Mar 9 2010
Low water Thompson River
Those of us that are lucky enough to call Southwest BC home, and lucky enough to call whitewater kayaking here a lifestyle take great pride in the year-round paddling we have. We also usually take every opportunity to remind our paddling friends especially those to the east of us how great the year-round paddling can be. But then there’s weekends like I had a couple weeks ago. While there were a few options for things to bump down in our backyard almost everything worth doing was super low. So with a friend here from the east coast the hunt was on to find some whitewater worthy of the stories I’d told earlier.
The best option I could think of for a day trip with the low temps and low water was the Thompson river about 2.5 hrs north of the Fraser Valley. The Thompson was quite low, actually as low as I can ever remember it being. Lucky for us though low on the Thompson was somewhere around 6300CFS, and on the other end it will peak out around 90,000CFS. There were all sorts of new obstacles and features showing up from the really low water. Even though all the usual play spots were now either nasty holes or bare rocks we did find a decent feature just below the Frog rapid.
Daniel Inskip shredding up the low water wave. Photo By Ryan Bayes
These sheep that came out to watch our surf session were the only other mammals dumb enough to brave the cold and wind on the river that day. Photo Ryan Bayes
It was also low enough that some of our group ran the right hand line at Cutting Board. Cutting board is the massive rock island that divides the river into two channels for a couple hundred yards. The normal line is down the middle of the left channel, with this lower flow there was a decent sneak line down the right side of the right hand channel. I can see why at the higher flows when most people are paddling this section no one goes right.
Jonathon Rasenberg launching the right side of Cutting Board. Photo By Ryan Bayes
Jono playing squirt boat. Photo By Ryan Bayes
The Thompson is a big water classic that is surrounded by lots of other runs within an hour drive like The Nahatlatch, Stein and Fraser Rivers as well as lots of other creeks. Most of the runs including 2 sections of the Thompson river can be found in the Whitewater in Southwest BC guide-book by Claudia Schwab.
Daniel Inskip and LuLu running out the bottom bit of Cutting Boards left side. Photo By Jonathon Rasenberg
In the end the easterner was stoked about getting on a new run as well as driving up the always beautiful Fraser Canyon.
