Copper Creek Washington

Copper creek two weeks ago. The hard rains were during the week, but as the weekend approached the water was quickly drying up. We were able to get on copper, for my first time, at a great flow. It was around 1300 on the East Fork of the Lewis and dropping quick. For the first time on the water since the Little White 2 months ago this was a fun choice. Overall nice run, not too hard, but only a few spots worth coming back for. The final five, especially 4/5 was awesome and big falls was really good, but with a few exceptions the rest of the run was mostly just bouncing around. I will be back, but I don't think this is a must run multiple times a year kind of run.
Pictures will come soon.

Untitled from Erik on Vimeo.

The Little White

Oh the L-dub.
After a summer of being out of Portland and out of my boat it was time to get back in the creek boat. Since the beginning of June I have been running around doing the river guide thing or seeing family so my kayaking has been suffering. Anyway, back now and since things have started to calm down in the beginning of August I have been on the lower wind twice. Seemed like a perfect time to make my first run down the Little White.

The flow was low, the gauge was not even in the water! Low as it was, this is still an epic run. The little white is everything I expected, steep boulder gardens, big drops and powerful holes. It was a great run and I learned a few things. The big lesson was that not only does Sacraledge have a cave next to it, there is a pretty big one behind the curtain. I can only tell you this because I was there with my boat. I was not in my boat, but we were there together. After pulling my way out of the cave behind the curtain and into the cave next to the drop i was fished out by the crew and down the river we went. First swim in a number of years, at least it was on the little white.
All in all it was a great day on the river and I learned that when you don't playboat much for a long period of time you quickly forget how long you can actual be in a hole before you should start to worry, in retrospect I should have ridden longer before bailing out, but what can you do.
Walked: Island, Bowey, Stovepipe, Spirit/Chaos.
Here are some pics from a great day in Southern WA.

Chris at Boulder Sluice



Jason: Boulder Sluice



Me at Boulder Sluice



Chris at s-turn, probably the cleanest waterfall I have ever seen.



Jason on s-turn

Rock Creek: Not the little white salmon

Last weekend the crew decided it was time, time to take on a task that kept at least me waking up every 20 minutes the night before in anticipation and stress. A run famous for beat downs, difficulty and general awesomeness. We come to the stressful conclusion it was time for the little white.

Saturday was Portlands first 80+ degree day of the year, and in retrospect was the day we should have gone out. When Chris checked the gage on Saturday it was around 3.2 which was highest we wanted to do. None of us having been down, the consensus we hear is we want 3.0-3.2 for a first time run. The warm weather brought the flows up overnight and when we arrived it had jumped to 3.6. We talked and decided, "um, we could put on but that would probably be stupid for our first time down."

Here we are on Sunday at the put-in for the little white and deciding not to do it. After some deliberation we decided to head for Rock Creek. Some of the crew had not run it before and heaven and hell was calling us. So rock creek, it was not the little white, but it was still a great day on the river. Hell may be the best waterfall I have ever run, and I even missed the good line.

Enjoy the video

Cave day on the Truss

As the water disappeared this weekend we headed back up to the faithful Green Truss section of the White Salmon. A couple weeks ago we did a Farmlands Truss combo at 2.75 on the Husum gage. At that flow none of the crew ran Big Brother so when we stopped at the gage on the drive up and saw 2.75 most of us almost instantly ruled it out. Garry who was looking to run it for his first time was hoping for a lower flow and probably went through the same sense of sadness and relief at the higher flow that I did. Thinking you are just not going to do it takes the pressure off.

However as soon as we were on the water we quickly realized the section above big brother was not nearly as pushy as it had been a few weeks earlier hinting that more of the flow is now coming from the springs down stream of double drop and things are moving into the summer type flows. When we arrived at Big Brother James started us off with a clean line and then rest of us had varying levels of success. I went into the cave, Garry (on his first time over the falls) went in the cave, Chris avoided the cave but swapped it with a short ride in the curtain on the left, and Eric A ended up having a short time in the curtain and going in the cave. Everyone stayed in their boat and we had a great day at a good flow with what ended up to be nice
weather.

Megi Morishita joined us along with James Bagley Jr. Watching James paddle is kind of like watching a talented artist paint, smooth, fluid, calculated, intentional, and comfortable. Megi shot some great footage and was a pleasure to have on the trip, but ended up re-pulling a muscle in her back and walking out at cheese grader. To add insult to injury, she left her boat in the ditch on the side of the road while hitching back to her car and then coming to meet us at the take out. When returning to pick up her boat it was GONE!!! Of course we are all angry and cursed at how much people can be assholes etc.

In the end we probably need to re-cant some of our criticisms of the general populace. Someone had stopped and picked up the boat thinking it had fallen off a car. They used her number written on the inside of the boat to call her and she had her boat back later that day. Lesson learned, apparently people don't always suck, and have your contact info written inside your boat.
Living here is awesome, our fall back run is the Green Truss, a run people come from all over just to do!
Here is the video of cave tour day. The first time any of us had been in the cave.

Farmlands and the Green Truss

So saturday rolled around and we had big plans for some expedition to new creeks. The roaring river was mentioned in the list but as weekend approached the water seemed to disappear and the options were quickly becoming limited. On Friday night the choice was made to head back to the classic, the Green Truss. Saturday morning after looking at the flows and the time we decided we would go for a Farmlands Truss combo (10 miles of the PNW's best IV-IV+ paddling). Not only was this my first time down the farmlands it would be the highest any of us had run the Truss. (just around or over 2.75 winter flow) The farmlands was fun, scenic and I now see why so many people love it; the truss was pretty juicy. The rapids above Big Brother were much pushier than I had seen them before and everything below double drop cleaned up and become more fun with the extra water. Upper Zig Zag was great, lower Zig Zag was still do-able and BZ just looked ugly as we all walked around. All in all a great day on the river; great weather, good crew, great flow and run. My paddling seemed to be a little off, but you can't let a few rolls ruin your day.
Here is a short video with a little bit of footage from the day. Did not shoot much in consideration of time.

Hagen Gorge and the Washougal

Hagen Gorge: This run has been on my list of must do runs since I first read the post on OregonKayaking. Finally the water lined up with a weekend that I was going to be in town and had a crew to run it with. We met up early, which ended up being good because we did the whole NF Washougal run after Hagen and it took a good chunk of the day.
Low water on Hagen and good water on the Washougal made for a fun day and first time down. 1 small swim, a sore shoulder, an almost scary ride in the hole half way down Hagen Daaz Falls, 1 backwards and 1 sideways ride down teakettle, a couple long hole rides on the Washougal and we had done the whole run. After doing it, I would strongly recommend that anyone doing Hagen also does the whole NF run as well. Having never done either before, I felt that if we would have taken out at the upper take out the run would have been really short and missed a lot of fun stuff.

Sorry I could not get youtube to like a higher res version of this, but here is the video anyway. Enjoy!

The Green Truss of the White Salmon

This run kicks ass! It was my second run down the truss ever last Sunday. My first time a little over a month ago I ran everything except Lower Zig Zag (portaged due to wood) and BZ falls which I had heard was could be super brutal. This time however I was with a group of people who make the run often and they ran Lower Zig Zag around the wood and BZ. Being the follower that I tend to be I ran both and had my first no portage run down the Truss. Did not even get my ass kicked. Some pics to follow but here is the video of a couple drops. I don't have everyone's name as our group had something stupid like 13 people and I had only met about 6 of them before Sunday. I do have to say that for 13 people the trip went really smooth with only 1 swim.

So here are some photos that Eric took on his camera.

Me:
Eric, on his first time running Big Bro
More to come when I get some time