Cle Elum River - Play Run @ ~2600crs - 5/27/07

I ran the play run of the Cle Elum River on Sunday 5/27/07.  This is an easy Class II stretch of river that was a LOT of fun.  There is some really good surf waves and holes that are not intimidating and lots of fun.  This is a perfect beginner stretch.

There was quite a bit of wood in the river that was easily avoided but could get nasty if you are swimming.

The crew for this run was Leif, John M, Sarah, and Erik.  Amazingly we had two swims and not by the beginner John.  Leif missed several rolls after flipping into a very swirly eddy formed by the confluence of a creek.  I tried to catch the same eddy but missed it and continued downstream towards a huge tree in the middle of the river.  I was able to navigate around the tree and point the rest of the crew to the river left side of the tree which is a clean line.

While in the eddy formed by the tree I saw Leif swimming!!  I couldn't believe it and he was headed right toward the tree trunk.  He slammed into the trunk, held on for a few second trying to crawl on top and then flushed under the tree.  He flushed through clean, I asked him if he was okay (he was) and then took off after his boat.  I pushed his boat into an eddy and caught an eddy downstream.  Sarah caught the eddy Leif's boat was in, got it out of the river, and emptied out the water.  Whew, crazy!

Of course Leif was on the opposite side of the river as his boat so Erik and I traded boats and I ferried Leif's boat across the river to him.  Cowtails really come in handy during a rescue.

After the drama and me yelling at Leif (sorry dude) for swimming we continued.  There was a spectacular surf wave with eddy service that we took turns surfing.  After Erik flushed off the wave and flipping I jump onto the wave.  When I came off I saw Erik swimming downstream!  What, no way was Erik swimming!

He self rescued and after a short break we finished the run with several holes and few more quality surf waves with eddy service.

Good fun but no photo's.  I think the new Cle Elum swim team guys (Leif and Erik) were just tired from an earlier Wenatchee play run session earlier in the day.  It's a good reminder that we are all between swims... even in Class II .

I snapped a photo of tree Leif flushed under on Sunday.  Nasty, eh?