Poland Creek Mid-Winter Solace – First 24 Hours

Some people just can’t understand the allure of winter paddling in Arizona. For them it just doesn’t seem to add up. The cold weather, unpredictable water levels, long drives and very real possibility of either embarking on a mis-adventure to remember, or just getting skunked all together seem to validate their misgivings. Certain members of the crew have even flown home early from trips to AZ and quite a few trips have ended in disappointment. But for the experienced AZ adventurer the very real possibility of embarking on an epic mission to be savored in the long Colorado off-season is just too much to pass up.

Dreams of a southwestern winter paddling paradise - photo by ES

And so under this spell it was that we made our plans to head south with a huge wet storm over the southwest, praying for favorable water levels on any one of a number of targeted creeks. Of course, when I say we, I mean McCutchen and I, with hopes for another crew to join for safety and for shuttle.  The email announcement was sent out, and when no one responded, the list was increased and the email was sent again. Still no takers. Mountainbuzz and Facebook posts were made and finally a small but hesitant crew materialized as we checked the gauges every 45 minutes. Things appeared to be shaping up nicely.

I dropped Kaija with my sister and parents in Denver and we started the drive through the night. Outside of Santa Fe the weather became a factor and I may have had to reign in a 70 mph tailwhip on black ice. By the time we got to Arizona the snow was falling hard and once we were on the rim the snow was deep. Much deeper than anywhere in Summit County this year.

Isn't the Christopher Creek put-in here somewhere? - photo by Leif Anderson

Our game plan was to head straight for Christopher Creek to check the level and best case scenario was going to be to put-on for a 3 day mission on Christopher thru the Hellsgate run on the Tonto. Well, the level looked good but the snow even around Christopher had become waist deep overnight and that didn’t seem like it was going to work.

Level looks great! The waist deep snow might be a problem though - photo by Leif Anderson

Before any trip to AZ it is generally beneficial to get some on the ground beta, maybe a visual or two. To get this done I generally try to consult two people before embarking. One being Tyler Williams, who wrote the book on Paddling in Arizona. Unfortunately he was in California. The other is Cody Howard, who has carried the spirit of exploration from his predecessors in Arizona to Japan to BC to Hawaii, which is unfortunately where he was at the time of our departure. When I got him on the phone he sounded genuinely disappointed that he was going to miss the storm (c’mon your in Hawaii man) and he said that if he were there he would head straight for Poland Creek.

Oh well, let's go to Poland Creek! and quick before that semi going 6 mph catches back up to us - photo by Leif Anderson

With Cody’s words in my head, we walked away from the snow covered Christopher Creek bridge, hopped back in the trucks and made a beeline for Cleator, the take-out town for Poland Creek. Cody and friends had quite the epic on the first descent of Poland Creek so were determined to get an early start on the day. Armed with “new and improved” beta and our gazateer we neared Cleator as the sun began to fully form in the partially overcast sky. At least we were out of the snow.

The take-out road runs  from right behind the Cleator bar, 3.5 miles across the desert to the creek. Our first real problem came when we thought we were in Cleator but we wern’t. After driving down every dirt road in a mile long radius in attempt to find the river we rounded up the crew, dropped a rig at a creek we knew confluenced with Poland and decided to just go for it. This was at about 10:30am. Then we drove a mile or two up the road and found the actual town of Cleator.

Cleator in all its glory photo by John Melrose

OK. So not exactly an alpine start here but the nice people of Cleator gave us directions to the creek, one truck went off to move the take-out car to the real take-out and the other went off in search of the take-out. No problemo, right? Wrong. Feeling kind of rushed for time we only checked out three of the four spurs of the road to the creek (which took over an hour) and decided to leave the truck again, at not exactly the take-out, but this time at a much closer spot, maybe a mile or a little more from Poland Creek. Sweet.

Poland Creek? Nope, never heard of it? photo by John Melrose

Back to Cleator to pick up the crew and off to the put-in, which was only five or six miles up the road. Turns out in those five or six miles you basically switchback to the top of the highest peak in the area.  Cleator was below the snowline, but Crown King, where the put-in trail starts, definitely was not.

It’s 1:30 pm, were unloading the trucks looking down from an outlook at a snow covered trail that drops out of the lightly snowing cloud were in, 1500 ft. and 1.5 miles to the put-in. Huh. There was talk of maybe a one day mission and maybe there was a chance for a one day mission, if we had arrived at this point at dawn, but now, at least in my mind there was no chance. Cody’s group had gotten themselves overnighted, and they got a relatively early start. There description also included words like

“This trip to our granite Disneyland was turning into a box canyon that resembled a never ending version of Mr. Toad’s wild ride. The gradient was relentless, and the sun was falling faster with each bend we passed. The time for lollygagging was over, we needed to get to the take out quickly. Unfortunately, the canyon was simply not going to allow this.” -Mike Fisher

Sometimes, for whatever reason, maybe it’s the length of the drive to get there, or the desire to get on something while it’s running good, but AZ can lead you to make some bad decisions. I was trying to not allow this to happen to our group when we huddled up to discuss the game plan. My exact words I believe were, “I would NOT do this run without overnight gear.” I think I even repeated it twice.

"I would not do this run without overnight gear" photo by John Melrose

Well, come to find out that Leif and Nathan did not even bring overnight gear, as they were hoping for a one day run of Christopher Creek and then a long drive home for work and school on Monday morning. Leif is a dedicated paddler, with some serious viking blood running through his veins (not to mention a sweet mullet on his head) and I could tell that he was just not going to be convinced.

Kyle wasn’t helping either, as the cold, high elevation AZ air must have gotten to his head. He was planning on traveling light with the remote possibility of an overnight, but he still thought he was for sure going to finish up the run in a day. I was just kind of nodding my head as he was packing his boat sans sleeping bag and even bivy sack and justifying it out loud. Inside I was thinking, “there is no way in hell we are not spending the night on this run,” while I packed my full overnight kit.

Looking down into Poland Creek from the put-in trail photo by John Melrose

Nathan smartly opted out (IMO). I mean he would probably have survived but he would have been exposed and at the very least have been uncomfortable. Everyone in the Denver crew + Scott Baker had their overnight gear and they were all smart enough to pack it. Tango opted out for a reason I never heard, but I’m guessing he just thought it looked like a bad idea. The double opt out was definitely kind of a blessing for the rest of us, as it meant we wouldn’t be driving to the top of this mountain again on the other side of the mission, whenever that ended up being.

With Leif and Kyle out front (they had “less” to pack) we began hiking the trail through the snow, down to the bottom of the beautiful, but deep and committing looking Poland Creek Canyon. I didn’t check the time but I’d be surprised if it was before 2:30 when we actually reached the creek. We actually put-in on a little tributary for a few hundred yards and before we knew it we were paddling in January, on no sleep, on an ill-conceived mission to still try and finish this thing before dark! Keep in mind the sun goes down early this time of year, even in the deserts of Arizona, and I was guessing it would be completely dark before 6pm.

Scott sussing it out - photo by Leif Anderson

OK. Let's do this! - photo by Leif Anderson

In as much of a rush as you can be with seven paddlers trying to travel safely down a tight and steep ephemeral bedrock riverbed, we made our downstream progress. We had what looked to be a pretty perfect flow of maybe 250 cfs and pretty quickly it became too steep to boat scout. We scouted a drop the first desencters had dubbed McLovin (I Love Superbad) and everybody quickly ran it as we pressed downstream.

Mclovin. Making a funny face since I hadn't boofed in so long - photo by Leif Anderson

Kyle managing an even funnier face - photo by Leif Anderson

Or at least that’s what I thought. Apparently somebody actually went for a little swim there as it had a fairly stout and funky hole at the end of the slide, but I was out in front and we were relying on the buddy system to move downstream as quickly as possible. You see, there were some among us who were still under the impression that this was just a novelty run, that there was just going to be a couple of waterfalls in a short gorge and that we were any minute going to paddle out into open class III and route down to the take-out, which we still didn’t exactly know where it was.

In retrospect I think everyone could agree that there is no way this could have happened. Even with just two extremely solid paddlers, boat scouting everything even remotely possible, you just can not finish this run in a day by putting on at 2pm in the middle of January. I already knew this, with some assurance, however I was just kind of going with the flow, knowing that when it got dark we would just have to camp and that’s how it was going to be. Looking back I wish I had been a little, or maybe even a lot more firm in my assertion that we were definitely going to spend the night.We then could have taken our time and moved as safely,  not as quickly as possible.

Scouting the lead-in to the Big Dipper - photo by Leif Anderson

We did make it down to the known waterfall on the run pretty quickly, the Big Dipper, a slide to vert 30 footer, with a tricky entrance and a tree blocking half of the top lip. At this point things were obviously going to slow down. Everybody needed to scout, get out the cameras, pray to their river Gods etc. It’s gonna take a few minutes for seven people to run a sweet 30 foot waterfall, it just is. And it was a sweet waterfall that everyone styled, but at the bottom of this falls is where I wished I had made it abundantly clear that we weren’t getting out that night under any circumstance. It was pretty obvious.

Kyle probing - photo by Leif Anderson

Tucking - photo by Leif Anderson

...and Stomping - photo by Leif Anderson

Leif stomping it next - photo by ES

Blurry but you can still tell I'm going to stomp it - photo by Leif Anderson

In my opinion we ended up making a semi-bad decision shortly after the falls, portaging high through a steep and prickly slope, around a series of drops that could have been broken down and either run or portaged individually. There was a very manageable looking must run drop in the middle into a good eddy above the last stout drop, which then could have been portaged if necessary. It ended up not being that big a deal, but in the spirit of saving time, I didn’t even get out to look until it was already decided that we should portage. Scott had come up with the aforementioned route at river level, but he was overruled and he acquiesced to the portage, probably for the same reason I didn’t even look. I just thought it would probably be faster to start portaging if that’s what everyone thought.  Again, it ended up not being that big a deal. We maybe missed one of the better drops on the run, had to do a pretty sucky portage and probably wasted some time and energy doing it. One of those situations that was rushed, but in the end, would have taken less time if all of the options had been thoroughly explored. Really, after portaging I realized I wanted to run that  last drop and I should have taken the time to look for myself.

Taking a peak out in front - photo by Leif Anderson

Making some fun moves - photo by John Melrose

Below this portage though, the run got really good and we got back into a good rhythm, routing each other through fun drops and making some cool moves. The canyon was still really steep, there were a few more river level portages and some great drops. We were definitely in the meat of the canyon and the sun was going down. I kept wondering how it was going to come up, when the sun was finally low enough that the entire group would just realize that, it was time to camp.

With style and finesse - photo by Leif Anderson

Ben West charging a fun triple drop - photo by ES

Scotty Baker about launch - photo by Leif Anderson

Ben getting routed into a fun double drop with a rowdy and blind entrance - photo by Leif Anderson

Double drop Blind Glory - photo by Leif Anderson

Leif lovin it - photo by ES

We got out to scout a stout double drop with a gnarly lead-in, into a must boof five foot ledge, feeding an ugly looking sieve, directly into a twisting 12 footer with a boxed in undercut. The thing was actually pretty runnable but not at this hour. We had some people scouting, and then eventually portaging on both sides of the river. You could tell the next drop was stout too, and as it turned out, was unportagable on the left where most of us already were. We scouted the next drop as the light began to fade. It was runnable, but it had some bad looking consequences.

I looked across at river right and noticed a fairly flat zone, the first we’d seen in a while and multiple piles of driftwood from the flood the day before. I said, “that looks like camp to me,” to no one in particular, but it got the ball rolling. Either way we had to cross to the other side to portage the second drop so we began that process in earnest. It wasn’t the easiest ordeal as there was no pool between the drops, just a micro eddy not even big enough for a single boat, where Leif was set up to catch you. We made it work and pretty quickly everybody was on river right.

“This is where I’m camping,” was the next thing I said, and everyone, save Leif and Kyle, were more than happy join me. Those two, I don’t know how or why, were still under the crazy impression that there was time to get out of the canyon before dark. It was truly mind boggling in many ways. Here we were at dusk, the clouds were turning hues of pink and purple,  in a rugged and obviously deep and sketchy canyon, and yet I understood from my own experience the feeling of just wanting it so bad that you truly believe you can will it so.

Don't know about you guys but this is where I'm camping - photo by Leif Anderson

Well Kyle and I have had a lot of adventures together, and have developed a supreme, if not slightly guarded, sense of trust in each other. I got my serious dad face on and pretty much told Kyle that he needed to stay with us, with the soon to be raging fire. They were going to be camping either way and if they went for it they’d be spooning without our fine company. He was pretty easily brow beaten out of his neurosis, however I don’t know Leif as well and though I expressed pretty emphatically  how bad an idea I thought it was for him to continue on solo, I could tell he was not going to be swayed. The last thing I said to him as he was seal launching in below our camp was, “when it get’s too dark to paddle, hike back up to our camp, follow the fire.”