Best in the West- Lochsa 9ft. +

Photos

By Devon Barker

Best in the West

This weekend the town of Missoula, Montana hosted the kayak event, Best in the West! Team JK paddlers, KB and Luke, hosted the great event in conjunction with World Class Kayak Academy. The feature is named Brenden’s Wave and is in a man made play park. With the water levels ever increasing the event was held in one!

The water is on the rise in the west. We had the Endless Winter, no spring, but instead went right to summer! In route, from McCall, Idaho to Missoula, Montana, you drive about 275 miles with just about 240 of it along side amazing rivers.

I took pictures of the rivers on my return. After leaving the Clark Fork in Missoula, you drive a short distance to the Lochsa. The Lochsa was approaching 9 feet on my way home. I pulled into Fish Creek campground to find three friends there wanting to do an early morning run. Chris Emerick was camping there just off a Middle Fork of the Salmon trip with his two friends. (He sends his best to JK family) We ran the Lochsa just under 9 feet on the bridge gauge, or about 10 1/2 on USGS site. The waves were awesome! Lochsa Falls was big!

From there I drove along the Clearwater River, to the South Fork of the Clearwater and then over the hill to the Main Salmon. When I left Idaho on Friday, the water was at 27,000 cfs, Sunday, 65,000 this is when the pictures were taken, and Monday 82,000, and expected to peak close to 1000,000 cfs by Wednesday.

Leaving the Main stem of the Salmon, I branched off to the Little Salmon as highway 95 winds up to New Meadows and on to McCall. The little Salmon is now over 5,000 cfs and expected to peak today.

As I write this there is still snow in my yard, the mountains are covered with snow and we are setting record high temperatures throughout Idaho. We are all praying that the forecasted cooling trend is correct and comes without rain as this could cause more flooding than the warm weather.

Enjoy the paddling, but watch out for the 30 to 60 ft. plus length trees that are swirling down the river.

Devon
PS- The destruction from the avalanches on the Lochsa this winter were massive. You can see the picture and write up on this at Lochsa River Report from this winter on JK site.