Day 9 - August 26: Virginia Falls

When we woke up, it was still cloudy.  It was actually starting to look like we would be paddling the entire river without seeing the sun.  It was another fairly long and uneventful day.  We took a (very) brief side trip to an oxbow lake for a snack; that was very marshy.

The river was really slow, but the views were really awesome.  There were some very excellent alluvial fans (and for you non-rock nerds, those are the big triangles in the mountains).

We got to the Virginia Falls campground eventually.  That campground is a VERY impressive piece of infrastructure.  All of the paths are boardwalks; I feel for the dudes who built those boardwalks.  Apparently it cost 2.5 million dollars to build, and repairs need to happen every year because they forgot about permafrost.

Before supper, we went on a journey to the top of the falls.  Right before the waterfall, there's a class 5 crazy rapid known as the Sluice Box.  Dan told us a story about a guide from another outfitter who nearly went down that rapid while trying to rescue a canoe.  If you were to go down that rapid, you would also be going down Virginia Falls, and then you would probably not be alive anymore.

Between the top of the Sluice Box and the bottom of the waterfall, there is a 117 m drop in elevation.  Also, there is a rock in the middle of the waterfall that they call Mason's Rock, since there is a picture of Bill Mason sitting on top of it.  How he got there is beyond me (Heather's mom speculated that it was likely in a helicopter).

We were having a layover day at Virginia Falls, and the sun decided to come out, giving us hope that maybe the next day would be nice.

There was going to be an optional hike up Sunblood Mountain during the layover day, and before we went to bed it LOOKED like it might even be a nice hike with good weather and stuff.  Here is Sunblood Mountain: