer the latter two who'd just completed the Upper class III section and set up shuttle for this BC classic. We were pursuing a mixed US/CAN/NZ group of 9 people in front of us so it was a busy day up there!

Cayoosh is very different from most other runs I've done. The scenery is dry desert with super steep slides and scree slopes everywhere, it's roadside, but about a thousand feet down and winds through 3 good canyon sections of varying rock type.

Most of the run is classic semi-continuous BC pool drop, and definitely could have benefited from more water, but we were just so happy it HAD water still we didn't really mind. The run starts off with a great fading boof off a sloped rock and continues down through some amazing boulder gardens for a majority of the run. Most of the run is read and run, but there are some places you'll get out to scout.

Things steepen a bit coming into Landslide rapid, by far the biggest drop on the run, unfortunately it had wood in it which forced the most horrendous portage I've ever undertaken over a slidey scree slope of loose rock. The rapid immediately after also had a mank seived out line which needed more water to be ideal, so we also portaged that, the rest of the run was good to go.

The run maintains a good level of steep read and run after landslide for awhile until you come to the final canyon, which features 3 good drops and a more bedrock nature. The last drop at this level swirled down the left to right around a rock, but at higher water looked like it would have a nice boof, it was my favorite rapid of the day I think.

Also on this run I witnessed the first time I'd seen anyone pinned in a river, luckily they could still breathe and we managed a swift rescue and got all gear back intact as well, but it was scary.

Well worth the drive, the scenery alone would be even, this run far exceeded my expectations! We got to have a few drinks that night at Jen's as well and enjoy the new Inga Rapids film...good times!

Dan Bentley made a great video for this run here!

Fraser Valley White Water 2010 writeup here!