On Saturday, June 26th, the Husum gauge was reading around 3 feet, but the upper part of the Farmlands looked and felt more like 3.75 feet. (Apparently, a lot of water is being taken out for irrigation. The Class II-III stuff toward the end felt bonier than the top part.) I botched the line (1.5-2 boatwidths too far left) at Lava, and got worked under the veil after a decent fight in front of the curtain. I made like a zombie from the grave and pulled myself upright behind the veil for a quick half-breath before my hull engaged the veil again (it's tight in there!) and was quickly back upside down in the cave, with the downflow interacting with one side of my torso. I conservatively (breath-wise) swam from behind the veil and was under for a long time, being balanced underwater on the bottom of the main tongue for a bit before being barrel-rolled for a few rotations just in front of it (still underwater), as far as I can tell. Balling up only seemed to stabilize me in the subaquatic neutral zone, so I tried to tap the downflow and GTFO of there. My first attempt only succeeded in getting me to the surface for a quick breath and a whack in the face from a throwbag before I went deep again. I made a couple more rounds inside the hydraulic before I was able to straighten my body toward the downflow as I cycled back toward it, and tap into it for my deepest ever body mystery. I felt it accelerate me downward quite vigorously, and lightly bounced along the bottom of the river before coming up about 35 feet downstream, just beyond the boil line. As I swam to the bank, I urged my companions to get someone in the water to grab my paddle and be ready for the boat to come out. After a paddler went down to the next visible eddy and stopped without having found the paddle, I asked to be live-baited in to retrieve the boat (need it for the Idaho trip!), but no one thought this was a good idea at the time. They looked at me like I was insane, in fact. My companions were more shaken than I was at this point, for better or worse.
Witnesses said I was gone from sight for over 20 seconds during the extended underwater portion of my working, and I definitely remember a moment of realizing I would be holding my breath much much longer than I wanted, and that it was time to get calm and work the hydraulic. This thought sequence took place a couple of rotations before I was able to tap into the downflow. My paddle went downstream, was later recovered from an eddy river right 1/4 mile down, and was stashed on the bank by a clearcut. My boat remained behind the veil (hard to see since it is dark dark gray), and I made a rock climb egress straight up the cliff on river right, roped up another paddler's boat followed by that paddler, who managed to hitch up to the put-in to get my car. Can you believe the other guys were drinking beer at the takeout when we got there? Luckily, the sun had only just set, and my sweetheart and I had a lovely hike before it got dark, in the course of failing to find the paddle on foot.
Early in the afternoon of Sunday, June 27th, a group coming off the Farmlands told me that they looked for my boat but did not see it. I put on around 5pm with an esteemed local in his playboat, and me paddling my SCUD with a breakdown that Diesel lent me. (Thanks, Joel!) At Lava, the pool of froth behind the veil looked bigger/whiter, so I surmised that my boat was no longer being held there. The river was perhaps 3 inches lower in its banks, which made the weak spot in the veil a bit more transparent, though it was still a solid sheet of water. Downstream, I hopped out to search for my paddle two times, and found it at the second spot, which was as described by Saturday's crew. I stowed the breakdown, and continued downriver at a medium pace, looking for my creekboat at every turn.
Rounding a corner about 3/4 mile below Lava, where the river gets shallow on the left and current piles up on rocks and sticks to the right, at the base of an active erosion zone, I thought to myself, "this is where it would have stopped if it came through here," and (lo!) beheld my boat near the right bank, broached on a couple of rocks in shallow/slow current, upside down and perpendicular to me, with no apparent damage. I pulled it out to find that it had zero damage whatsoever, other than a few very minor scratches. Both handpaddles (with gloves attached) had come free, and my sponge was long gone. All other outfitting and equipment was intact. The Watershed stowfloats were bone dry. I made one of the burliest climbs in my life with my rope playing out behind me and attached to the SCUD, stopping halfway to yard it up for the final push, and left it hanging off the cliff, tied to a tree on the edge of the mad cow pasture, which was mercifully unoccupied by malevolent bovines. The egress here was so burly because the geology just plain sucked for climbing, with crumbly rock aggregated into loose dirt for 60 feet of vertical, before some vegetation and more solid rocks made it manageable. The descent back to river level was just as harrowing, and I can safely say that I personally accelerated the pace of erosion in this spot quite a bit. In retrospect, I should have floated the SCUD down to a better egress point, and brought a cockpit cover or sprayskirt+camstrap for that purpose. I paddled the Magnum out the remainder of the Farmlands, and met my companion at the takeout, where he presented me with one of my handpaddles, glove still attached. He had proceeded downstream during my paddle searches, waited for a while below Offramp before surmising that I'd had to hike out for some reason, and had been at the takeout for 5 minutes when I arrived. It was truly a great experience to take my time down the 2nd half of the Farmlands on a solo basis in my recently recovered creekboat. What a beautiful canyon!
The trespassy hike in to retrieve the SCUD was a sweaty affair in the evening heat, but with no cows or landowners to assault me, and such a great outcome, I was in good spirits. I made calls at the pair of wild turkeys I startled on the edge of the pasture, but they only clucked back. I guess they don't gobble back if they can see that you're not also a turkey. Some of you might beg to differ with their assessment on that, though.
So, there is a handpaddle with my name/# on it somewhere below Lava on the White Salmon, that may or may not have a glove still attached. The sponge was near the end of it's life anyway, so I consider myself lucky to be down one handpaddle, with no damaged gear or injury to myself or my parties. I do not recommend swimming Lava Falls.
Willie
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