Upper Yellowjacket Creek

Christie Glissmeyer on Yellowjacket Creek.

Finding a rarely run section of river, about which I had heard nothing, just doesn’t happen that often. It started off quite simply. During July of 2008, a huge snowmelt year, Mike G and I headed up to paddle McCoy & Yellowjacket Creek. Driving up and down NFDR 28, in search of the access, we spied a big waterfall from the road. I also noticed on our WA Gazetteer that the road got close to, and appeared to cross, the creek further upstream. We found the put-in, which the Bennett Book describes as Class V. During the subsequent hour it took us to get down to the creek, loose soil and rock avalanched down around us as we clutched thin tree trunks. The steep terrain forced us to improvise several rappels, lowering boats to one another. Dirty, sweaty and tired we made it to the creek, where I slipped and cut my knee open.

After a great couple of hours on the Yellowjacket, we reached the take-out and I resolved to find an easier way to the creek. And, perhaps, run that waterfall. A week later Mike and I, along with a crew of paddlers from Portland and Hood River, headed north to explore.  We drove on NFDR 28 2-3 miles past the Bennet put-in.

We put-in just before the turn off to 7713

Just before the road veers across the creek (at least on the Gazetteer), a slightly over grown dirt road veers off to the left, down towards the creek. Follow that for a hundred yards and you are new, higher, better put-in. It is less than 30 seconds to the river.  Below, lies a great section of river.  Several class 3s, lead to a logjam and the subsequent portage.  After the medium-hard walk, up and over on river right, be ready for the horizon line.  This is the waterfall viewable from the road.

Dave Hoffman in the lead-in... (Photo by Christie Glissmeyer)

...and on the drop. (Photo by Christie Glissmeyer)

Pat Sherwood in the pool.

Turin Hill

Turin stoked on a good line.

Mike Gottlieb

Exiting the pool below this drop is a fun little slide.

Christie Glissmeyer

Someone was a slalom racer.

Keep an eye out as you head downstream. The next horizon line is big. I caught an eddy right at the lip and wouldn’t recommend doing that again. The waterfall is about 40 feet high. At the medium-low flow we had, a visible rock shelf extended 2/3rds of the way into the landing zone from river right. It may go further. As the lip wants you to be on the right of the drop, this one might just not be runnable. At this point you can do one of two things – hike around, which takes 10 minutes or jump into the pool below. Our group did a mix and lowered boats into the pool after some folks were below to recover them.

Jesse Becker looks downstream.

Turin could have done a better job of jumping.

Lowering boats past the (probably) unrunnable falls. (Photo By Christie Glissmeyer)

Now for a super fun set of slides!

Jesse Becker

Fairly gorgeous, hunh?

Dave Hoffman on the slides. (Photo By Christie Glissmeyer)

Turin

This was a really really fun rapid.

Around the corner from this rapid, we reached the place where Mike and I put on during our first paddle of the Yellowjacket.

To sum it all up, by using the higher put in for “Upper” Yellowjacket Creek

• You get a few more good class 4 rapids and one sweet waterfall. This makes the run a little harder.
• The adventure of a big portage.
• A tighter, more scenic gorge than the rest of Yellowjacket
• Eliminates the sketchy put-in
• Much less work for more miles of river.  It took us an hour to get down the ‘original’ portage, though I imagine it could be down much faster. It took us an hour and fifteen minutes to paddle down to our original launch spot. That includes a lot of photos, the 1st portage and the throw-and-go/hike.

I hope you have fun on Yellowjacket!