For Day 3 Heather and I got a very early 7am departure caravaning with Alpacka folks. Along the way we pulled off on the side of the road to check out Jacob's Ladder, which was just as impressive a maelstrom as I remembered. Ours was the first car to be dropped off at the Smiths Ferry takeout (an enormous field which would be nearly filled with weekend boaters by the time we arrived back) and then piled in the Alpacka van for our dropoff at the Carbarton Bridge. We said our many thanks to them and got ourselves ready as raft after raft began to appear to put on for the 9.5 mile Class III Cabarton run. This run was advertised as being the most scenic non-roadside runs with a healthy dose of whitewater, but really it was a lot of flatwater through generic forest with three notable rapids. Fortunately we pushed off before nearly all other rafts including well organized guided trips and had a most peaceful float down the first 2.5 miles of the run. The river temperature was remarkably warm and despite the few splashy rapids I am sure I could have done without the drysuit.
After 2.5 miles the old 1913 bridge on the abandoned railline crossed the river and we got out to scout Trestle Rapid by walking the tracks and crossing the bridge. After a few small things to avoid under the bridge the rapid had three discrete parts: (1) a clear left side tongue to enter with waves to ride out to center, (2) moves to work back left to punch through some lateral wave, and then (3) another tongue and waves to ride out. It was all quite straightforward (and I would have taken the same line if we didn't scout), but it was longer and more complex than I was expecting.
After Trestle we had some more flat stretches interspersed with some splashy Class II wave trains. We stopped under the highway Rainbow Bridge to figure out how long until Francois, the next rapid Heather wanted to scout, then continued on. After a rapid that a tour group let their clients float through (not Francois!) we passed the landslide stabilization engineering on river right and then got out to scout on river left. Francois was essentially a straightforward tongue that required some strong paddle strokes to skirt around the right side of a chunky hole at the bottom. Heather came close to wanting to walk this but ultimately decided to give it a try. She made the critical moves in the meat of the rapid perfectly but a comparatively tiny third of fourth wave at the very end of the rapid clipped her just right to give her a swim.
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| Francois |
Once collected and recovered it was a short distance to Howards Plunge, which we were told was a short and steep rapid into the start of a 0.8 mile long pool to end the run. Here we got out at an interesting railroad tunnel for a long and thorough scout. After much deliberation Heather had no interest and so she was on camera duty as I got a bonus lap through this fun ski jump-like rapid. From this point it was just a mellow paddle through the calm waters to the ferry bridge.
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| Howards Plunge |
We drove back to camp and after a snack and not really finding anyone else to boat we drove to Danskin for the Swirly put-in. Though we were content with our plan of running Swirly just the two of us, we actually ended up timing ourselves just about perfectly to end up tagging along with a group of six or so other packrafters. Swirly was a scenic 6 miles of Class II+. The rapids were fairly mild but there were some neat bedrock min-gorge sections with countless hot springs cascading in and boiling hydraulics and eddy lines from the rough bedrock features hidden in the river that kept us on our toes. The most notable rapid came early with a weird S-Bend with messy compression waves. Heather had a flip in one of the bedrock sections. At the last mini-gorge opened it was a milder gravel bar float back to camp. Cabarton did not quite live up to the hype for me but it was nice enough. Though the rapids were tamer I thought Swirly was a much more enjoyable run.
It was the last night of the roundup so we did our best to initially be social but eventually the allure of the hot springs one out for one last soak. Thanks heaps again to the Alpacka crew for shuttling us on Cabarton and Evan who kindly agreed to help me close our shuttle on Swirly.
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