The Cal Salmon river corridor.

Nordheimer Campground is named after Nordheimer Creek which was once a major mining operation during the California gold rush.  This amazing area also serves as the starting point for the 6 mile mass start race through class IV-V whitewater!

A meadow near the camping area.

At 1:23 pm the countdown hit zero as boaters of all types charged toward the first IV+ drop, Bloomer, which was about a half a mile from the start. Below is a clip of our run:

IMG_0206-1

The Maze and Airplane Turn were just a few of the stout class IV drops in the next 4 miles leading up to the toughest class V, Cascade.  We changed up our crews from R4 to R6 just before the start, and with the bigger boat we chose to run the meat of Cascade which we had not practiced.  After getting blasted at the top we were fortunate to stay in the boat while only losing a paddle.  The other team that attempted this line weren’t so fortunate.  We greased Achilles, and next came Last Chance-

Rounding the corner at the bottom of Last Chance

Next came the coolest finish line ever, class V Freight Train!

Freight Train from above

Dropping into the Bomb Shelter

Jubilation.  What a sweet race run!  The dudes were solid.  Race coordinator Paul Gamache at the finish:

Paul Gamache

A creature on the creature craft as competitors enjoyed the Butler Creek section just downstream.

He stayed on for a while...

A relaxing float on the North Fork of the Salmon on the drive out

The 2012 Cal Salmon Crew

The Upper Clackamas Whitewater Festival is the next event in the Western Whitewater Championship Series, hope to see you there! http://upperclackamasfestival.org/

Our 2012 season update: Full Contact Rafting

“When an opponent comes forward, move in and greet him; if he wants to pull back, send him on his way:. – The Art of Peace

A recent but mostly welcome series of weather events forced us to postpone the Wind Festival due to high water.  However, our pent up rowdiness was simply released at altitude.  Fortunately we all walked away!

Following the high speed bail out the Puma sailed into the middle of the access road.  The next run we had a close encounter with a very large snow plow. The decision was quickly made to move this party to White River where we would try to to gap jump said river in a raft.

Fire Man leading the charge.

Not exactly paddling but a good 2 hours of exercise.

Saggy and Timber took the first crack at it.  We justified the ensuing pain by adopting the concept of “Soft landings are for pussies”. Brutal but worth it!

Free Bird

Saggy checks for a bloody nose, Timber checks for feeling in his legs.

Greg the new guy demonstrating he qualifies as a nut ball.

Lucy can race rafts too!

Raft jibbers

We conclude yet another escapade. See you on the Wind River March 24th!

Put in 2012. Compare this to the photo of Kenny and David below, same place.

It has now been 7 years since Kenny Kiley, David Saquety, and myself attempted a first raft descent on Roaring River of the Clackamas drainage.  Our attempt also marked the highest flow it has ever been run at, by anything.  The photo at the top shows why.

We were about to experience one of life's unique trials.

I had driven over or floated by Roaring probably 100 times in the past several years, on each occasion I was reminded of some unfinished business.  There were several drops we had been unable to run in 2005, that is not the case anymore.  Jacob Cruser also accompanied me in 2005 as he did this past weekend.  Back then he was a 16 year old kid who had not yet attempted a first D.  I asked him to sit our first attempt out.  He later got that first D experience when David and I ran the North Fork of the Clackamas.  He apparently enjoyed the punishment as now at 22 years of age, Jacob is an accomplished first descent trip leader with many extraordinary runs under his belt.

1st raft descents started happening with more frequency in the northwest following these adventures.  The guard had changed from Val Shaull, Jeff Bennet, Doc Loomis, and their crew to a new set of risk takers who loved whitewater.  This seemed especially true after ORT ran the big waterfalls on the Lewis River (Jacob’s idea) and then showed up at the PDX Kayaker Film Festival with a piece Jacob created that would show the world what rafts were capable of.

Bruce Reed and Tim Brink of ORT

Dan  ”Stunt Man” McCain approached me afterwards exclaiming, ” I aint that smart but I want to run waterfalls”!  Well, despite appearances Dan is quite intelligent and his feats are well documented.  Although I’ll never get in a boat with him again after having my hip dislocated on Celestial Falls:)

The Pain Game is about to kickoff.

Hans Hoomans, Scott Wadelich, and Darren Albright have certainly fueled the current drive to go big in rafts.  Of course Ben (Dirty) Sigler of ORT is more than worth mentioning as well.  The Habitat film that Ryan Scott has been working on will surely confirm the bad in the badass of the Northwest’s rafters.

Bottom of Headknocker on Roaring River

Just like in 2005, our Aire Puma again spent the night underwater!  And just like 7 years ago, we came back the next day, peeled it off, and finished the trip.  Yes they sponsor us but anyone would be challenged not to appreciate the resiliency of these incredible boats!  We would R4 the rest of this day and come back the next after the water dropped to recover the boat.

Bottom 1/3 of Headknocker, wood prohibited an entire run, again.

Back to 2012.  It is now 3pm and we are only 1/2 a mile into the 3 mile run.  We are in a heavy R4 on a low volume run which has unknown wood hazards and we just completed a long and arduous portage shown above.  We missed a turn on the hike in which added another mile of hauling rafts through the forest but we could not sit down and rest.

Overcome (pain+fear+exhaustion) = Survival. 1st D algebra.

Here’s the run:

Another towards the end:

Big ups to kayakers Willie and Andrew for their assistance and PATIENCE.  Bruce Reed proved once again to be an incredible teammate as he drove the LONG shuttle while recovering from shoulder surgery.  Kenny, Jamie, Caitlin and I went in the next day to recover the Puma.  Kenny was also the recovery expert on our first attempt years ago.  Blunt Family Paddles is branching off into the realm of Blunt Family Boat Recovery (BFBR).

Kenny Kiley. BFP

Timber crawling around on pinned boats, what else is new:

Success!

Kenny and I then R2ed the last 2.5 miles of Roaring in about an hour.  A little too quick as we had to wait almost 2 hours for the shuttle rig.  I am truly blessed to have friends like Kenny and teammates like Bruce, Jamie, Karl, and Daniel.  Caitlin spent the day tromping around mud with freezing feet as her BF Timber cleaned up another mess:)

Hopefully this TR and piece of inflatable history finds everyone well.  I may have missed a few names or even recalled events to fit my own schemas but that was certainly not the intent.  There are a lot of great boaters in our area that I respect and wish to run rivers with for may years to come.  We all wish to contribute, make the world a better place, somehow I pray that maybe this is my niche, a very small contribution to the greater good.  Please do come to the events that ORT coordinates and say hi.  It really is all about coming full circle, as the water does, and together we will find closure.

Put in on the June Creek section of the Clackamas.

My helmet would not fit right today.  This had not been a problem before.  My head hurt.  We stopped for a break at the confluence with the Collowash.  Searchers scoured the banks, the first day of sunshine in a week and the lowest water levels were, in my opinion, more than happenstance.  ”The plans of the righteous are just…”

Just below Drop Stopper, we enter the crux of the run.

I had never run the Killer Fang section at higher levels for good reason.  On this day the 3 Lynx gauge read 4,500cfs.  Prelude, the last drop above the mandatory portage known as Killer Fang came into view.  At this level it looked really big.  I had planned on catching the eddy river left just above then sliding through the left slot.  From our perspective the left and middle slots looked huge.  The safest line would be to go right, we dropped in with speed and charged right.  We weren’t able to square the Puma up well off the boof rock and landed sideways.  Chris and I were now swimming above the Killer Fang.  ”Don’t become a victim during a recovery mission” was just discussed.  By going right at Prelude we were out of the main, fast at high water current that feeds the Fang.  We easily swam to the right bank and watched the bigger Aire D Series boats navigate the ledge.  The Puma was still getting surfed.  We tried to get an R4 back up to the boat but couldn’t make it.  After a few minutes it came loose and began drifting into the main current.  Matt and I rallied into the boat and paddled to the right bank where we began the portage process.

Stage 1 of the portage.

Stage 2

I crawled, waded, and climbed out to take a peek at the Fang.  The sieve present at low water was gone and in its place was a river wide ledge that type-writered into a terminal hole next to an undercut wall.

The bottom of Killer Fang at 4,500cfs.

Killer Fang "rapid" from downstream.

While the team finished the portage I walked down to scout the Sieve and what was now a beefy class IV entrance rapid.  Of course, once your actually on the water everything gets a lot bigger.  The entrance drop was huge on the left, we quickly scurried over to a safer line on the right and then worked back left to set up for the Sieve.

The Sieve

This is usually a boulder garden with a few very narrow slots.

Making the left to right move at the bottom.

The only part of the drop that you cant scout is usually what gets ya.  On the very last move after the meat Chris didn’t make the high side and had a little swim.  Val and Matt were clean, somehow Jake and Dustin stayed in the boat:

After River’s Revenge we came back into sight of the road which was just before our take out.  An emergency vehicle was heading upriver with its lights on.  ”They found her” I said to Chris.  This was later confirmed by the Sheriff on our drive out.  The healing process begins.  ”The plans of the righteous are just”.

Aire. The toughest boats in the world. We'll leave brand X on the trailer for this trip.

Prior to sharing our experience I must add that the conditions were very dangerous and not recommended.  We accomplished this task with a team of veterans who have run many difficult rivers together for several years.  There is no margin for error and zero tolerance for miscommunication.  Even with that, we were challenged.

Fire Man and Grizz.

Our boat did not make the eddy above and instead chose to duck under this log.  Another log just beneath the surface prohibited us from getting low enough for the limbo.  Pictured log delivered a wood to Shred Ready helmet blow which dislodged my Go Pro and reminded me of sparring the night before.  From this point forward footage was limited.  No time to snap pictures, no functional helmet cam.  Getting stuffed into this log awakened the survival instincts.  It’s on now.

I decided on a mid stream log portage some time later.  The boat was nearly over the last log in the jam when a momentary lapse in communication with a teammate precluded the raft slipping back in the stream and becoming pinned against a creek wide log with several vicious sharp broken branches attacking the Aire (it was NOT punctured!).  We drug the other boat through the brush on shore and placed it in a stand by position below the log jam and the pinned raft.  I then shimmied back out on the log jam, got on the boat, and checked for all air valve locations reachable from the surface.  The plan was to either come back the next day when the water dropped to recover the boat, or deflate and hope it comes loose.  One minute after releasing the air out of the only valve I could reach the boat started sinking and slipped under the tree.  It quickly picked up speed, I dove in after it, climbed on top, tied off a flip line, flipped it over, got in, and began de-rigging the spare paddle when the next log jam came into view.

The D Series Aire passed close enough to a mid stream island that I was able to jump out and after a few minutes wrestle the boat out of the above pictured log jam.  The chase boat then arrived.  One paddler was walking down the bank.  I decided to roll one boat and make the two R2s one R4 for the following reasons. 1. Given that I had the most experience I wanted to guide everyone down in one boat. 2. Eddies were minimal and not conducive to getting to 14′ rafts into simultaneously. 3. An experienced and seasoned R4 crew was more solid in big water than lighter R2s who had not had the opportunity to develop team chemistry. 4. We had two boats mid stream and 3 paddlers.

Rigging one boat inside the other to finish the run.

We made the eddy to scout the falls.  I had never run an 18 footer with 4 people.  Not to mention a rolled up raft.  Keep it straight and hold on tight, very tight.  Let’s just say that next time everyone will have a Shred Ready helmet with a retention strap that prohibits the lid from rolling back and exposing the forehead…

As you can see there was even wood river right in the landing area.

Fortunately we landed this drop cleanly. One more tough portage and we were below the Boy Scout Camp.  Here we were rewarded with a long, class IV at this level rapid with of course a tree river right that we missed while “yarding” through the holes.  We took out at eagle Fern Park where we were rewarded with heated bathrooms!

Jamie shows off his wounds. Fire Man enjoying the carnage.

Another great day of boating in the Pacific Northwest!

We are what we are not.  ORT has survived through relationships which in one manner may be described as a dependence, alliance, or kinship.  We needed all of these likely as a result of our inability to attain these variables in traditional settings.  An interpersonal relationship is an association between two or more people that may range from fleeting to enduring.  Fleeting to enduring, that’s ORT.  In 7 years we have had about 28 paddlers come through our ranks.  In nearly each case we still communicate on some level, enduring.  However it is also true that we do not have tight nuclear families, and only in some cases lasting marriages.  Then what’s the glue?  Competition?  In part, a common goal that we can work collaboratively to achieve.  Yet only a few of our paddlers have or had previously participated in organized team sports.  Adrenaline?  We don’t all drop big waterfalls, attempt first descents, and enjoy racing head to head or even against the clock.  Acknowledgement, notoriety?  Possibly.  In our travels nationally and even globally we bump into folks that know us, but that’s not the primary innate force.

River; a natural watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, lake, sea, or another river!  That’s ORT!  An alliance that is both fleeting and enduring.  A wonderfully natural and pure connectedness, an everlasting sense of belonging that doesn’t have issues or expectations.  As Bruce commonly says, “Expectations are predetermined resentments”.  A river is an earthly manifestation of God’s soul that instantaneously replenishes our own.  Water brings so many forms of life.  Whitewater provides the platform for glory and humility.  Life, death, and everything in between.

Of course we need support to sustain our efforts.  Our biggest sponsors share many similar traits, likely the reason the relationship has endured.  Aire, longest warranty in the industry and built in the USA.  Whitewater Designs, products made in Oregon by boaters.  Next Adventure, Deek and Bryan were resilient in starting their store years ago through the concept of sustainability by buying and selling used goods.  Team  Quest, Olympic silver medalist Matt  Lindland and wife Angie have been happily married for 16 years and manage a business training fighters of an obviously volatile nature.  Aquabound Paddles, likely the best bang for the buck in performance paddling equipment.  Immersion Research, John and Kara Weld are boaters for boaters.  More recently Keen from our hometown of Portland Oregon, Tom from Shred Ready, Chris from Kershaw Knives, Revo, Sierra Nevada, and Paul from OS Systems.  All of our sponsors have soul, heart, and a genuine love of our rivers.  Not fleeting but enduring.

      ORT shares it’s energy.  Like a paddler picking up another thumbing a ride to the put in we give back.  Our coffers are nearly empty at the end of each season.  Events are run to cover costs, and fundraisers keep our vehicles on the road and make it manageable for our paddlers to participate.  We sell or raffle gear below wholesale, hand out t-shirts and shwag, provide free barbeques and beverages at our events, and do a lot of darn work pulling it all together.  The return is amazing.  Paddlers are independent and self sufficient by nature yet we help lay the platforms to start and maintain relationships.  The river is always the blessed medium.  We hug each other after months and sometimes years of separation.  Our stories make the camp fire glow.  The water returns to the sea and comes back in another form to facilitate yet another adventure.  So will we.  ORT.

 Fleeting and enduring.