Sunday, March 30, 2008

Truss @ 2 5/8' w/ BZ Falls

Devin on Little Brother or the Faucet as it use to be called.
pic by Eli Loper

"BZ Falls isn't a waterfall but a piece of hell shit on the river" quote by Scott Shipley.

Man, what a weekend. Canyon Creek one day and Truss section of the White Salmon the next. While Canyon was lower than preferred, the Truss was once again higher than we'd previously ran. The level proved to be still within our comfort and look forward to even higher flows. We both did opt to portage Bob's Falls which I happen to of had the please of being part of it's swim team. One of Ej Etherington's friends from Corvallis, Richard got his turn on rejoining the team for his second glorious time. His beatdown was pretty short and myself and James Bagley both had ropes out to him and got his reeled in quickly while his boat spent close to five minutes stuck in the hole till it came out on river right where Devin was and got a hold of it tell I got in my boat and paddled over to that side and grabbed it up and out of the water.

Devin looked at running Big Brother Falls once again and he gets more ready with each time. I've always been respectful of his judgement and I'm confident he's capable of running it correctly. His main reason is being a little afraid of heights. Not the line on the drop itself.

Devin also ran the main line on the left through "the wicked hole" while most of us ran the sneak on the right. He had a great effortless line that was sweet to watch.

Upon reaching BZ Falls, we had taken out way above it and as Devin got up to it, he looked at it. Watched several people run it and style it. Even Ej Etherington ran it in his Riot playboat. Devin was pretty sure he was gonna give it a go this time. We had spent 10-15 minutes looking at it on a previous run with Nate Herbeck and Ryan Scott. This time no camera or camcorder. My camcorder wasn't still working thanks to the rain from the previous days run. After Ej's run, Devin was 100% confident he was good to go and knew he could hit his line. He walked up to his boat, hopped in and waited for another paddler to fire it up. Ty almost got back into the falls after staring back up to it on river left. Even after that, Devin was ready to go and ferried out into the current, charged down at the horizon line. He told me later he was on the highest adrenaline rush of his life. Nailed his line, boofing down the middle and disappeared for a second or two and popped up on the right far away from the hydraulic. Rolled up and was elated to have styled one of the most feared drops on the White Salmon. One that alot of people that run the L-Dub don't even run.

He's an amazing kid and a upcoming talented whitewater kayaker. I hope to get footage Richard took on his camera and I'll get it up on the blog as soon as possible. Though, I'm sure I'll get more footage here soon on another run down one of Devin's top favorite runs.

There is now video linked in the comment section in this post. Devin's is the bottom .mov file.

Cheers, Corey

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Canyon Creek @ 4.4' with ORT Rafting Video

Video of our trip down the Canyon Creek, WA with Team Riot's Ej Etherington, ORT Rafting, Chris Dawkins and Paul Guinea and other kayakers I didn't gt their names.

At 4.4' it was 8" below the unit. Hopefully not what it is for the Canyon Extreme Race next month. Come on rain!!

Astral Aquavest 300 adjustment

The other weekend after a run down Canyon Creek myself, Devin and like 5 other people are standing around talking still all geared up. We all were wearing our Astral 300's and we got into a conversation about how nice it would be if you could adjust the shoulder straps to position the vest better. One of the guys who works for a kayaking instruction company mentioned that due to the rescue features there wasn't any such features.

This past weekend while gearing up to run the 3 Bears section of the Molalla. I was with Michael Williams and Shannon Crosswhite and I mentioned the conversation and they both looked at me and informed me that they are adjustable. What? Shannon pointed out the two strings. One on each side of your vest in the lower back corners. You can see them in the pics below. So I guess after you put the vest on, you can cinch the drawstrings to where you want the vest and then tighten the straps like normal up.

An old faithful gear item gets cheers all around.

I checked on Astrals site and they briefly mention of such strings so it's no wonder very few know about it. Did you?


Devin sporting his new Aquavest 300 that kinda started the whole issue. The bottom of the vest was sitting against his skirt and the back deck of his LiquidLogic Chico. We raised the seat up to help with clearance. It also gave him a wee more height in the boat that was an added bonus.



Devin pointing out one of the drawstrings for the shoulder adjustment. When they're not adjusted, they are a little hidden inside the pocket the towline goes into.



The vest adjusted up, though it's kinda hard to tell. But the feel is competely worth the two pulls of the drawstrings.

Cheers, Corey

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Me and my projects




I do a lot of metal fabricating at work and on personal projects and this is a unique one in that it involves kayaking, metal fabrication and digital camcorders. This is a prototype of a industructable, waterproof box that will fit in my kayak and allow me to still zoom as most other versions won't. A feature that's important since your filming a moving object that is coming at you or away from you.

More to come soon.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Pocket Rocket hits the snow

The other weekend me and my kids headed up to Mt Hood in search for a hill to run kayaks down. For Ryan and Kaytlin, it would be just sledding but me and Devin were looking for a jump or trees to dodge down a steep slope. After driving around for a little bit we stopped at White River Snow Park which was suppose to have a great sledding hill a half of a mile hike in. With my little girl, walking that proved to be longer than we wanted. So after coming to a steep hill with a bunch of seedlings on it with room to shoot in between. We called in home for the next several hours and got to work.

After testing it Devin deemed it good enough and gave it a go. It proved to plenty steep and all three had a great time sledding down it. I got to be the chair lift for the kayak and never actually got a ride down myself. Good thing I'd brought a throwbag with us.

Me and Devin started building up a jump on the stretch he was going down and after a little trial and error this is what we came up with. Can't wait to head back up and built another one.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Canyon Creek on Sat and U Wind on Sun

Saturday, myself, Devin and Dave Hoffman headed out for a planned 2-3 laps on Canyon Creek with a plan on working on lines down from Thrasher to above Tobi's drop. The level was 4.6' on the internet gauge or 4" below the unit at the put-in. Though I'd heard through the grape vine that several groups were gonna be headed out most likely for the same reason's. In the end we guessed around 16 boaters were on the creek at the same time. WOW!!

We were lucky enough to keep a good pace and stayed ahead of all the boats waiting their turns in eddies above drops and most likely a little carnage. I know of at least one nose banged up plugging Kahuna Falls.

One of the highlights to both runs was Devin having a OK line on Thrasher the first lap and a really good line on the second lap. In addition we ran Kahuna direct without eddying out above it like normal. Both laps we ended up too left to hit the flake perfect but we're gonna keep going at it till we find the sweet spot.

Sunday, myself and Devin met up with Kris Litz and some of her friends for a run down the Upper Wind. The gauge rock had water running through the horns that makes for a medium flow and to make it even more fun we opted for playboating it. We were the only two in playboats while the other four were in creekers. It was not my first time playboating it but it was Devin's. He was in his LiquidLogic PocketRocket and I went down in his new Ronin49. He still fit's great in the Pocket and the Ronin is a we bit too big for him to throw around as of yet, Too bad they don't have a smaller one out. As for me at 155lb, I loved the boat. I'm not the best playboater so I'm not gonna compare it's looping ability or anything like that but it help a line through the diagonals, holes and dodging boulders. It also had great hull speed and I caught several surfs in it. One other great feature was outfitting. My legs didn't fall asleep, nor cramp my toes with the shape of the bulkhead. Not something I can say about my Bliss-stick SuperRad. I will need to do a little adjusting to wear my shoes in the boat but that's my fault for not having a screwdriver or outfitted it at home with my gear on.

On Canyon I brought my camcorder but the battery ended up dead thanks to me switching it on earlier in the week and I'm still building my camcorder drybox for the new HD camcorder. Here's a recent pic of it's design. More to come and then the testing!!

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Canyon Creek, WA at 5.1 feet

Me and devin looking down at Big Kahuna. Photo by Keith DeWit


Today, me and Devin got to put a few new notches on our belts. Run Canyon Creek at a good flow. The water was 1-2 inches below the platform which makes it the highest we have run it. It's makes the run much more interesting than the low flows of 8-10 inches below. Most all the lines seems to stay the same. Terminator is a little more challenging in that you have to drive up and over a diagonal to reach the far left side to avoid the hole.

The other goal was to run multipal laps on it. Brooke, who I've met before was sitting at the take-out looking for someone to run with so Devin jumped at the offer so we ran shuttle and fired it up again. It was nice this time to just fire off Big Kahuna Falls and not sit at the lip forever.

One thing I noticed with the Chico Jefe on the run was at Hammering Spot when Devin boofed the right side of the ledge. The boat makes a perfect scoop as the nose resurfaces quickly and on line. Very impressive and should make a nice difference for the Canyon Creek Race.

The New Boat in the House "Chico Surfer"


Devin got his new Chico Jefe in this week and it came with a little suprise. We knew it would be white. The flowers were a suprise. Yes, Devin has gotten hurrased a little about it but at the end of the day he likes the look of the boat. We already knew how the chico's performed, so that's no suprise. But, the boat properly outfitted makes it even more of a beast on the creeks. The only thing we're gonna check out is raising the seat so he can wear his new Astral rescue PFD. It's yellow, unlike everything else he's wearing that is black.