Hall Creek
August 7, 2021
If you haven't already, check out the previous days' trip report where we descended South Fork Snoqualmie.
By day three all of us students and the instructors were accustomed to one another and so we cut the morning chatter short and went straight to Hall Creek.
I was the only person who didn't suit up at the beginning and the only person who brought a rain jacket for the approach. Consequently, I really learned these two lessons on the approach of this canyon.
- If the weather isn't hot and the approach is less than about 1.5 miles, wear the wetsuit on the approach.
- Don't bother with a rain jacket because you'll sweat a ton and you'll be just as wet on the inside as you are on the outside.
After the approach and gearing up, we took a look at the first drop of the canyon. This place was bolted to death. I was initially questioning the ethics and as usual there was a good explanation that makes lots of sense in a swift water context. There were bolts for low, medium, and high flows. There were also bolts to set up a traverse line. And this is apparently a SAR training canyon so I assume they placed additional bolts to suit their needs.
- SAR practices with them this way and we're just using their bolts for not the intended purpose
- They used to regularly have webbing but would get ripped off in flooding events and become trash later in the canyon. So no one uses webbing anymore.
- Having chains thrash around during floods damages the rock
