Canyon Creeks

Having fled the rain and coming snow in Idaho (they got 3 more feet in the mountains), we headed to Oregon to check out some creeks that usually only run during winter. We hit both Canyon Creek Oregon and Canyon Creek Washington, and also went to the wedding of our friends Allen and Jess near Hood River.

Canyon Creek, Washington
After wrapping up our Oregon mini-tour, we headed up to the Hood River area for the wedding of my friend and former roommate Allen. We hung out with good friends, and saw Allen and Jess get married on a beautiful day with Mount Adams in the background. We even caught a quick run on the West Fork of the Hood one of the days. The morning after the wedding found us teamed up with Trip and JEB, heading over to meet former southeasterner and Portland local Joey Baranski for a last chance low-water trip down Washington's ultra-classic Canyon Creek in the Lewis drainage.

Gearing up with Joey.
Photo by Trip Kinney.

JEB on one of the early cool ledge drops.
Photo by Trip.

The first main hurdle of the trip is this drop into a really chunky hole. JEB decided he would give it a try first.

JEB in the hole. He worked it out, but it was close.
Photo by Trip.

Trip taking a slightly more floaty line.

The rest of us decided not to roll the dice on that one and did the easy two step to seal launch walk. Next up was the falls - a mandatory drop of about 16 or 17 feet that was super fun. I followed Joey blind so that I could get some photos of the others.

Leland on the falls.
Photo by Trip.

Trip on the falls - the light was terrible so the photo's not great.

The other classic rapid of Canyon Creek is a sweet double drop down at the end, with two decent sized ledges back to back. Trip and I both shot photos here - what a sweet set of drops! The light was really bright on the top drop, and the lower drop was in the shade. This meant a picture of both drops together was going to be really hard to shoot, so we shot them separately.

Andria boofing the first ledge.
Photo by Trip.

Trip on drop 1.

Joey on the bottom drop.

Leland finishing off the sequence.
Photo by Trip.

After a great day on Canyon Creek, we ended up meeting Allen and Jess on Monday at the East Fork of the Lewis for their first run as a married couple.

Click to read the next part - East Fork of the Lewis!