Upper Elk

I've been awfully quiet these last few weeks with teaching, visiting family and time with my girlfriend and haven't had much time to get out on any challenging runs until now. I flew into Calgary Thursday afternoon and quickly made plans for the weekend, convincing Kelsey Thompson to come with me to Fernie so we could paddle the rarely run Upper Elk. I called local Fernie resident Shon Cottrill but due to a separated shoulder he was only able to come out and take pictures.

I had first done this run the previous year with Shon Cottrill, David Manning and Scott Feindel on a mostly exploratory run. The run starts just below the dam located near Elko B.C. You put in and paddle across the big pool to a large low angled otter slide, in all it is about 70 feet and a simple fun class 4 rapid. You then run another class 4 slide before eddying out to scout Horseshoe falls. Horseshoe has a tough technical rapid leading into a 15 foot horseshoe shaped falls. You want to run the main ledge far right so you skirt two holes at the top before running through two reactionary waves and skirting into an eddy on the right. It's extremely tough to not get spun around backwards in the eddy and keep your momentum up for the main drop. I went first and was able to get into the eddy and spin around downstream hitting a huge boof over the ledge. Kelsey went next and not wanting to eddy out too much he over compensated and went straight over the middle of the drop. He managed to stay right, out of the cave on the left, and came out just fine.

Kelsey running the slide while Mikkel films

Kelsey and Mikkel Scout Horseshoe Falls

The veiw of Horseshoe from below

After this you paddle through two more fun class 4 rapids before you get to the manky drop. This drop is actually three really fun clean ledges but it has a manky boulder fence of rocks on the left of the first ledge and that's how it got its name. The tricky part of this rapid is that most of the water pushes into a headwall at the bottom with a lot of water collecting in an eddy on the left. This coupled with two tricky holes both pushing left directly above makes for a difficult rapid. Kelsey went first and came through the first ledge perfectly but was deflected left in the second one and even further left on the third. He ended up in a cave above the headwall but it was super mellow and actually set him up for a ferry over to the eddy on the right. Not wanting to make the same mistake myself, I ran the first drop clean but put a big left boof stroke on the second ledge so that I ended up on the right side and was able to cruise directly into the eddy on the right at the bottom of the rapid.

A fun random ledge below Horseshoe

Kelsey ferrying out of the cave

After this there are a couple more good rapids before a nasty slot that I hope never gets run. It bounces from side to side with rocks sticking out everywhere before ending in a terrible looking cave on the left. Portage on the right and while you're at it go take a look at Leap of Faith. This marks one possible put in for the Middle Elk formerly know as the Upper Lower, the other is to walk down the steepest railroad track ever to the base of the falls, its more a climb down a ladder than it is a walk. Kelsey wanted to get some footage of himself from the top so went first while I filmed. He had a perfect line but came up without his paddle and was obviously hurting, it looked like he hits his paddle on his face. I quickly went back to my boat and ran the falls hitting my line and tossing my paddle to avoid Kelsey's mistake. He had already started the trek up the hill and I quickly followed. It turns out he had a broken nose and needed three stitches below his eye but was otherwise OK.

The next day with Kelsey nursing his injuries I recruited Jeff Germaine to paddle down the rest of the run with me. After some debate he decided to give the falls a go, his biggest waterfall to date by quite a bit. He had a great line and only a blown deck marred an otherwise perfect descent. We continued down the Middle Elk which contains some great bigwater class 4/4+ rapids before it mellows out into the Lower Elk. Here we met up with our girlfriends for a nice mellow class 2/3 paddle out.

All photos Shon Cottrill.

Also check out Kelseys write up on the run here.