We left town in falling snow that fell thicker as we drove south. Turnagain Pass had a line of cars parked and skiers skinning out and up. It seemed silly to be headed out to packraft and I was surprised that a certain boater had been coaxed out into this madness. Personally I could think of nothing more appealing. I had run Ship Creek six times in five days and needed a change. And my wife was out of town and it’d been lonely at home with her gone.
While it was 32 degrees and snowing, there wasn’t any ice on the river and it actually felt warmer than the October 7 trip. Brad, JT, Becky King and Tony were all up for this, expecially after running Ship Creek multiple times over the last week. Best of all, the water in Six Mile was low, low, low – running at ~8.6 feet or 390 cfs. Like late season snow, late season boating on Class IV classics is good for the ego.
We decided to put in just upstream of the foot bridge, above the 1st canyon’s first rapid, where a wide trail leads down. The water was running at 85% of the flow of the Oct 7 trip and things looked much easier, slower, and simply more fun. The first set of rapids in the 1st canyon – 17-ender, and the next waterfall drop – we ran twice, dragging our rafts kid-sled-style in the snow. The remaining three or four drops down to Canyon Creek were also easy, requiring maneuvering that is no harder than Eagle Rivers’ Campground Rapids in midsummer, but much less powerful.
We got out at Canyon Creek and shuttled down to Boston Bar – essentially cherry-picking the second canyon. It too was low and easy (relatively). I was amazed at Becky King’s style and smile – she had a big grin on every drop and seemed to simply float, like a little bubble of joy, across every hole. She honestly seemed unable to get bander-snatched or otherwise squirted in any rapid.
JT, who’s been boating for 20 years, and has run 6 mile many times in a hardshell kayak, had that typical kayaker-in-a packraft look on his face: the same expression most dogs have when you pick them up off the ground, “Why are you making me do this?”. He was the only one of the four of us who didn’t swim at least once in the third canyon. The Staircase was really no big deal – the trickiest rapid was Merry Go Round with two near flips and one swim. Of course Becky just styled it with a smile.
Anyway, with each low water, creekin-fun paddle, the third canyon loses some of its mystique and its bad-ass reputation. But come summer and water over 9, 10, even 11 feet (no place for packrafters, right?), it comes back as a big scary, hard-ass river. So, get some while it’s good and sweet and low: under 400 cfs.
BTW there’s a river wide strainer/sweeper just upstream of Staircase and below a steep little drop – Be careful there, it’s easy to pull out into a river RIGHT eddy and portage, but a swim in the drop above the eddy might put you into the log.
but 2-3 drops after the footbridge there is a log just in a perfectly bad position in the main current on right. Its not huge, I tried to move it as I was out of the raft anyway 
but I just didn’t have the muscle power. I think a group would have no problem removing it. It is fairly easily avoidable left but its not easily noticed while dealing with the drops right before it. Then almost immediately after that there is another log overseeing the main current on the right. One should be able to easily go under it, but it can be as I chose to half portaged to the left. Its right where a very large rock splits the current that does not want to be split and it just seemed like a wise idea to not deal with those two things at once.