Lewis (falls section) birthday run

Lewis River

all photos by Aubrey Russell

For my birthday, my family, girlfriend and I camped at the Lower falls campground.  It had been over a year since I was here last.  That time I had shyed away from the lower falls after seeing Rush Sturges get stuck in the cave, and I broke my nose running Upper falls.  This year, my goal was to run Lower falls if I was feeling ready.  On Friday I ran the upper section with my stepdad Dave, and I had run a pretty interesting falls up there.  Sunday rolled around and it was time to run the falls section.  Jean Loosmore and John showed up along with Tim Brink and ORT, with Paul Guinea also along for the run.  Jean realized pretty quickly he had forgotten his PFD so he opted to video the show.  After scouting, we all put on and ran Taitnapum, a 20 footer that produced some interesting lines.

Paul went first and cleaned up.  I went next and was planning on a plug for practice, but hit a pad anyway and I dropped at a 45 until I hit the rock face forming the fall which dropped my bow and I came up facing the falls but upright. I got out and got a cool angle of the raft running it from where I was.  I was close enough that when they hit, they splashed a sheet of water onto me as I protected my camera!  Last was John, some miscommunication caused him to be offline and he got turned sideways and dislocated his thumb!  So after some interesting lines we headed down to Upper falls.  We scouted the first class IV sliding drop and all successfully ran that, then we eddied out and scouted the big part of Upper falls.

     Jean's girlfriend was starting to get sick, Jean couldn't boat, and John had dislocated his thumb, so they decided to call it a day and head back home.  Meanwhile we all got set up to lower ourselves to the shelf between the nasty part of Upper, and the sweet 35 below.  Getting into the eddy in a controlled manner is the most crucial part of this drop as I learned last year when I got blown out before I could set up.  This year Ox helped lower me backwards into the eddy and I got a controlled ferry into the river left side of this drop which is a bounce bounce hit into the pool below.  Last year Nick and I went much farther right and it is a ten foot slide into an autoboof 25. I wasn't up for that this year, the water was lower and the pool was not very airated over there. The left worked out great and Paul followed my line.  Next the raft worked its way into the current and dropped off the completely vertical far right side.  Amazingly they landed upright with a couple collided heads(football helmets were a great idea).  From here we hightailed it down to Middle falls.  Paul went for the gutsy left side slot and came away upright.  This drop was really technical where he went, the video and pictures should give you a good idea.  I went for the low stress far right slide with a paddle twirl after the raft slid down sideways.

 The raft had already taken off by the time I finished talking to my sister, mom, and Aubrey.  Paul and I played catch up for the next half mile.  We finally rounded a corner and got out above the big one.  Paul and I headed down to scout while Tim and Ox started lining their boat down to below the lead in rapid, which was too narrow for the raft.  I have not looked at a drop as long as I did that one and still decided to run it.  I wanted to do this perfect or not at all.  As I was getting closer to feeling ready we looked up to see Tim and Ox loose control of the raft, as we watched helplessly it plummeted over the edge, unmanned.  Well, that sucked.  As Tim and Ox took off to corral the boat downstream, Paul and I again set our sites on lower falls.  After a large chunk of time I decided to go.  I went upstream and got in my boat, I don't remember the upstream scouting or predrop ritual, but as I floated down I saw Paul waving the camera, signaling that he couldn't get it to work.  I didn't really care, I wasn't running this for the media, it was for me and I didn't want to refocus myself again after showing him what I hadn't pointed out earlier about the cameras more detailed functions, so I told him it was fine and continued into the lead in.

         I came through the lead in and slid into the fast water leading into the falls.  I haven't been so focused on a drop as I was then.  I saw where I needed to go, I took a stroke off the top ledge to keep my bow up but I didn't want to plain out because the lip of the 40 footer was just downstream. I was in control right where I wanted to be, I shifted the boat slightly to the right, took a right boof stroke, left correction stroke, remembered I wanted to tuck, took another right stroke as I came into my tuck so as not to throw anything off.  Then I hit, I am guessing I landed at less than 45 because I didn't sub out.  My face hit my arm, which hit my deck, but it was fine because I was tucked just like I wanted.  I took a left stroke and I was sailing through the gorge below the drop and into the huge pool below.  Sweet, it went absolutely perfect.  

     I was feeling just dandy, I was completely satisfied. No one except one random camper saw my descent (Paul was running down from up-top, my family and Aubrey hadn't arrived, and ORT was collecting there boat).  The moment was mine.  I was feeling so good that helping ORT slog there boat up the canyon rim below the drop wasn't even as painful as it should have been.  This did however remind me of the last time I went on a "raft first descent" with Tim on the N. fork Clack and we shlepped the raft up a couple hundred feet through the brush then too after missing the normal portage.  I have now come to expect this from first descents with the ORT crew:).

Paul drops lower falls

    Next up was Paul, I don't know his thought process so I can't give you a blow by blow from him, but it must have been pretty good cause he came away upright as well! 

All in all a great birthday, and I am very glad to have spent it with all the right people, in the right places, doing the things I love doing.  Thanks everybody.

     -Jacob

extracted from my pdxkayaker film fest entryfile:///Users/jacobcruser/Desktop/lewis.mov

North Fork Lewis River

I got to go back to the Lewis river this year, which is one of my favorite rivers, there is not many rapids but lots of falls and plenty of exploring.  This year I made the trip for my birthday weekend.  My girlfriend and I went up early and got the camp set up while the rest of my family came up later.  On Saturday my stepdad and I ran the upper North fork Lewis section above the big falls.  The water was way too low but it was enough to scrape down so that is what we did.  The gorge was still fun class III-IV at this flow with a fair amount of wood to portage in the beggining before the gorge.  There are two class five drops on the river, the first is approaching class six, even at this level.    It is a twisting ten foot slide, into a fold, into a tube created by rock and wood, and the outflow mostly goes under a log into a seive.  It was definitely runnable, and I considered it for a short while, but since it goes through the tube it is hard to scout properly.  I chose not to run it but seal launching around it did save a lot of effort in what is reported to be a brutal river right portage as described in the Bennett guide.

  My stepdad decided he would rather jump from the log so threw his boat then had a semi dicey walk down the log until he jumped into the pool.  It was cool being in this pool since we figured not many people end up there.

 Downstream from here where a few more suprisingly fun class four drops for the flow we had and some easier stuff before we reached the second drop.  I had assumed that I would not run this falls but possibly run the other one from the description in the guidebook.  The other one was simply described as "unrunnable" which in the older guidebooks is often not the case anymore, especially since the rest of the falls downstream of Quartz creek also fell into this description and I had run all of those.  I figured they were ruling this one out from height, so I figured that it would be like a 25-30 footer that was probably just fine at the low water level, but that was not the case.  On the other hand the lower was described as a fifteen footer with seething undercut walls.  I figured they ran plenty of 15 footers back then and if the leading explorers of there time hadn't run it, then me, not a big fan of being stuffed under a rock, was going to pass.

When I got there my opinion started to change pretty quickly, the low water had turned what I am sure was a nightmare at higher flows into a drop that could be run by an average class five boater.  I looked for a bit of time.  The concerns were that the right side fell onto a rock outcropping, and the left side was not long enough to land in without crashing into the wall.

  The good news was the lip had a rolling wave that looked like it would let me get my nose up if thats how I wanted to run the drop.  So plan A was to drive right to left away from the rock outcropping with a boof stroke landing just a foot or two left of the rock at the bottom.  I realized this was risky so I looked for a way to error to my left.  It was possible but the option for a boof was not there because of a flake a couple feet down that my tail would catch on.  Also, I would have to land with right angle to keep from hitting the wall when I landed.  So I decided to error left in case I was swept right, and just decide which stroke to take at the top of the drop.  I came in through the lead in, took a stroke towards the left side, and found myself on the left side of the wave at the top.  I turned my boat to angle just a bit right and took a right stroke while keeping my angle right.  I subbed out shortly and resurfaced shooting right and into the downstream current.  I was pretty happy with the drop, a cool thing about this drop was that when I paddled back upstream from the bottom I saw for the first time a rainbow that did an entire circle!  The rainbow ended right at the nose of my boat, I thought it was really neat.  I called the drop "Rainbow Pie"

 The rest of the run was through a pretty gorge.  The last rapid pinned my stepdad pretty good on a log and we lost his water bottle, but it was the end of the day and we had both had a lot of fun.

   -Jacob

Little White (finally)

I finally got to run the Little White last Firday. I had the chance about three times before but something always seemed to happen. My dad and I drove to hood river to demo the jackson super hero for me. We met Ryan Morgan at the take out and drove to the put in. My dad decided to hike in below boulder sluice to avoid the low water gettin busy in his IK. Ryan and I put in at the normal put in and had a lot of fun finding the lines through Gettin Busy (neither of us had run it before). Ryan led most of the way and we only scouted when we had to. Ryan had one short pin sort of thing but worked free himself. We made it to Island and didn't find my dad. It had taken over two hours so we figured he had hiked out. We portaged island and continued on. Everything went very smoothly. We portaged Stovepipe and Spirit and one manky class four. Everything went smooth and we both rolled in Wishbone. -photo by Ryan Morgan.
 - I had a lot of fun and am glad I got to experience the run the first time with someone else who had never seen it so we could figure out the run for ourselves. When we paddled to the take out we saw my dad for the first time in five hours. It turns out while he was hiking in a boulder gave way and he bruised some ribs! He hiked out after 15 minutes of rest and we relearned the lesson of never leaving someone by themselves on a class V run. That won't happen again. So it all turned out alright and I'm glad I got to do the run.
Photo by Ryan Morgan (RIP)


-Jacob

LWS Drano

Lower Wind

Here is a compilation of our last couple runs down the lower Wind, including Jean and John's first times down.

-jacob

Tubing Eagle creek

Alex and Nick and I headed up to Eagle Creek again this summer to tube the normal kayak run. I had kayaked it earlier in the year so I knew what we would be seeing. We put in with a throw and go at Skoonichuck, portaged on the trail the class two boulder garden section below the high bridge gorge and put back in right above punchbowl. It was a blast and is a fun low water alternative to kayaking. Between the three of us we ran every runnable drop except the 7 footer that lands on a rock shelf just above the bridge and the top drop of Skoonichuck. Nick even fired up punchbowl. Here is the video.

-Jacob

tubing and truss

Alex and I went tubing a few days ago and this video is the result. I think I got more beat up in two hours of tubing than I have ever while kayaking. On the Hymelator drop (with the four foot ledge), the landing is only two feet deep so we took big hits everytime we ran it. The drops were fun, but that one was a pretty tough drop for a tube. We had fun though. There is also a couple clips of Theron on the Truss that I shot last week. -Jacob

N.F. Clackamas

Jacob took Neil and I down the N.F. of the Clackamas on the first of June. It's a shame that this was the first time I'd been down it, because despite all the portages it was a lot of fun. I didn't get too much footage but the stuff I did get was mostly of Stairway to Heaven. Anywho, enjoy the clip! Oh...and thanks for letting me post on your blog Jacob, this is my belly flop into the blogisphere. ~Theron