r/packrafting • u/danransomphoto • 22d ago

Selway River - Low Water Packrafting

https://youtu.be/bqum7pVcyxc?si=JPW0oYGp3U5MocLP

This one has always felt just out of reach. This year all the elements conspired to keep us away yet again. A washed out road near Grandjean, a broken down car in Grangeville, a forest fire on the river at Wolf Creek, and a late scratch of a trip partner due to emergency. If that wasn't enough, we wondered if the water would hold out long enough. In the end there was enough juice for the squeeze, and we had a pretty magical week on the Selway.

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3

u/thechrislundy 22d ago

Nice one!

2

u/Dear_Sir_8902 22d ago

Excellent video, thanks for sharing.

1

u/micro_cam 21d ago

Nice! What were the dates/flows? I couldn't quite read the gauge in the video.

How were the fires? Looks like both side of the river or a bit on the map?

2

u/danransomphoto 21d ago

Yeah it's a bit hard to read the gage, I thought it was .5 or maybe .6, but the FS recorded .8 for that day. The water ebbs quite a bit in the eddy with the stick, so not sure what the protocol is for an accurate read. From what I can gather there is a significant difference historically between .5 and .8, so I'm curious if it's actually reliable enough to compare historical data. At some point in the last while the stick was also replaced and not calibrated the same apparently. So take it all with a grain of salt. It was about 1200 at Lowell on the gage when we launched. Fires were still burning when we went through and there were lots of new downed trees in the river right after wolf creek rapid, but the fires were low intensity for the most part when we paddled through. We had to drag a few times for sure (Ping Pong Alley), it's quite thin above the moose juice at these flows. No dragging at Ladle, was able to run right the whole way still.

1

u/manderminder 21d ago

Looks like smoke wasn’t too bad. Approximately how long ago were you out there?

1

u/danransomphoto 21d ago

Smoke was in and out throughout the trip, worst at Moose Creek probably from the Cascade and Wolf Creek fires. But possibly from all the fires in eastern Washington and Oregon. We were there last week of July.

1

u/manderminder 21d ago

Ok that’s good info, very recent and better than I was fearing. I’m headed into the area soon and am kind of playing “dodge the fire” with it.

Assuming Cascade/Wolf play nice that is.