Saturday on the White Salmon

July 16-
Corey, Devin, Joe and I met a few other folks up at BZ and did Farmlands through to BZ.
It was 3.2 on the stick at Husum and a really good day up on the river.
Enjoy the slide show!

This River Log

Since not all of the runs I do are worthy of posting full color spreads (infact some of the rivers I do aren't worth doing) and I like to get out a lot more often than I post, I wanted a way to share the rivers I'm on easily. Its little now but officially, this is the unveiling of ThisRiverLog which also appear in the sidebar.

Stay tuned for a few photos from Mike of the day thats the first entry.
Good times.

EJ

Photo Update:

On the return from the Grand, Sybille and I did some traveling. We drove over Glen Canyon, through Grand Escalante, Zion and the Sierras. Slept out Twice in sub-20 degree temps and had a great time easing our re-entry. I shot a few along the way and kind of like them better than my Grand shots. I hope you enjoy

Grand Canyon Photos

They are finally here. I had enough people lay into me enough times and here they are.

We were fortunate to have the controlled flood of 41K CFS on our first couple days. The morning of our put-on we were watching the water rise inches as we packed and that was just the ramp up, the flood gates were opened the next day while we were at Soap Creek. Our first major rapid was flooded.

Many of the major rapids in the Roaring 20s where significantly changed if not gone. House Rock because a riffle with a toungue down the left whereas President Harding Rapid became a huge boat flipper that ate a cataraft and cartwheeled a 16 ft Mauravia from another group.

A few days later we were back down to typically low spring flows, drinking beer and bouncing through wave trains.

Too few days later, we took out at Diamond creek for a rude reentry into the world and a sad, long trip back home. I'm looking forward to my next visit!

Have a look at the photos to see what else went on.
This is the narrow set only 165 out of 1489 that I shot. Enjoy

WKCC Safety Weekend 2008

The Willamette Canoe and Kayak Club holds and annual weekend of safety classes taught by volunteers to their peers. This year the event was more popular than ever and extremely well organized by Sandra Uesugi. She also led the morning warm up exercises and cooked most of the food, which was excellent.

Land classes included knots, throw bag technique, packing for overnights and extended trips, mechanical advantage including z-drag, escaping vertical pins and entrapment rope rescue. Wet classes were shallow water crossing, swimming rapids, strainer swimming, wet throw bag practice and rescue practice.

I hung out for the free food, good company and to take photos to document the whole thing, not necessarily in that order.

Just a few photos are show below.
All the photos from the weekend: here

Sandra made cupcake and blue icing for all the volunteers! Accompanying kayak benders made for a fun and educational snack. The bender on the right is demonstrating the Oregon Tuck, the left, old school waterfall techinique.


Sandra and Cate warming up


Lindsey about to swim over a strainer


The worst injury of the weekend. What happens when one person has a rope on one really big guy!


Mandatory group shot, Keith demonstrates the running man!

McCoy Cr: The Best Creeking in Oregon...

is in Washington!

May 31st 2008:
Casey, Rick, Jame, Richard and I met the bridge over the Cispus on FR 23 at 9:45AM. Rick and I met up in the morning, the other three had camped up there the night before for a shake down cruise in his new EuroVan.

McCoy Creeks is a bitty trib of the Cispus near Randle Washing. Bennet calls for 150-600 cfs at 5-15% of the Cispus at Randle. We had about 3K there giving us a calculated 150-450cfs but I swear it was more than that. Our own visual estimates were more along the 600cfs range. You can look at the photos and make up your own mind though.

Put on grins

Rick and I had done this one once, about a year before the other three were new to the run. As it turned out, we had forgotten most of the run which is a real shame considering the number of quality drops that are in there. McCoy Cr on Oregon Kayaking.

It looked a bit higher than last time and there was a nervous pause at the put in but that could have had something to do with the miners with guns and a stick pickup truck down the put in path.

The day started out rainy so I missed out on the first few drops but as the rain tapered off and the sun came out so did the camera.

Richard finishing up the drop with the pothole. We all ran left.

Richard below the tight double drop.

James halfway through Chinook Falls

Richard finishing up the bottom slide of Chinook Falls

Richard really hit the boof on the '20ft' falls.

The big portage was next up and though I've heard of a better way, we instead went up and around and roped the boats down a couple hundred feet before 'schwacking down to river level. Once down there and after a short breather, Rick paddled across and looked upstream at the clear path down to the river.

Shortly after that, the confluence of Yellowjacket and a mile or so of read and run class IV followed by a couple more miles of annoying class II.

Unfortunately, my shoulder was too sore in the morning to paddle on Sunday but we spent the better part of the it driving around anyway. We found out that the road to the Super Slides still has plenty of snow miles from the take out and that the put in for Smith Creek is REALLY steep.

BUT my shoulder is feeling better and I'm looking forward to WKCC Saftey Weekend next weekend.

Check out more photos here.

Till next time!

May Melt!

Chris G, boofing. As if you didn't notice

This week has been HOT.
Its like someone open the oven door and turned on the sun lamp. In just a few day, every drainage with a little bit of snow leapt up to bankfull or higher. Including high elevation, rarely run creeks like EF Rock creek.

First run by Jason Rackley and crew and subsequently run a handful of times since then, it was full of wood then and its full of wood now despite the wood faerie's best efforts. it seems the heavy snow that allowed the higher creeks to run and the larger rivers to flood also downed alot of small wood into the creek bed that's barely a boat length wide in most places.


The five of us (Chris G, Jeff H, Richard Y, Rick C and I) got to the put in and stared down the brushy, woody tunnel that was EF Rock Creek and after hiking down the creek to the falls hoping we would see the wood lighten up. Instead, we didn't see an end to the brush and wood and we discussed the possibilities. Eventually we decided that there was too much wood, too much water and too many of us. The likely hood of finding 5 eddies above the next log across the river and the next one and the next one was too low for all of us to on. We opted instead of a quick park and huck and to ease on up to a lap on Opal before camping and hiking in to Battle Axe on Sunday.

I started out with the camera down below straight away while Chris fired it up first, followed by Rick and Richard. All three of the boofed it following Chris's example. He boofed so far out he cleared the boil and nearly ended up on the wood at the bottom of the pool. The sound of his hull, and those that followed, hitting the water was enough to make me decide the boofing out like that was a cool, put potentially painful option. Everyone said it was soft but it sure didn't sound that way. As you can see, I went for the low angle, huck and tuck.


Rick C, at the lip



It seemed like such a good idea to plug it. Richard took this one


The landing was super soft but I flipped in the boil and as I snapped a quick roll something in my already injured arm popped and it hurt like hell. I had pulled the muscles in my arm a couple weeks prior on Opal Gorge in a rookie, hero-highbrace. Luckily, just the muscles, not anything joint relate.


Richard, gettng airborne.

After I rolled up, it was hella painful just to paddle over to the pull out where the team had to help me get my boat back up to the road and once there, get it loaded.

Well, at least the sun is tucking back up soon so maybe I'll be healed up and there will still be some snow up in the hills then. Till then, I'll have to find something else to keep my occupied like puzzles or knitting...

I hope to be out there soon.
Till then.

EJ

More Photos from the day

Some of Ricks Shots: