Lava falls; welcome to the chunder dome

Saturday, February 20th 2010

White Salmon river, Farmlands section, 3.5 feet

Class IV-V

5.1 miles

Due to a lack of rain and cold weather, this weekend a large caravan of people made a pilgrimage to White Salmon, WA. The group consisted of Jon, Jon's girlfriend Katie, Chipper, Chippers girlfriend Kelsey, jP, and myself, and we ended up meeting up with other groups that included Texas Dave, Dan, Fish, and Ian. Friday afternoon I drove down solo and went to All Adventures where we would be sleeping that night. I arrived at the old stomping grounds and was warmly met by Karen, I hung out with her for several hours and watched the Olympics and talked about politics, local gossip, plans for next year, and firearms. Time well spent with the Boss. The rest of the gang arrived late because of their long slog from Seattle.

After a bitter cold night (24 degrees F) sleeping in the bed of the truck, I roused around 8:00 am, and made myself some coffee while I waited for the sun to rise. The rest of the gang woke up soon after and we began to hash out plans for the day. We were going to wait for Fish and Ian to go paddling, and they wouldn't be there until noon, so we had a leisurely breakfast, checked the river level at the gauge in Husum, and then rallied up to the take-out to meet the rest of the gang.

Most of the group including myself wanted to have a warm-up day on the Farmlands section of the White Salmon, a class IV-V run located several miles north of the BZ corners. We dropped my truck at the take out, and the girls drove us up to the top and dropped us off. They had made plans to do some hikes at the advice of Karen.

We suited up and clambered down to river level, did some warm-up paddling, and then made our way down to the first rapid of consequence; Little Sidewinder and Sidewinder. Little Sidewinder is a straightforward class III+ with some weird water at the bottom. Sidewinder proper is a relatively easy line with disastrous consequences, if a paddler messes up their line there is a large undercut rock that the current pushes you under. The rapid looks ugly and in reality wouldn't be that satisfying, after some scouting, jP, Jon, and I decided that we didn't want to flirt with disaster and walked around. Chipper felt otherwise, he wanted to run it, so he did, and with a really good looking line.

This section of the river is pool-drop in nature, basically that means that there is a rapid followed by a flat pool of water. From below sidewinder there were several class III and IV drops, all shaped by the bedrock riverbed, some big ledges, and S-turning rapids all were fun and relatively low stress. The next big rapid we arrived at is Lava Dam Falls, it's a 15 foot ledge that has no lead-in rapid above it, just a glassy pool. We scouted and then Jon ran it first and had a really quality line, off the lip with speed and landed flat and paddled away from the hole. jP went next and had a different line but was equally successful. Chip followed and was not as successful. He approached the lip and threw in a really strong boof stroke, landed flat, and then the boil from the backwash turned him and brought him in towards the falls. I scrambled down the rocks with the throw bag to get a better angle because he had gone out of my line of sight and he was gone. When I say he was gone, I mean that there was no sign that he had even just run the drop, no paddle, no boat, nothing. Just a pounding waterfall with three kayaker's staring at it in puzzlement.

what had happened was the force of the falls had sucked him behind the veil of the falls and had pinned him and his boat between the veil and the rock behind it. Eventually you could see the orange of his kayak showing through the falls. After about 10-20 seconds of this Chip breached the surface downstream, I threw him the bag and pengulumed him to the shore. His boat eventually flushed out and went downstream, jP chased it through the next rapid and collected it in the pool below. Chip being too eager to get back to his boat, almost jumped back into the river to swim through the rapid, which was the only option, but at the time we - as a group - needed to take a second to smoke the proverbial cigarette and calm down a second and talk about our next plan of action. I still wanted to run the falls so I wanted to have someone with a throwbag and someone else in their boat to pick up the pieces if it all went bad.

Now it was my turn, I took a final look at the line and where I wanted to be, climbed in my boat, splashed some water in my face and started charging for the lip. From here the next thing I remember is being upside-down at the base of the falls with the falls pounding on the hull of my boat. I couldn't roll because of the ultra aerated water, I could feel the boat being tossed around, and I eventually decided that extricating myself from the kayak was going to be my best option to go deep and away from the cave that Chip had taken a short vacation in. Somehow the falls had imploded my skirt for me and I was now swimming freely underneath the falls. Swimming in a hydraulic is extremely disorienting, the water is tossing you around, and the things you learn as a raft guide about swimming whitewater aren't in the forefront of your mind, in some respects it's panic-mode. After being chundered around a bit I eventually remembered to ball up in a cannonball, this flushed me deep and the next thing I was catching a rope from Chip whom I had pulled out of the river only too recently.

My boat and paddle flushed downstream and Jon chased. Now chip and I were sans kayaks, standing above a class IV rapid that we would need to swim in order to get back in our boats. There were no options for walking around, so we got prepared to swim through some substantial holes in order to get back to our boats. Chip jumped first and I followed shortly behind. The first two ledges we stuck down the left side of the river and then swam strongly to the middle to avoid the hole on the left and the right wall that I had seen my boat get hung up in for a minute. The worst part of the swim was how cold it made my hands and feet. I had forgot to put thick wool socks in my bag so I had been forced to wear white cotton socks underneath my drysuit. Dumb. My feet wouldn't warm up until we got off the river an hour and a half later.

There was one last class V rapid at the end of the trip which I optioned out of because my confidence was in tatters. We paddled down to the take out and our cars.

The hardest part about this experience for me isn't the physical beating that I received, but more about the bruising of my ego and confidence. For the rest of the day I was in a solid depression about my situation, not because I swam, but rather because I had such a bad line that forced me to swim. It wasn't until a few days later that I was able to remind myself that I am a competent paddler, and that I won't do that again. Paddling teaches us plenty about ourselves and our limitations, it also reminds us what is so exciting about whitewater; the unforeseeable future.