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Friday, October 05, 2001

Blowout changes Staircase Rapid on the SF Payette

Blowout changes Staircase Rapid on the SF Payette

On September 13, 2001, an intense thunderstorm triggered several debris flows in gulleys on the north (road) side of the South Fork of the Payette River in the vicinity of theStaircase rapid. The largest flow entered the river right a the top of staircase and essentially buried the rapid. Whale rocks are no longer visible, and the entire flow is diverted toabout 30 feet on the left. The parking lot is covered with several feet of mud and boulders up to about 8 feet in diameter. Here a few pics of the staircase debris flow by Jim McNamara, a geomorphologist at BSU. These pictures were taken right after the blowout.

As of October 1st, we understand that crews from the Highway district were still excavating and blasting rock. We don't know what Staircase will look like when they're done (or after Spring runoff and high water washes through), but it simply won't be the same rapid. Here is a Eulogy for Staircase Rapid by the Boicatr, Ted Day.

Well put Ted! On September 27th, and before continued excavation, Chad Porter made this report of a run through the new and changing Staircase Rapid:

Last night (sept. 27) my buddy Cole and I went up and ran the SF Payette. We scouted staircase because it has changed again from all the excavation going on. Well, there was a crazy rapid that formed because of how they have dug out the river. FYI for those who haven't seen it yet or lately, they have started digging out the river starting towards the end of staircase. This has changed the way the water flows almost 95% compared to the flow of when it blew out (compared to the pictures Jim and Peter provided).

There is a big eddy created at the point where they stopped digging temporarily (I assume for the day). Just above the eddy, at the end of the channel, is a section that could be easily rated a class IV. If you look at the bottom of photo #6 from Jim/Peter, this is about the location I am talking about. The water was moving hard and 4 rocks were apparently causing some big holes and drops. When we originally scouted the line it did not look to bad, it looked fun but we figured just run the river right line and no problem. Well much to our surprise once we were actually paddlin' thru this section, it was about 3 times as big as it looked from the side and all that water pressure was crashing over those rocks. Once we were in the channel we didn't have time to pick a safer route so I stuck with the river right line I originally picked and Cole ended up changing his line after seeing what I went through (I think Cole's line looked scarier then mine).

As I approached the section I could see a rock/hole on the right edge and just past it about 10feet out from the right edge was a bigger rock/hole. After that rock was another one just as big with water crashing over it and I remember seeing a jagged rock that was showing from when we scouted it. If that didn't make sense here's another picture, there was one rock river right. Towards the middle more was a series of 3 rocks which were all in a row. The first two had water going over them and the last one was like a tooth and it was sticking out of the water-definitely DO NOT want to hit it.

So once I was in it, I entered just to the left of the first rock on the r.right. Then I turned and pointed my boat to the r.right bank so that I could paddle that way and avoid the tooth rock. As I went into the second rock I was sideways and leaned into the down river pillow of water and used a left brace (this is so I didn't get flip over from the upriver current). The pillow held me there for a second and then it spit me out to the right. -I think this rapid is very similar to the last section in "hounds tooth" on the NF- In the meantime Cole saw my line and decided to go different. He ended up dropping the middle line over the two middle rocks and left of the tooth rockat the end. It was an awesome set of rapids, but I warn people to be cautious if you do it because there wasn't any room for error in there because the water was thrashing thru in a hurry.

Hopefully that rapid will be there for awhile but I think it could be gone with in a weeks time maybe even today because of the construction going on in the river. So hurry up and check it out and/or try it. It could be just a window of opportunity before it changes again. -the end-

Let me know if anybody else had the opportunity to run it, and what did you think?????

Chad Porter

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SOURCE: Vinces