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.