Tamihi Creek (Lower)

Knowing very little about this creek, we put-on and had a bit of an adventure, would have really appreciated a small amount of beta so I'm sharing our experience of this rarely run creek which deserves many more visitors!

A video from Dave Wortley (not including all the best rapids)

To gauge the level look up from a bridge at boulder in the middle of the river, if water is just going over this it'll be the same level as I describe here, the start will feel low but by the end you'll be glad of not having any more water! The day we ran this the Chilliwack Canyon was at 1.65 and dropping after heavy rain a few days before.

There is an Upper Tamihi Creek section above this which is currently undocumented but apparently is worth a visit too, class IV+ / V.

On the drive up Tamihi FSR currently (February 2024) any 4WD can get up, it's muddy, a few shallow water-bars and there are rock-slides in places but a Subaru made it to the put-in, take the right fork about 2km.  Along the drive you divert away from the river and gain quite a considerable height, eventually coming back to river-level and getting to pre-scout some rapids and spot some wood probably.  Hiking off this river towards the later half would be particularly arduous. The lines feel very class 4 to 4+ in places but the consequences are high throughout this river.  There is one mandatory portage and expect wood. Most rapids are easily scoutable and you can portage the harder stuff if you really wanted to. That'll be enough info for you to have your own adventure, read on for the full beta.

Starting at the bridge about 7km up, we were a bit intimidated by the mankiness of the rapids upstream and immediately downstream (with some wood blocking the river too).  We put-on a little further downstream, the first couple of rapids were steep and hard to read and run.  It seems from older reports that groups put in a little further down which would avoid the hasty first paddle-strokes. 

We got out and scout as frequently as possible, at the first island split we headed right which looks a nicer line.  The eddies on this river aren't very big so suggest a group size of 3-4 maximum, or keep very far apart eddy-hopping.

Wood is a major problem on this river, the first few km were manky boulder bashing, shallow with the occasional nice boof. The river eventually started to clean-up, but our trip was punctuated by river-wide trees or small branches making clean-lines dirty, despite this it is well worth doing as we started to get rewarded with nicer rapids and long sections where you can easily read and run for several hundred meters at a time.

A small island signaled the start of the canyon section with a lovely clean entrance rapid.

Sadly the next rapid which had a lot of very sharp shale rock from a landslide (beware of gouging your boat eddying out) has a huge old-growth log which shan't be moving for a very long time stuck down the middle of it (has been there 14 years so far).  Easy portage left.

The river now has much steeper sides and blind corners, after a few reasonably easy read-and-run rapids we came across a medium sized log-jam which may blow out with enough water eventually, we were able to sneak by the left side of it.

One of the next rapid on a wide right bend is worth inspecting as it's just before the portage, a short steep entrance, an undercut boulder on the left and some holes at the bottom, almost read and run, eddy out before the obvious horizon line with old growth in it. 

There is a reasonably established trailer up a short bank, which takes you to a ridge, you can't really get a view into the rapid you are portaging but note it drops somewhere between 30-50ft  around the bend.  A group in  2024 left a rope to help make the surprisingly long descent easier, the next rapid also had a lot of large old growth in it which will be there for a while so we put on below that after probably portaging 200m of river.  Watch out for devils club.

The next set of rapids are beautifully clean, the sort of rapids you'd expect on the Upper Cheakamus, and without the mank/portaging above would make this run one of the absolute best in the Lower Mainland. Enjoy your reward for the suffering, the last 1km is fantastic, as the river bends become less sharp you'll notice the canyon opening up and all of a sudden you'll be at the take-out bridge which has a lovely clean set of drops in its own right.