Norrish Creek

There's one thing I love almost as much as whitewater, and that's sharing the experience with others. It was great to get two first time runners on Norrish Creek last weekend and seeing them have good runs down, despite the low level. It was also nice because the weekend would end with two flat tires!

Norrish Creek is a classic Mission, BC class IV/IV+ run that features numerous boulder gardens, granite drops, deep canyons, amazing offside waterfall scenery second to none and lots of cars. Turns out it seems to run more often than was thought in the past, and after a slow season for it last year it seems to be turning into more of a staple run this year, especially with laps being pulled in about an hour now.

There are 2 must run rapids that without the creek would be cruisy class IV, these 2 rapids definitely up the tempo a bit and crank on the intimidation factor. Despite this, it's wise to give the whole run the respect it deserves, or it'll bite ya.

I bought a DSLR camera (Canon Rebel T4i) finally and was also really excited to get that out for the first time. I decided to go my first day sticking to a 50 mm fixed zoom f1.8 lens and polarizer. It's apparent from the photos that it's my first time and I'm still working to dial in lots of the settings and work with it, despite this some of the 300+ photos I took this weekend turned out ok. You can tell the lack of image stabilization on the lens and an often too slow shutter speed affected my outcome, all things to work on in the coming months! Everything I know comes from Darin Mcquoid's website.

I look forward to reading this years down the road and seeing how things progress..

Happy paddles!

Getting dressed at the takeout before heading up

Marvin getting wet

Marvin getting more wet

The first deep flatwater canyon

Scott loving it with his new FNA full face

Amazing 200 footer that pours in when the boulder gardens switch to granite

Ben dropping the slide

Neat perspective slide drop

Scott on the slide from above

Denny setting safety at the infamous must run, the waterfalls behind fall onto you if you go far river right in the lead in

Klade splashing over the must run on his first time down

Dave coming into the must run

Ben letting out a war cry out of the must run

Scott about to hit the crux move

Marvin and Klade enjoying an eddy between the crux and the weir hole

Dave entering the weir hole, this unassuming hole has a massive tow back

Looking upstream at the final must run, the logs upon high are deposited at high water