Upper Kuskanax

It's been a long time to dry out after our trip to Hood River, but with some warm weather and a bit of rain this week, Mom nature turned the taps back on for all us parched West Kootenay creekers.

On Tuesday the 26th the Tres Hombres, Chris R, Carlito Jacks and I overcame much adversity and massive "honey-do" lists to get out on the seldom run Upper section of the Kuskanax river near Nakusp. The standard section is usually run from the hot springs down to the Hwy on the edge of town, which offers up a sweet waterfall section with 4 class V technical drops and some great boulder gardens, but we have been seriously infected with the exploring bug and needed to do something different.

To get to the upper you take the left turn off about 1km before the Nakusp Hot Springs which is the Kuskanax FSR and drive up another 4.5km to the first Y and take a right about 700m down to an old deactivated bridge. We left our shuttle at the classic Gardener creek park n' huck at the waterfall section which eliminated the need to scrape down the lower 4k to town. Arriving at the bridge we were stoked to have nice med low levels but the river was wide and looked bony. Upstream looked better ,with some nice III boulders and there was talk of going to the next bridge another 4k up the road, but we had our plan and we were sticking to it.

Spirits were high as we suited up until one of party noticed a lack of available head gear. Now this person usually has their shit together and given the fact that they do own a kayak retail store, gear is not usually a problem. Today however was not a usual day. So boats were loaded up and we made a mad dash back down to Nakusp where to our good fortune there is a new outdoor store that sold our buddy a Styrofoam bike helmet (read: dodgy/sketchy-feeling-really-lucky-guy-helmet). Carl thanked the store owner for their wares and it was back up the road to the put in, time for round trip including purchase, 1 hr.

OK, game on, after about 1km of shallow scrapping, the river began to narrow up and started getting steeper with some fun boulder gardens and read and run drops. This section includes a particularly nasty 30-40ft three stage drop just above the Hot Springs. It might be a good idea to check it out by walking up the trail to the source pools from the Nakusp Ho Springs parking lot. It has been run, but is mighty risky as nearly all the flow pushes into a fatal looking undercut on river left at the bottom.

We could tell that we were getting close as we could smell the sulfur from the natural hot springs. The rapids became steeper and more continuous and the canyon walls rose higher, as the river turned we could see a significant horizon line around the bend and decided to scout. Now we were having FUN!

Somewhere in here Chris R was in front and eddied out mid stream behind a rock and began "yelling" in hand signals. My first reaction was that we have run into some typical Kootenay wood fest (this whole section was basically clean of wood) but no! He had startled a couple endangered woodland caribou that were chilling out beside the river! Very cool!

Here's a vid of Carl stylin this drop that signals the star of a short but significant canyon above the main drop.

After we all ran this it was a short eddy hop down to the lip of this meaty mother.We all portaged.

There is a hiking trail along the river left side of the canyon that makes it a breeze to get around.

After the hot springs there is one more drop worth mentioning. There is a significant horizon line with a great eddy on the river right above this monster.

I have ran it before at lower levels but the hole in the middle is backed up and you would be really messed up if you dropped in anywhere but hard left left. Right is a one way ticket to Piton city. The video doesn't do it justice as there is more that you can't see. After this it's just more boogie water to the waterfall section near Gardener creek which is all time good fun with good eddies to scout and take pictures.

The Upper section seems like a good option if the lower is too high or if your group has some more conservative members that don't like the gnar, as it would be easy to portage the first IV drop and the canyon. Or they could just go and wait for you and have a soak at the village's own Hot Springs. This section builds nice and gradually and gives lots of warm up time before it got serious. I would like to say that this section could be extended by heading up to the next bridge (4km past our put in), but we never got a look at it. The option is there if you get bit by the exploring bug. And hey, isn't that what we are out here doing anyway? Personally I like not knowing what is around the next bend, its what keeps me going.

Randito