This is a gallery of pictures taken on a number of trip to paddle on Willow Creek. Willow Creek is about 80 miles away from Anchorage, on the Parks Highway (the one that goes towards Denali NP). It's a very cool creek, and the pictures are mostly from August -- lower water, lots of play, very fun to run.
The seal-drop
Tristan, who lives there, showed us the seal-drop rock. It's a rock that's about 10-12 feet high, has a nice indentation that fits a kayak, and you can slide off it into the current that will throw you into an eddy. Unless you go too far, in which case you head towards a rapid :) I did the seal-drop with Brian, and Shelly took some pictures of us. We hiked up the river, got into our kayaks, ferried across to the other side, got into the boats, and paddled upstream for a bit. There we climbed up a little rock. It was the small rock -- rather than ferrying across to the rock, we decided to seal-drop from the small rock too!
We dropped off the little rock, ferried again, climbed up the back of the bigger rock. Brian went first, with a big splash! Whoo-hoo! I got into my boat, shouted "ON A COUNT OF ONE, ONE!", after Hawk from Space Cowboys, and pushed off with the paddle in my right hand. I hit the current in the right spot, and survived!
The rapids
Willow Creek has lots of rocks and things to avoid, and at this water level the water isn't very big. There are a bunch of strong waves that are harder to surf, but nothing taller than a boater.
The next set of pictures is from running a few of the rapids, particularly the "180", where Willow takes a sudden left turn.
The play wave
I don't have too many pictures of the play wave. It's lower down, almost towards the end of the run. At high water it's a pretty nice hole, great for cartwheels. Earlier in the season it's good for surfing. At this point in time we were trying to do cartwheels, after a season of getting tips on how to do it.
