With the lowe Saint releasing and flows up everywhere, it looks like there will be lots of people skipping work early. I checked out things on North Drwyood Sunday afternoon. Those creeks are at ideal flows.
The first set of big drops on N. Drywood
The last major drop on N. Drywood
So things should be good for a slew of trips this week.
19 comments:
Did anyone end up going out on Monday night in the rain?
Lower StMary is about 250 cms this morning!! wow. Apparently the gates at Oldman had to be opened as well, so the Oldman at lethbridge is 750 cms... Starting to look like 1995.
Clay, Mark I and I went out surfing. It was OK but hard to stay on the wave. If you could get in the surfing wasn't too bad. It was fast and required lots of carving. It was actually pretty hard to stay in the recirc so it was very safe. The underwater currents when you flipped were pretty strong.
The police came by to check things out. There were also a number of cars that must have seen us from the bridge. It was pretty fun. The eddy was big, but you had to get out of your boat to get far enough upstream to catch it. Clay figured between 200cms and 300cms is a good level for the wave.
Right now the plan is to try the lower Saint. We will meet at the put in by the windmills at 4:00pm. We will see how washed out it is.
Whats the highest you have paddled the Lower St.?
I don't know. I think it was around 100cms to 200cms for one trip the other year.
I can't remember what the flows were like when stew paddled it in '95. 300+ ???
Could be big today (250cms now). No swimming please.
I heard they just closed the road to Lethbridge. I am not sure where. I guess that means the trip is off. If you need to get hold of me, I am at 653-1546.
Lethbridge City has also closed access to all river valley parks near the Oldman due to high water and risk of higher water.
I'm out Chris. Flows are above 250 and I'd like to avoid the epic on a Tuesday night. Friday however is a different story! Let's see what we can arrange for the friday.
Shame guys, I heard from Stew that he didn't think things would be all the different from high flows the other year. The big water he described in 95 he thought was over 500cms. I think we have a way to go for that. Oh well. I just heard from Aaron Hemphill that he ran Gold creek over by Frank. I am going to give him a call to see what is going on tomorrow.
Screw the flood. I am boating tomorrow (Wed after school)! Gold creek if I can find it, Lower Saint if the party poops out. Clay is coming too. Maybe he can write off the trip as landscaping research (assuming of course he spends lots of time upside down checking out the rocks on the river bottom).
I love big yellow boats!
School is cancelled for Wednesday. WHo is up for boating? Call me on my cell. 653-7447. Hopefully the battery holds out.
I took a road trip yesterday and everything's up - ranging from big to spooky big with floating debris - be careful.
In addition to the heavy rain, the snow line came down quite low so the good news is that flows will be up for a while. Now we just need a bit of warmer weather for those of us who are cold-paddling whimps.
We just got back from the Lower Saint. It was amazing. There were only two holes on the entire run. One was a wave hole that clay hopped in on Run no Run. The other was a death hole at the ledge above haripin.
The surf was amazing. The river wide ledge was a good surf wave. The dump had big waves, but little surf. The best surf was at the tail end of Hairpin. It was amazing, and has a better run out than the glassy waves on run no run.
We're up for a shortish paddle Thurs. and probably the main St. Mary run on Sat.. Anybody around Thurs. afternoon?
I paddled the Oldman below Fort Macleod today, rescuing our weather and instrument station - the wind gauge had become a stream flow gauge - humorous but cost a few $.
I may be in for Thursday for a shortish run on the St. Mary.
Sorry, I won't be able to make it out until next week sometime. Nice pictures Chris!
Anyone planning on going out this week on the Lower St. Mary's?
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