All went as planned getting down near Mapleton, OR to the creek. As we were driving down I was checking the online gauge located on the Siuslaw River which Lake Creek feeds into near the end of the run. It was coming up from 7.5' Friday gradually and looked to on line for 10.5 to 11.0 for us. We scouted the only real rapid on the run, "The Horn" and got our shuttle done. Michael knows the run very well so he showed us the playspots as we headed down. There are tons of catch on the fly with several named ones like, "grassy lawn","mill wave", "the ledges" and "red hill wave". All were in and we spent most of our time on grassy lawn and mill wave. Devin was finally able to put the prototype small Biscuit through it's paces and he was very excited with it's performance. He's loved his LL Pocket Rocket and now the Biscuit will make that transition into the boat a very pleasant one. During the run the levels kept creeping up and got near 12.0'.
Once done with the run and shuttle we headed into Florence to get a room and eat at the famous clam chowder place "Mo's". Great food at a descent price and we then returned to our room to rest up. During the night the rain kept coming and we found ourselves with just over 16' on the gauge!! Wholly crap! Over 15' it's highly recommended that you're on your game as holes in "the ledges" get very sticky. Luckily for me and Devin was happy to join suit was to hop into our LL Chico and Grande Jefe's instead of the LL Ronin and Biscuit. There would not be much play other than what your could catch as you ripped down river. This isn't a creek at this point! This run rivaled your big water runs like the Lochsa or Crooked in character. Michael only had his playboat so he went down with it and Shannon opted to run shuttle not having a creeker. Good call in my mind.
We put in this time at the upper put-in for a warm up to get a feel of the beast and watch all the wood floating down with us. Creepy watching large tree's to small branches shoot past you when you're on a wave? It also gave me a opportunity to get a feel for my new creekboat! The Grande Jefe is similar in size with the Nomad 8.5 I'd been paddling. I'll compare the two later on. I'm not sponsored like Devin so I have nothing to gain by my opinions. I was very on the Truss with the boat and it proved to perform as I wanted on big water too.
After the warm up we came into "the ledges" starting near the left bank and I watched Michael in his playboat charge over a few large waves. As I crested one I got a glimpse of Michael climbing a huge near river wide ledge hole. What happened next sent a shiver down my spine as I was on the same line. At the top of the hole he was rejected flipping back into the hole and began getting chundered! With what felt time 20-30 mph current I watched for where Michael was getting worked and charged the ledge hole at full speed. I hit the turbo on my shiny red boat and punched the hole within 10 feet of Michael making it through without issue. Michael spent a few in the hole before flushing out after some fun loops. There are multiple ledge holes that you dodge while boat scouting through them. I then found myself in the front and ran "the horn" first. The rapid flushes out at that flow but had some huge waves with laterals crashing in. Good stuff!! Just after "the horn" is another pair of offset ledge holes. At the lower 11.5' we went down the middle in between them. This looked to still be the ideal line. The entrance is a right elbow that wants to push you left as you come into the ledges. We'd initially talked of running the far right but as we creeped around the corner the right hole looked to be scary big and Michael adjusted for the middle line though the holes. It worked quite nicely. The hole was as big or bigger than the next rapid at normal flows, "bus spot". "Bus stop" at 16'+ was nothing but a couple large waves. I briefly caught the first wave and can say I've surfed Bus Stop!! LOL.
"Red hill wave" becomes to ugly holes that Devin spent time in the lower one in the Chico and was happy to playboat out of it. "Mill wave" was in and Michael had a great ride in the wave hole, I blew off being too far surfers right catching it. Devin said he had his best surf in a creekboat on it but the eddy service didn't exist so we were hundreds of yards downstream while he was on it. Bummer...
In the end when we got off the water as Shannon gave me a ride back up to my Subi I found that the creek was at 18.34'!? 18.0' is flood stage for the Siuslaw River and most of the water was coming down Lake Cr. over the Siuslaw. It was just plain BIG!!!
We also went down to Sweet Creek to check it out at flood stage. Pics to come!! As well as video from playboat Lake Creek.
