Clearwater

This July 19-21 I made my 3rd trip to the Clearwater river in Clearwater BC. At around 6 hour drive from my house or 7 from Vancouver it was well worth it even with the new high gas prices. The river was between 3 and 2.5 all weekend and was the best levels I had seen. The surfing was amazing, truly the best surfing Ive ever had. At the right level this river has surf wave after surf wave. Pink Mountain is the last surf wave to hit and the best truly is saved for last in this case. The other times I had been on the Clearwater were a little to low or way to high for this wave to work. There isn't great eddy service but the hike up is easy enough. Another great wave is Tsunami, this level was also the best Id seen for this wave. Probably the widest wave Ive ever surfed, must be over 100 feet wide with a 75 foot foam pile. As per usual when this river is at a prime level there was no shortage of boaters on the river, some days we didn't have a shuttle but never waited more than 10 minutes before we were picked up by the next group headed up. This area has an awesome local crew and lots of regulars when the levels are right.

Water is dropping quick but should be good for a few weeks still. Be sure to Check out the festival this year.

Here's some pics and a vid from another great Clearwater trip.

Adrian on Pink Mountain

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In 2007 I was lucky enough to make 2 trips to the Clear Water River. The first time was for the Clear Water River Festival, and the second was with the Vancouver Kayak Club. Both trips were full of awesome paddling and good off river activates. For the festival there was an awesome party at night with cheep drinks and a really good live band in an old ski lodge at the bottom of some mountain. Mix that with 200 kayakers and you can imagine how the attendance was for the rodeo in the morning. For the festival weekend the water was quite a bit higher than they had hoped for. This meant that most of the decent surf waves were washed out and the rodeo had to be held on a smaller feature on the upper run. Still had decent turn out and some good moves were hucked.

The second trip I did was few weeks later. I went up with around 15 others from the Vancouver Kayak Club. The river had come down quite a bit, allthough it retained its big water feel it was now splattered with some of the nicest surf waves Ive yet to surf. The largest of wich was called pink mountian, it got its name from the pink coloured mountain on the banks of the river, and I think mountain comes from the size of the foam pile on this monster. There was also Mini-Pink just up stream from Pink, this wave was considerable smaller but wider and more user freindly, this wave had eddy service unlike its big brother down stream witch was a get out and and walk back up afair. Tsunami is the first wave you come to on the lower play run and all though Im not actually sure witch wave it is thats called tsunami because there were so many really nice surf waves spanning the width of the river that you couldnt even catch half of them, this was another top three features on the river.


Pictures from the festival Weekend








Mike Grant hucks down in the rodeo

Looking down from the put in at "The Kettle"

The Line up for the rodeo



























The Party!!!

Pictures from the club trip




Ben on Pink Mountian























Matt Micheals in Pink Mountain












What you see here is a father and his son who unknowingly ran "The Kettle" on inner tubes. The Kettle is a rather long grade 4 chuck of white water that has a very nasty abrupt grade 5 finish into one of the nastiest much Pitt holes I've ever seen. They both survived but were quite banged up I think a broken leg and some bruises.








Here is search and rescue going to get the tubers from the kettle in one of the local raft companies raft.