North River

I arrived late Sunday night from a weekend at Deception Pass and decided that since I was leaving the next day for the coast, I’d just leave all my damp gear on the roof of the Montero. I have to admit that the best part of any of my paddling trips is the wonderful homecoming that Theresa prepares for me, and this was no exception with a hot dinner and fresh bread waiting for me. I’m not sure what I do to deserve such special treatment, but I seem to have been born under a lucky star.

Corky Canaday was flying in from California on Monday. The plan was for me to pick him up and head down to Grayland with Kiwi hopefully joining us when he was able to brake away from his duties. Sometimes things just seem to fall into place, and this was one of them. Corky’s plane was on time, traffic was light, weather was pleasant, and Kiwi got away just a half hour behind us.

We had come up with a variety of options depending on the weather, surf, and wind. When we awoke on Tuesday we had a good BF5 wind out of the SW and sloppy surf. Trying to surf in this stuff would have been more work then fun, so we elected to explore North River, a tributary of the Willapa River which empties into the north shoreline of Willapa Bay. The first I’d heard of the area was from Barry, a local I’d met in Tokeland during a pervious exploration of the area. I remember Barry mentioning that in addition to the wildlife there is a large flotilla of floating homes as colorful as the people who occupy them. Apparently there is a long standing feud between them and Pacific County over taxation.

Just to the east of North River is Smith Creek which has a boat ramp for launching. From there it’s a quick 5 minute paddle back over to the larger of the two. The salt march topology was very reminiscent of my boyhood trips through the bayous of Florida’s panhandle. I half expected to see the submerging eyes of an alligator at every turn. It didn’t take long to start seeing the floating homes and they were as varied and colorful as promised. From the posh to the down right ‘Deliverance’ movie shacks, but all had some sense of humor displayed in either mile markers or some other whimsical sign.

As we made our way upriver we passed a small on shallow creek with large over handing trees creating a creepy cave-like entrance. That’s all the ‘Peter Pan’ in us needed to turn our bows and start up this small tributary. We expected on only go a couple of hundred yards at the most, but this ditch seemed to go on forever. Although we were out of the wind, the temperature felt a 10 degrees colder the on the river and we half expected to see a witch come out and greet us when we found the oldest and worst shaped shack floating in a small elbow of the ditch.

We finally hit the end of the road with a small sand bar and log jam blocking our way, but it was a great excuse to get out and stretch the legs. However, it wasn’t long before we were exploring the banks on foot which meant sinking up to our knees in mud and slit. Where we on the North River or Congo? We all had a good time laughing at our partners struggles in the muck!

On our way back to the North River, I happened to glance at my deck compass and couldn’t believe how turned around I was. I asked the others to quickly guess our direction without looking at compasses, and they where as turned around as I was. Fifteen minutes later we tried again, and again had lost our sense of direction in the thick undergrowth. Humbling.

Regaining the river proper we continued north and it wasn’t long before we noticed that the banks where gaining both altitude and steepness. Also they were no longer mud but rock. It wasn’t long before we heard then saw waterfalls and just at the end of our outbound journey we were greeted by the unexpected and beautiful sight of a cascading set of waterfalls nearly 200’ in height. We figured that this was as good a place as any to start the return journey, so we let the current take us back to our vehicles. A bit different from the regular ocean journeys we use to taking but it was a great fun filled float on the river in true Huck Finn style.