Highwater on West Cherry

By Darin McQuoid

Photos

Once we got off our beautiful run down Fantasy Falls, the weather warmed up and Ben Stookesberry motivated us to take our Heros into West Cherry, the lesser run tributary to Upper Cherry Creek. Southern Oregon locals Dustin Knapp and Matt Thomas came down to join us for two days of wilderness paddling. We knew flows would be high but were surprised by good bits of snow on the road and we had to dig our way through several patches to get to the put-in. We decided to hike in to the upper put-in, but were all too tired and short on time to really consider running the massive put-in slide. On the water we had a great time still running the majority of drops with high flows and softer than normal landings for West Cherry. Our campsite was typical for the Cherry drainage, beautiful scoured granite and blue skies. The run was epic with big drops and big portages, and good times had by all, I’ll let the pictures do the talking for the beauty of West Cherry….