For a hike in, the Upper Browns is pretty easy, relatively speaking. From parking, the walk-in took Jaime and me 25mins over 1.3kms. This included lowering the boats the last little bit down to the river below the Medicine Bowls.
After getting down to the river we had a short section of river to run before a portage on river right. Approx 100m downstream from the put-in.
After the portage, you have a number of interesting drops and chutes to run downstream. The first kilometer holds a lot of the gradient. The is the first slide, followed by a fun chute, afterward, you hit an eddy on river left to scout Triple drop.
This run is pretty interesting as it takes you from the Forbidden Plateau area and you can finish the run in downtown Courtenay.
Anyway I digress, The next set of drops is pretty fun with a 10ft ledge, followed by a sliding right to the left chute, then a narrow pinch, and into a 6ft ledge.
Below triple the is another ledge drop which is typically run on the river right of the rock. When we were there it was pretty clean on both sides of the rock ( This is not always the case ). One of the main points of this section is to scout lots, keeping an eye out for wood.
Below this, you have 4.5 km of paddling to the lower section, some beautiful canyon sections as you paddle along. Some very fun whitewater with a few interesting sandstone features. Once on to the lower, you have a waterfall, and two more slides before hitting the confluence of the Puntledge river.
After that, it’s a quick shuttle on paved roads all the way back to where you parked your car for the hike. Okay in all truthfulness there is 180m of gravel driving to the start of the walk-in. Enjoy.
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