Bridge Creek

Bridge creek is a tributary to Wooley Creek which dumps into the Cal-Salmon. The rumors that circulate about this precocious low volume jewel are all true. Multiple ten to twenty footers, several slides, lots of mank, lots of wood, and one hell of a two mile hike in.

The night before the Bridge trip New School (Dan Menton), Damon Goodman, Seth Mamon, and myself camped out at Wooley camp located on the Cal-Salmon. This is a good way to go when taking on Bridge due to the necessity for an early start in anticipation of a tough day on the creeks. We all woke up around sunrise, ate a quick breakfast and were speeding down the road in Damon’s truck boats loaded and myself trapped in the bed sealed in by the camper shell with three dogs, one of which was a Labrador with incredibly bad gas.
The shuttle road is the first left on the salmon road after leaving the 96. After about 45 minutes of being gas chambered by Willow (lab) and spectacular views of the Marble Mountain Wilderness we turned left at the fork in the road that leads to the decommissioned road which is the being of the hike. The hike down the road is very easy but is countered by a tremendously hard hike straight down the hillside. This class V hike begins once the rock cairns are encountered on the left side of the decommissioned road.
Due to the large amounts of low snow in the Marbles many trees and bushes had fallen across what was already barely a trail. This made it hard to stay on the right path but with veteran Bridge creekers Damon and New School we managed to make it down to the correct creek within an hour and a half. (don’t wander too far left because this could result in finding a tributary to Bridge making for an even longer hike).
Once at Bridge we were confronted with about 5 woody portages right off the bat. New School mentioned that this year the creek was unusually woody from the low winter snows. Eventually we paddled up to Blue toe gorge/Mullet power (either name is a go from Leif Anderson running the portage last year and petoning hard!). After this semi hairy portage the mank/wood begins to clear out a bit (except for one log I managed to get swept under : )
From here on the run gets better and better! The first set of falls are called medicine upper, and lower. The upper being clean 10-15 and the bottom a booferific 20 footer. The run literally has too many waterfalls to write about without creating a small book but the ones that aren’t an obvious portage were good-to-go! Some of the names include Toilet boil (we all portaged), Magic Carpet, pearl necklace, rooster, kicker, and many others.

Myself in Lower Medicine Falls
Damin Goodman in Rooster Falls
Damin in top drop of the Tea Cups
Damin again in the lower drop of the Tea Cups
Seth Maman in Pearl Necklace

Things to consider: I found this run to be very long and strenuous. To tell the truth it was definitely at the top of my ability level since I have literally never run a true waterfall before and made for one of the most physically and emotionally challenging days I have had on the river. This year was extra woody (6.8.08 and probably after a large winter flood, will clean up, cutting down on the portages). None the less, plan on a full day and don’t rule out the possibility of spending the night. This run should done with someone who knows the way. We arrived at woolly at around 5:30 after putting on Bridge at 11:00, ate a quick snack and paddled the remaining nine miles in about 1 ½ hours with New School leading/probing the way.

A special thanks to Both New School and Damon for leading the way and introducing me to such a great run! This is a definite must do on any Nor-cal boaters list of places to huck! I plan on making several trips back in the future. Hopefully next time with the Humboldt boys! (Martin, Dustin, and Will)

Photos By Dam Mentin