Different creek at 300 +/-. The geometry of swimmers ledge was pretty interesting.
We had two carries yesterday, the first just below put in and the oaks about 2/3 down that we carried on R left. The one at the boat-pin hemlock we avoided by running left around the island. We lined boats under rather than carrying around.
But I thought we had four carries
Thursday. Am I mistaken?
Had a nice run starting 11:30. Waites was in the low hundreds, 130-120 ish and level on Tearflesh, I mean Tearcoat was down 15-20" from Thur when WC was in the 500s. Back pocket guess, we had 300 cfs. Beautiful creek. Saw wild geranium in flower and a nice variety of ferns including a patch of Maidenhair fern which is rare.
The geometry of Swimmers Ledge was obvious yesterday. I think of ledges as crossing flow, 90 degrees to direction of travel. So backwash comes directly upstream. No side to side component. If you're using the clock face as a reference and paddling to 12:00, ledges run 3 to 9 and the backwash is to 6. The place where we had problems, the ledge runs 2 to 8 and the backwash coming back upstream was funneled along the face of the drop so there was a powerful push towards 8, an acute angle left turn, which flipped Larry and gave Barb and Gus memorable surfs.
Started as C-2 and K-1, finished as 2 C-1s and a K-1. Compared to the maelstrom of Thur, the stream had more going on, more ledges, eddys, and required maneuvering, less power, fewer boils, and no suspense about strainers around the next corner.
No idea how robust the correlation with Waites Run is, but if it is strong, I would reset canoe zero above Waites = 50. Maybe 80 or 100.
I came home after Tearcoat Ck, but Larry and Phil headed down to Passage Ck which was in the 800s at 2:00 in the afternoon.
I've been thinking about the initial swim and walkout and trying to figure out if we took the best option. I think a post mortem would be of benefit so that we could make better decisions next time this happens. We came home, eventually, with all our gear and no significant injuries so we get good marks but I wonder how we might overcome the problems of communicating upstream once separated.