The Cottonwood river is just north of Quesnel, which is about 100km south of Prince George if that means more to you. Where the river passes under the highway at the put in and take out, it's dead flat, which has lured more than one foolhardy person into trying to tube it, fully equipped with jeans and beer.
It's technical 3+ or four at low water, and gets really serious at higher water. There's one mandatory portage, which is easy to make at low water and hard to make at high water. There's no gauge on the river, so local knowledge is essential to tell you what the water level is like. It's runnable in the summer when there's been some rain to get the level up, and in the spring if it's not too high. In contrast to many Cariboo rivers, it's pretty warm, since the water has been winding through cow pastures before it gets to the canyon (yum).
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Here's me almost splatting up against a rock. (Note the solid air brace.) As I said, the Diablo doesn't normally do this kind of thing, but this drop was squirting even the Freefalls in the group. See, the reason you want to be in control is that this drop comes right after it. |
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Gary got flipped in the first drop so that he was forced to run the second one down the wrong channel, hit the rock wall so hard we heard the thump from where we were standing and then got smeared against the headwall for a while before rolling up for the second time. Who wants to go next?
Kelly went next and didn't have any problems until he decided to go ahead and run the third drop to make some room for the next person. Now, the last time we ran it, if you went left you ended up pushed up against the headwall. So we'd decided to run it on the right since that route had worked well last time. Poor Kelly.
Duncan and I were still standing on the scout point when our attention was attracted by flashes of yellow in the distance. Apparently a cartwheeling Corsica S. With the increase in volume since last time, a terrifically sticky hole had formed there. Periodically the yellow would go away and we would see a paddle blade fanning back and forth. Then the yellow ends would start again. After longer than I think I would have lasted, we saw Kelly swimming out, which was okay because it was flat below there. That was two paddlers chewed up.
Leo and I had perfectly clean runs, but the group was still jinxed. Duncan got stuck going last and wouldn't you know it, he flipped in the same place Gary did and was heading for the left channel. Luckily he managed to grab a rock and claw his way back up so he could get over to the right.
I think that was the last time I got to run the Cottonwood, which is too bad. The whole incident convinced us that we really need a gauge on that river, because none of us wanted to run it any higher than that.
