North Fork Clackamas, V+(VI)

Flows were high on the North Fork Clackamas, causing some raised eyebrows at the put-in. We are usually shooting for 250 on American Whitewater's calculated gauge for this run. (The AW gauge is calculated to be 10% of the difference between the gauges for the Clackamas at Estacada and Three Lynx.)

The river peaked while we were running it on this day, putting our flows in the mid-to-high 300's -- definitely the high side of high. Too high, in many respects. Eddies were tiny, rare, and often guarded by tree branches in the water. With a group of six, balancing spacing and communication was a constant challenge.

There was plenty of amazing continuous Class IV from the put-in down through a mandatory portage or two and some challenging log sneaks. Wood was a constant threat, but the number and quality of juicy boofs was well worth the constant vigilance.

There is a nasty sticky ledge that comes up quite fast in the upper gorge that has been a common problem spot in the past, and this day was no exception. First, Tango Charlie took it to the mat and pulled himself out of the hole using some logs on the right bank. GRRRRR says the honey badger! Moments later, Diesel dropped in for a short and terminal ride to the deepest part of the pit, and was roped out while still in his boat. That Jimi Stik that floated off will turn up someday, we hope.

With our delayed progress through the upper gorge, the rising water was catching up with us, and things went very quickly down to the "15-footer" above the unrunnable big falls. (Oregon Kayaking's NF Clack description calls this drop "Speed Bump", and says it's ten feet.) Too quickly, really...

Speed Bump seemed closer to 20 feet on this day, especially when routing into it unawares. Due to the high flows, our probe service was quite loose. It's quite an unnerving sensation to be jamming down a long and fast Class IV boulder garden and realize that it is routing right off the lip of a flooded-out waterfall. A variety of blind lines were had, with the key commonality that the paddler went extremely deep and ended up on the left at the bottom, somehow clear of the maw and upright.

Looking back at this drop from below revealed that a forearm-thick tree branch was protruding from the right bank into the center of the flow. With the volume of water going over the falls on this day, it would only have been in play for someone going over the far right.

Without taking the time to frame the shot without foliage, I snapped a quick photo to document just how juicy Speed Bump was before we got to work on portaging the big one:



Two of our group were lucky and/or smart enough to stop well above this drop and use the nice-and-easy fire road portage that ends at Stairway to Heaven.

Those of us that found ourselves below the fifteen footer were faced with a much tougher (but shorter) portage. (It's a damned good thing that Palmire gave Tendercheeks the beta about the portage route before our run.) In exchange, we got to see more of the river, including a good look at the rapid leading in to the lip of the big one. The last time I was in this spot was on a low-side-of-low spring day a few years ago, and I remember the lead-in as a series of relatively glassy pools divided by dry bedrock and twinkling in the sun. Not so on this day:



If a paddler were to swim out of the fifteen footer and fail to get to shore before entering the section depicted above, they would have a good chance of finding themselves dropping over the big no-no horizon line at the top left of this photo:



Such a swimmer would face death or dismemberment at the hands of the rockpile at the base of the big falls that are always portaged. Our portage on this day consisted of a steep scramble 50 feet up the left bank, roping boats up behind us, followed by a reasonable but steep traverse to the top of a steep ravine that heads down to the river.

The ravine back down to the river has a conveniently fallen tree whose rootwad marks the top of our route down, and also provides a handy anchor for the couple hundred feet of nylon rope someone has left in place. The lowering of boats and selves was plenty strenuous, but this route would simply not be possible without a rope. The entire ravine is an active erosion zone, made all the more active by four paddlers and kayaks making their way down.

Here you can see one of our group getting ready to launch from the base of the ravine we came down:



The paddler launching in the photo above is in the mist zone from the big drop, and is getting hammered with 20-mile-an-hour winds comprised of 50% water spraying from the base of this monster. When I was launching, I was sponging out my boat before ferrying across to take a couple of photos, and realized at one point that the spray was so heavy that I would need to just call it good enough and get somewhere drier to finish the job.

But, man! What a sight the big falls was on this day!







Looking downstream from the big one. Stairway to Heaven is literally around the corner:



This guy actually likes it when the water is a bit too high:



Stairway to Heaven was quite impressive to behold. As with lower flows, the left-to-right line was clearly the way. When Jer-bear and Loneman get there they know, if the stores are all closed, with a word they can get what they came for. And a new day will dawn for those who stand long and the forests will echo with laughter.

Jer-bear makes me wonder:



The stories don't stop below Stairway, but the Led Zeppelin lyrics do. :-)

By the time we got down to Storm Drain, three of our crew of six had gotten their fill, and opted for the scenic land-based egress to the takeout, while three of us polished off the remaining mini-gorges and boulder gardens. A notable moment came when a wrist-thick sweeper awaited out of sight right below the horizon of a random five-foot ledge. Jer-bear and Loneman made friends with it before proceeding downstream and I was the lucky one, having managed to boof my bow over it.

I've been on the NF Clack when the top part was good to go and this lower section was too low to float, and it sucks to choose between monkey-knuckling and just getting out and walking. It was quite a treat to have it be rowdy continuous Class III, but the blind channels and three short log portages right before the end demanded constant attention.

We made it to the takeout with minutes of daylight to spare, having spent just under 5 hours on the river. Shuttle got ran while the other half of our crew made their way out of the woods, and most of us proceeded to The Country in Estacada for food, drink, and a debrief.

The North Fork Clackamas always delivers interesting times, it seems. Lots of epics and lost gear come out of this canyon, and this run was no exception -- plenty of portages, a lost paddle, a swim, some blind runnings, and some hiking. Given the high flows, abundance of wood, noontime put-in, and six paddlers sharing tiny must-make eddies, we came out pretty damned squeaky clean!

The Story of Swimming Lava Falls

(a previous and successful run of Lava Falls on the Farmlands, at lower flows)
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

Middle White Salmon: handpaddling Maytag and Husum

(Willie's custom expert handpaddles)
These suckers (crafted by Hucky McChuckinstuff) are just under half the surface area of my large handpaddles, and even smaller than Riveraholic's small handpaddles. My first time using them, on September 9th's Carnage Run, was a hoot.

It'd been quite a while since I asked anyone to have my back on T-rescues, and even longer since I'd felt gripped in the big eddy at Fish Creek. With my heart racing, I undertook the run without knowing for certain that I'd be able to navigate, much less have a combat roll. Things went very well, and I even got my surf on several times.

My hand roll has to be a bit more optimal with the tiny handpaddles, which is good training. I find that taking many more (but less powerful) strokes gives me a better cardio workout on the river, and requires better boat control, more focus on river reading, and more premeditated obstacle avoidance.

Friends who've started handpaddling recently after months of encouragement from me have been having a blast and extolling the virtues of this pursuit. Me to them: "I told you so!" We had 3 handpaddlers at the first and second Carnage Runs this month, and 4 last week at the third. People wanting locally-made handpaddles should hook up with Hucky, a.k.a. Tango Charlie.

The following Saturday, Luke, Ryan, and I set out to conquer new turf with our handpaddles, having honed our game on the Upper Clackamas. This was my second time using the insignificant pieces of plastic known as "Willie's custom expert handpaddles", and the White Salmon would prove once again to be a sizable step up for someone so used to Fish to Bob's on the Clackamas.

This clip (at Maytag, the first rapid of the Middle White Salmon run) starts with me (background) succeeding at my second frantic roll attempt in the boils below the top drop with Luke shouting encouragement in close chase, as Ryan runs the 2nd "drop" (foreground), followed by myself and then Luke:


(Ryan, Willie, and Luke on Maytag, with handpaddles. Footage courtesy of 'Nette from Next Adventure's staff blog post.)
The run was challenging, as I don't know it very well, and line planning has to happen much earlier in each rapid when I'm in the tiny handpaddles. My focus slipped at one point, and I found myself center-broaching on a rock in the shallows, where I flipped. An advantage of the handpaddles in this situation was that I was able to crab-walk upside-down on the rocky bottom, from my back deck over to my upstream side, and roll up from there, protecting my head/shoulders/etc. from the menacingly shallow riverbed. There is probably a whole sub-sport to be had in dynamic playboat moves that incorporate the riverbed, but I'll leave that revolution to someone else. ;)

This clip of Husum has Luke crushing the tricky low-water boof, then myself, followed by Ryan, having more interesting lines. I can tell you that handrolling in froth with something smaller than a DVD case strapped to each hand is an interesting exercise. The word "swim" ran through my mind briefly when I got pulled back into the maw after my second capsize. Luckily, it was all the more easy to feel and grab the downwater for an inverted escape from the chunder zone:


(Luke, Willie, and Ryan on Husum, with handpaddles. Thanks again to 'Nette from Next Adventure for the footage!)

Oregon Kayaking: Chelan Gorge

(Entrance Exam - photo by Chris Arnold)
Chris Arnold has finally gotten his Chelan Gorge trip report up on Oregon Kayaking. There are a couple of pictures of me. I still need to finish my report for that trip, but it's getting close.

Squirtboating: Weasel Gathering, underwater footage

I had a blast figuring out how to sink at last weekend's Weasel Gathering. I'm so grateful to the small community of Northwest squirtboaters for letting me try lots of boats and giving me crucial pieces of advice at just the right moments. I managed to get 6-8 consecutive submersions, with a max of 8 seconds, once I was in a boat that worked for me. (Noah's KOR was just right in a very Goldilocks way.) I came in last, but posted no zeroes. Not bad for my second day on the river in a squirtboat. What helped me get fast results was having read Squirtboating & Beyond and then rereading it again after doing a lot of playboating, before ever getting into a squirt boat. Handpaddling my playboat a lot and getting partial mysteries doing so at high water Big Eddy on the Clackamas helped a lot too, no doubt. The hook is set; now, I just need to knock off a bank so I can get a custom squirtboat and accompanying gear.

Weaver sinks into the Weasel at previous, higher flows.
At the end of Sunday's session, I volunteered to shoot some underwater footage of Tim Hollar dropping at The Weasel. To prepare, I swam into the downwater and rode the mystery with swimfins and one handpaddle, which was a trip, indeed. It's as if there is a creek beneath the river that follows the contours of the bottom-most part of the riverbed. It would be nigh impossible to stay in the "body mystery" while filming, but it was an instructive experience nonetheless. For the following footage, I just stayed in the seam on the surface, upcurrent from Tim, and managed spacing by kicking forward with the fins or pushing back with the handpaddle. Thanks to Joel Meadows for letting me use his camera, and thanks to Tim for the use of the goggles and snorkel.


(footage by yours truly, who has no "S" in his name)

Whitewater Kayaking Lifestyle Videos

In the absence of completed trip reports for recent adventures, I offer you these glimpses into the kayaker lifestyle. This clip is from the informal White Trash Party 2009 at Northwestern Lake, on the White Salmon River. The annotated video says more than I ever could with mere words:


Some months later, Adventure Technology had a farewell party at the plant, with a Pimp & Ho theme. Katie and Josh were probably the best pimp and ho of the party, respectively. Here's Josh playing on his unicycle with a both feather boa and a light buzz tied on:


Any whitewater kayaker who tells you that they don't see this kind of thing every weekend is obviously hiding the truth. It could be a cocktail of pride and shame, or maybe they're trying to bogart the fun all for themselves. Trust only those who can look you in the eye and assure you that this type of shit happens every day...

Upper Upper Cispus: Behemoth from above

I'm still pulling together media and words for my Chelan Gorge trip report, so here's a clip from a Cispus run we did in the meanwhile.


(video by Travis Lee)

White Salmon: Green Truss: another day, another cave rescue

The Green Truss in summer can be a real treat. This weekend, we had sunny weather with temperatures pushing 100 degrees F. You know it's a hot day when you can sit safety in the mist coming off Big Brother in total comfort, wearing shorts and a lightly-insulated drytop. My lines were good this weekend, so I got to be the rescuer in the scenario below.

Steve and I yard Eric out of the cave at the base of Big Brother
(photo by Chris Arnold)

Lower Wind: handpaddling Shipherd's Falls, melt line

I tried to prematurely boof a little to give my bow more downward momentum into the seam. I don't think I can get all the way under the foam pile to the downstream side without higher flows or a bunch of water in my boat. Either would be a scary proposition.


(Thanks to Ryan Young for the footage.)

just watched a hand paddle fly out of the boat on my roof and get kicked into the median by a passing car on I-405...good ol' carnage run!