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.
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