Homathko River

Homathko River, BC
09.28.10

It's been a minute since my last update... This summer has been full of
action throughout Iceland, Norway, and the Americas. I'm stretching
myself thin trying to kayak full time, make the movies, do my music,
and of course maintain the business... It's not leaving a lot of time
for web updates but here is a quick one...

The Homathko at it's source. Our starting point

Our mission was to travel to Northern British Columbia with 2 weeks time to
run some rivers. Our first river was the famous "Homathko" which starts
small at it's source and then winds it's way to the pacific. I would
put this in the top 3 most beautiful rivers I have ever paddled. It is
truly a gem...

dropping into one of the first challenging rapids. Katie Scott ran this one first (so what if it wasn't on purpose)

Katie Scott drying off after a long day

A nice cave we found to camp in after our longest day on the river

Katie Scott below a mandatory portage. Too bad this gorge ends with sieved
out nastiness otherwise the lead up would be EPIC! Maybe there is a way
to run the stuff above and get out before the death drop but I think it
would require some serious rope work...

The start of day 3

We arrived at the first big rapid of day 3... This thing is runnable (and
I think it's been run) but none of us wanted a piece of it... Maybe at
a different water level you could make it through the top hole but it
was a big risk with high consequences. I started to walk up to portage
around the beast when all of a sudden I saw Katie's boat floating down
the rapid! It appeared she had not pulled it high enough up on the bank
and a surge took it away... We spent 15 minutes scrambling downstream
to try and catch it but were too late... Her boat was gone...

Katie being pulled 190 feet out of the canyon

Remote Class V kayaking requires extreme caution as EVERYTHING you need to
survive is in your boat... Sleeping bag, tent, food etc. At the point
where Katie lost her boat we were a 10 days hike from the nearest
settlement. After some debate, we decided to use Darin's SPOT device to
call in the Search And Rescue to get Katie out of the canyon. (thanks
Shannamar and sorry for the stress this caused you) We feared she would
be stuck with a serious bill... However, Canada is much cooler then the
states and they charged her a grand total of 0$ to be rescued. Not
really sure if this was a special price for the young lady or if us
boys would have received the same treatment...

After 4 days of wilderness boating we arrived at the ocean where a float
plane landed to meet us. This river has great whitewater with a few
commiting canyons. On 3 different occasions we were in walled out,
vertical gorges with no way of portaging or scouting! However, beyond
the whitewater my greatest enjoyment was the setting... We saw several
Grizzlies and got within 30 feet of a few... The final gorge of this
section is class 3... Willie Kern named this gorge "Inner Peace." I
can't think of a more suitable name....

Our crew, from left to right Darin Mquoid, Rudy Rampage, Katie Scott, Jonas Grünewald, Charlie Center

Homathko River

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