The Tsable River is located in Buckley Bay, it was paddled over twenty years ago by Shayne Vollmers and crew. It has been on my mind for ages to go and get back into the canyons that hide this river from view. As it turned out it hides some fun rapids and one kick-ass waterfall. The beta I got was that it had a couple of harder rapids and some read-and-run boulder gardens.
The levels had been low this spring when it lined up for Kiril and me to get on the run.
The Browns River was running at 10cms that day, it has a gauge and the Tsable does not. Gives you a reference point. You can put on higher up the Tsable however it’s quite a bit smaller upstream. Our location was below the confluence of Beaufort Creek.
We put in and started to bump and paddle down the river. As we ducked a few pieces of wood and headed downstream we got into some Sandstone formations. As these became more apparent the river dropped away in the distance. It went over a small ledge, which pushed the water toward the river right and the tops of trees were evident downstream. With some obvious gradient downstream we eddied out and went for a closer look see.
After taking in the view it was an easy decision to portage on the river right. Your typical BC bushwhack of walking over and under logs and dragging boats through underbrush before lowering them back down to the river. All part of the fun.
The river has a variety of smaller rapids and kicks up to more fun boulder gardens and some harder rapids toward the end. Hoping to find a put-in below the 100ft waterfall at some point this fall.
The last drop was a nice ramp into a 5 ft boof off a flack on river left. There is a potential for a better take out a short way downstream, however, there is an unrunnable waterfall canyon 1.5km downstream so be mindful of that.
Check out the link above to see the map that Dave Wortley created.
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