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
