Team Swain SE Boating: Dinkey Creek: The Spring Mission

Last week we ran Dinkey Creek. During the summer, this might not have been such an epic adventure but in the spring, when the roads are locked in by snow and the rivers are on the rise, running Dinkey creek can turn into a mission.

After attempting to drive Stephen Wright's van to the trail head of the standard hike in, we quickly realized that the snow would simply not allow that to happen. After pushing the van up a few hills and out of a few ditches, we finally decided that it was simply not going to happen. So from there part of the group decided to start hiking. We knew we had somewhere between 5 and 15 miles to go until we reached the trail head, and chose to commit to walking there.

The team using our paddles to dig the van out of a ditch

Dragging our boats through the snow up the road

Will Pruett charging!!!

After seven or so hours of hiking about ten miles of road, we eventually we made it to the standard trail head and started working our way down the two mile trail to the river. We were tired and sore and way over carrying our boats, but we still managed to take some time to enjoy the scenery on the hike down.

Dinkey Creek!

A tributary on the hike in

Right around dusk we finally made it down to the put in of the river. We decided to set up camp there and rest up to charge the entire river the next day. Dinkey Creek is generally paddled as an overnight, but because of our late start, we would have to paddle the entire river in one day. It was awesome.