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JayB
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  Quote JayB Replybullet Topic: North Fork Teanaway!
    Posted: 02 May 2013 at 3:40pm
The NOAA forecast has the flows boosting into runnable range early tomorrow and staying there until roughly next Weds. It's looking like I won't be able to catch it during this spike, but someone else should!
http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=pdt&gage=tnaw1

This is an awesome little run, but a tough one to catch, and has been a good back-up run for me at least once when the flows on all the other LW area runs were too high.

It's tough to correlate the flows in the NF with the gauge levels for the main fork, but based on a day at 1000cfs and a day at 1300cfs (both of which felt the same), with flow in that range you can probably expect continuous III+ that feels a lot like the Peshastin at medium to medium high flows, but be prepared for a *significantly* higher wood potential. On the upper section in particular, it comes at you fast and anyone putting on should be a solid class IV boater and be familiar with operating on continuous gradient rivers with very few eddies and a real potential for wood lurking around every blind corner. Thankfully quite a bit of the run can be scouted from the road, and I've always foot scouted just about all of the run from the road when before I've put on.

The lower portion of the run (below the bridge/culvert mentioned in the writeup) was basically clean last year, but that can change at any time.

If you get on it post your impressions. Any first-hand info on how it looks/boats as flows hit 1.5K or higher would be particularly helpful feedback.

Here's a thread from last year that might be helpful, too:
http://www.professorpaddle.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=12073








Edited by JayB - 02 May 2013 at 3:46pm
-Jay
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  Quote JayB Replybullet Posted: 03 May 2013 at 11:34pm
Update:

Had a chance to swing by the NFT today and the flows looked like they were on the low side of good, at least on the lower stretch.

In mid-May in 2010 the gauge was at almost at exactly the same level as today, and this stretch was pumping. My take is that early in melt-off most of the volume on the main fork of the Teanaway is coming from lower drainages, but day-by-day the high drainages that feed the stretch from the Beverly Creek Campground to Johnson creek start to kick in and deliver more of the total volume.

The simple upshot is that early in the melt-off the NFT may be good to go even when the gauge reading on the mainstem are significantly higher.

Peshastin looked to be on the low side of runnable with maybe 50% of the flow coming from the upper Peshastin and 50% coming from Ingalls.
-Jay
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  Quote Dirty Replybullet Posted: 04 May 2013 at 10:49pm
Hey Jay,

Thanks for posting about this run. You piqued my interest, so two of us went up and ran the North Fork today. Flows for the mainstem were between 800-900 while we were on the river. I would say that the flow on the North Fork was on the low end of runnable. While the two mini-gorges had enough water, the more open sections in between involved lots of rock bumping. However, its seems like more water would make the wood situation even hairier. We portaged twice in the first mini gorge, and had at least three other tight squeezes under/through wood. While more water would have cleaned up the run quite a bit, it would also have made it harder to eddy out and squeeze under a few of the logs. Additionally, someone (probably recently) felled a Ponderosa pine into the river partway through second mini gorge. It's too bad because portaging breaks up the flow of the series of super fun rapids in the second gorge.

I'll add some notes to the river page soon as well.

Aaron
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  Quote JayB Replybullet Posted: 05 May 2013 at 9:22am
Hey Aaron:

-Big thanks for taking the time to chime in with a beta update. When I was back in New England there was kind of a virtuous circle going on where more beta lead to more traffic which magically lead to wood prone runs staying much cleaner.

-Did you guys put in at the Beverly CG or just above the culvert? Seems like the wood situation tends to be much more dicey from the Beverly CG to the culvert, but that's only based on a couple of data points so more info would be great.

-The first time we did the run from the Beverly CG in 2010 I'd estimate the flows were ~3X what I saw on Friday night and despite doing some scouting on the way in it was a grippy white-knuckle-fest all the way down because of the continuous gradient and the wood.

It was kind of tough to get the tone right on the write-up, since it was an awesome run that I thought lots of people would dig, but I also wanted to avoid luring people on who might not be ready for it. Looking forward to seeing your thoughts added to what's already there on the river page.


 
-Jay
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  Quote Dirty Replybullet Posted: 05 May 2013 at 10:56pm
Jay,

We did one run all the way from Beverly CG and then another lap starting at the culvert. The wood situation was definitely worse between Beverly and the culvert. We portaged once in the section below the culvert. About 200 yards below the culvert, in the midst of the series of small ledges there was a tree in the river that appears to have been felled with a chainsaw?!. Other than that the section below the culvert is fairly clean. Having three times the flow would have definitely cleaned up the upper section, but I don't think I would want to run it at that flow with the amount of wood present. Some of those logs come up fast! If it was clean it would definitely be a great run with more water than we had yesterday.

Cheers,

Aaron
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  Quote JayB Replybullet Posted: 06 May 2013 at 9:43am
Hey Aaron:

Thanks again for posting what you encountered. If you get a sec and feel inspired to add a river-alert based on your run I'm sure that other people that may not scan the forum for recent info will find that useful.

Also - for anyone else reading this thread and considering running the NFT - there was a set of sweet ledge drops maybe ~1/4 to 1/2 mile above the Beverly CG. They looked like they'd go somewhere in the IV-IV+ range, but we just took a quick look so we could have easily missed any hazards that might be lurking in that stretch.
-Jay
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  Quote JayB Replybullet Posted: 28 Apr 2014 at 3:15pm
Bump.

NOAA forecast has this run getting into the runnable range as of about noon on Friday. Hard to peg the flows in the NFT based on this gauge since it's a ways downstream from the NF and the three forks of the Teanaway have drainages at different elevations - so one fork can be contributing a disproportionate amount of the flow.

Usually only runs about one or two weekends a year.

Take the wood hazards in the write-up seriously if you decide to check it out. Eddies are scarce and everything comes at you fast.
-Jay
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  Quote James Replybullet Posted: 28 Apr 2014 at 4:00pm
I hear the bull trout in dem dhar stream can git real mean.
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  Quote SOPBOATER Replybullet Posted: 01 May 2014 at 9:19am
Originally posted by James

I hear the bull trout in dem dhar stream can git real mean.




take your friggin arm off man, no joke.
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  Quote JayB Replybullet Posted: 01 May 2014 at 4:23pm
Sensing an inside joke here - do tell.
-Jay
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  Quote Mr.Grinch Replybullet Posted: 01 May 2014 at 5:08pm
Anyone around tomorrow? I'll be around the area and would like to check this out. Late morning meet, run when deemed ok?

Cheers!
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  Quote JayB Replybullet Posted: 01 May 2014 at 7:28pm
Post whet you see if you make it out there. Looking like we may get on it on Sat and would be most thankful for a heads-up if the wood situation is bad enough to stay away (or good enough to make it worth taking a look for ourselves on Saturday).


-Jay
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  Quote James Replybullet Posted: 01 May 2014 at 10:44pm
Jay I don't know about an inside joke... but if you were in a comical mood you can hire Nate Treat to take you down that thing and slay some ESA fishes, I hear he is from that area!
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  Quote SOPBOATER Replybullet Posted: 03 May 2014 at 10:51am
remember kids when you catch a bull trout roll it in the dirt a bit it helps keep their coat shiny and vibrant. lastly take lots of photos with the fish dry and out of the water for an extended period, this will clean any aquatic parasites by depriving them of oxygen. then release, its easy and you can blog about it later.
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  Quote JayB Replybullet Posted: 04 May 2014 at 10:11am
Boated it yesterday. Four portages between BCCG and Stafford Creek. One particularly dangerous - spanning-log just around blind corner in very fast current in the final drop of the bedrock-mini gorge. Easily seen during scout. Log was at river level and now elevated roughly 2-feet above river right. Flows were medium at a main-gauge reading of 1350cfd/13.4'.
-Jay
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  Quote JayB Replybullet Posted: 07 May 2014 at 1:09pm
Originally posted by James

Jay I don't know about an inside joke... but if you were in a comical mood you can hire Nate Treat to take you down that thing and slay some ESA fishes, I hear he is from that area!



Sounds like there's a story behind the Bull Trout ESA thing that I'm not privy to. If so - have some mercy and let me know what inspired this banter via PM.

I'm still in awe of the NT inspired performance art piece -e.g. the "Squidro" thread that went down on WFF.com last year.



Edited by JayB - 07 May 2014 at 1:13pm
-Jay
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  Quote SOPBOATER Replybullet Posted: 08 May 2014 at 12:18pm
nt..........master baiter, flier, catcher of all that swims. hell next time i swim he will likely floss Me right in the chops. he fishes at wall of voodoo, he grew up there.
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  Quote JayB Replybullet Posted: 08 May 2014 at 12:28pm
Originally posted by SOPBOATER

nt..........master baiter, flier, catcher of all that swims. hell next time i swim he will likely floss Me right in the chops. he fishes at wall of voodoo, he grew up there.


 Just out of curiousity -Are you "sopflyfisher" at WFF.com or does that handle belong to another NT fan over there?
-Jay
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  Quote jalmquist Replybullet Posted: 08 May 2014 at 12:35pm
I don't bet, but there's one I'd make...
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  Quote SOPBOATER Replybullet Posted: 08 May 2014 at 7:01pm
nope, that guy is a real opinionated dick though.
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