Grays River

We ran the Grays River Saturday with the ORT group and a few kayakers from Seattle. It was a great level for a first trip and a good kayak level. It was a little low for the rafts though. Superbowl was Super fun and Picnic was pretty manky but still fun. The first gorge was class four and had some wood but was really fun.

Theron about to plug under the branch in front of him. Dave and Matt in the first gorgeSeattle boater driving left at Superbowl.ORT crew chargin Superbowl.Neil taking the center line.John drops the ledge in superbowl.John dropping into the turbulent second drop.Seattle boater resurfacing in the second hole.I dont have time for a full report but I got a video to put up.

ORT dropping into Picnic.The gorge Picnic drops into.

Take out near an old covered bridge

-Jacob

Snowboarding/Utah

Nick and Alex snowboarding in Utah.

Eagle Creek-Columbia Gorge-(Swimming)

Last Wednsday Alex and I went to Eagle Creek in the Columbia Gorge to do some swimming and our new hobbie, tubing. Now I used to look down upon tubers as I am sure most kayakers do, but we have learned that when the water level drops that and you have worn out the lower Wind and the Truss is not cutting it, that tubing drops that are too low to get a kayak down can be a good substitute for the real thing. On this day our destination was Punchbowl falls, a very famous hike. We did not have time to continue upstream but plan on returning next year. We hiked up from the main falls two slides and started on a nice ten foot slide. This was difficult to land as in order to hold onto the tube we would have scraped our hands pretty bad. Then we headed downstream and spent some time on the slide above Punchbowl. After we each went three times it was time for the big one. We both got the impression that the hit would be very hard in a tube, so I swam off and Alex jumped off. This is all the time we had as I had just enough time to get back to football. The falls and slides above them would be doable in a kayak at this level, but the hike would only be worth it if you ran punchbowl and I think that might be a real hard hit. Here is the video. -Jacob

Rock Creek (swimming)

Last week Alex and I went to Rock Creek to go swimming. We decided to start at Heaven and Hell since I already new where it was. I had a little trouble finding it, but as we were driving back I saw the horizon line and it was a short hike to the falls. We had brought inner tubes in hopes that we could slide down some of it and it turned out that we were in luck. The first slot/crack drop that is usually portaged was easily slideable with a fun boof at the end. There was another drop above the crack that was fun. Then the three foot ledge between the two bigger drops was slideable but required landing on a rock ledge and took some consideration. This one was really fast once you hit the shelf and the tubes took most of the impact away(very fun). And here is Alex cleaning the shelf drop. Then a short pool above Heaven and Hell. We then scouted the first ledge in this double drop that is 5+ in terms of kayaking at normal levels.

Alex takes a look.

At this level we could drop the first ledge and get out which is what we did. The ledge only had about 25 cfs in it but the six foot ledge created a powerful drop for the inner tubes. There were more swims here than any of the other drops, we both had a little above a fifty percent success rate. Then we eddied out on the right and ran them all again many times. There was plenty of carnage that occured and some of these videos captured this.

The pictures and video were all taken on Alex's phone so the quality is a little blury.

Steep Creek falls on the drive back.

-Jacob

Naked falls

One of these days after football Nick, Alex and I decided to go swimming.  This day Nick found a spot on the internet called Naked falls on The Washougal.  I had drive past before while kayaking, and was looking forward to some summertime fun with toys. We drove there with a boogie board, an innertube, and life jackets and camera. When we got there we realized just how fun this would be. The normal kayaking line was slideable on the boogieboard which we all slid down a few times.

Nick

Me sliding

and about to drop

and the left side lowhead damish drop was low enough to run, which we cleaned up on for the most part, one or two swims each:).

landing

There was also a 25-30 foot cliff. We spent hours there and didn't get bored.

Alex "seal launching" in

 When we were gearing down to leave some idiot started talking big about drifting the gravel road.  Alex didn't want his car anywhere near that guy so drove it away before the guy could pull his stunt.  It was a good call, the dude crashed his car exactly where Alex's vehicle had been parked about 1.5 minutes before.



-Jacob

Lower Wind

Two weekends ago Nick, his brother Alex and I went to the Lower Wind for our last run before Nick and Alex left for college. At this level it is a large hassel to run the entire river as the total lack of other boaters proved. High Bridge was the worst with the IK's getting stuck on almost every one of the small drops that make up this rapid. For Hardshell's it might almost be worth it, but the rapids all dropped a class, with the fun being zero until the Flume.

This rapid is usually OK

but boring today

The excitement is not actually the Flume, but it was the first reason to get out of our boats. Within about a minute we had all decided to portage. The most likely outcome at this lowest of levels was demonstrated in the first clip of Theron Jourdan's video "Hot Session" which can be seen on oregonkayaking.net . The level we had was quite a bit lower than that two, making it next to impossible to miss the F U rock without hitting the rock that Theron's head almost collides with in the video. So we all tried to seallaunch in interesting ways to spice things up a little. With the Flume looking the way it does, there really is not much reason to run the entire river. We boat scouted Beyond Limits, then headed down to Shipperds. first tier second tier (Nick)

Myself

Third Tier

We had tons of fun and Alex decided to run it for the first time after watching Nick and I both run it succesfully with a couple rail-grabs. He did great. Then we headed to the hot-springs to finish off the day.

-Jacob