We had heard that the Upper North Fork of the Poudre was running and the gate was open so we decided to make an attempt. Mike had heard reports that it was low, but runnable. In fact, it was really low and barely runnable and quite boat abusive. Despite all that we had some fun and quite a bit of excitement.
After camping at the takeout and heading up to the trails end parking lot, we embarked on the mile hike in. Damn those land owners. It sucked hiking way out along a fence line when we had just passed a bridge we could have used as a put in. All information says to not test the locals, so we obeyed and hated every minute of it.
Despite that it was nice to be kayaking again, er bumping of rocks. There were quite a few islands and the correct paths were not always clear. With the water divided between the channels it full on rock humping. I took one channel and got pinned so bad I had to get out of my boat in the bottom of a mini-drop. Every little drop held the fear that you were about to boof into a pin or find some wood, but all was well until we reached the 10 footer, which doesn't really like 10'.
We came around the corner fairly tight and saw some ugliness and caught the eddy on river right for a scout. It was tight, but the four of us piled out and stacked the boats. Note to all: don't stack your boats. As we were negotiating a view of the drop, Tanner's boat slid off the side, into the main channel. Someone probably could have gotten it, but the instinct were to avoid swimming around above a waterfall so it disappeared around the corner.
Tanner was up on top yelling, "it's fucked now, it's totally f'ed now". I thought the boat had hit a rock and the bottom of the falls and exploded or something, then I finally saw that it was stuck in a gnarly sieve that non of us even knew was there. It was actually in a bad spot, as you could easily have ended up getting sucked in backwards if you made a mistake on the entrance to the falls. It was guarded by two rocks you had to shoot between at low flow.
Tanner's boat was screwed. There really wasn't a way into the sieve as the rocks creating it were 15' high and no real way down, if you could even get on top. We spied a 30' log downstream and decided to make a bridge to the sieve.
It was quite sketchy as the end was flimsy and could have broke, but Mike tied off to Tanner and trekked out to secure two bow lines. We decided it would be best to pull from the other side of the river, so I crossed and we threw the ropes over.
It was a tough extraction. We set up 2 5:1 systems and yarded for about 3 hours. We had to switch directions a half dozen times, trying different angles along the bank. Nothing was working. Our hands were blistered, our backs and shoulder were sore and Tanner could see it in our faces that defeat was looming. his hike out would have sucked real bad. Finally, someone decided to change to an extremely high poistion at the top of a cliff and everything got real easy. We still had to pull hard and move the second line, but the boat was out and over the falls. A couple of things we learned.
- Have multiple pin kits, if it was my boat, it would still be there
- Don't stack your boats if avoidable
- Make sure your shit is secure before leaving it on the bank
- Try many different pulling angles
- Try using a double 3:1 system for a 9:1 advantage
With Tanner boat out we ran the falls, which was quite anti-climactic.
There were a couple of more rapids, one of note slammed into a wall and almost flipped me, Tanner flipped and nailed a sweet combat roll. We paddled on down and out.
