Paddling on the Clearwater River

Clearwater River - Big, warm water with lots of play spots depending on the level. Named waves include “The Wall”, “German Basher”, “Spin Wave”, “Tsunami”, “Pink Mountain” and “Little Pink”.

Clearwater River - A fun, warm, big-water day trip. Put on at or near Clearwater Lake taking your pick of grade III waterfall hucks. Enjoy several Kilometers of fun bouncy big water and a few surfwaves before arriving at Myanth Falls(IV). This is a 200m long rapid with a series of holes, ledges, and diagonals. You will know you have arrived here by the sound and and horizon line as you pass through a grade II canyon section. Skirt right around the canyon wall to eddy and scout. Pick your line and have fun :) after a few minutes you reach the Grade V-V+ Donkey falls, scout/portage on river right or if you plan on portaging all of the lower drops you can eddy river left and hook up with the hiking trail for some easier trudging(20min to parking lot). Next up is grade V+-VI Marcus Falls, scout/portage on river right. If you aren't already on the river left side of the river you will need to ferry across below Marcus falls to avoid Bailey's chute. This ferry is pretty straight forward but you absolutely do not want to blow it as the river feeds into Bailey's Chute (VI) several hundred meters below. The hike out is along a well defined and maintained hiking trail for 10 minutes from Bailey's Chute.

Clearwater River - Easy Float / Paddle Trip down the clearwater river. No rapids, boat launch / beach access

Clearwater River - Two of us paddled the Clearwater from Trident Lake on June 26, 2021 in a 10 foot Alpaka Forager two person inflatable whitewater canoe. We hiked 44 km over 2 days to get there from the Cut Off Creek staging area, then paddled out in one day. Our put in was about 62 km upstream of Elk Creek, and about 40 km upstream of the Cut Off Creek/Timber Creek put in. There were three class III rapids in the first 15 km or so, and then nothing else above class II except there were logs everywhere. Many, many tight log gardens, and several riverwide log jams that we had to haul our boats around. A few kms from the put in there was a blind corner that had a nearly completely obstructed log jam that we got through on the right but then immediately there was another log right in front of us that we narrowly missed by madly getting over through a channel that had a log in the middle that we somehow didn't hit. At the half way point (just downstream of where the wagon trail crosses the river) the entire river piled through mature forest - there was no clear channel anywhere and we had to haul our boat about 50 yards through bush and log jams in knee deep water. I wouldn't recommend paddling any part of the river above the Cut Off Creek/Timber Creek access because there are just too many logs and log jams.