A McKenzie River Birthday

August 15-17, 2006:





After a week’s worth of super warm weather and lots jumping in the river to cool off at work, Christina and I decided we needed to go kayaking before we went crazy. The river gods were calling and we couldn’t very well make them mad! We had to go… it was simple. We needed to please the river gods right? Ah… either way, it was a good excuse.
Photo by: Kim Russell

We decided to hit the road early Friday morning and spend the night over on the Mckenzie River with our parents for a few days since Dad’s birthday was coming up.

Photo by: Christina Russell

Located about two hours from home, the McKenzie has multiple play spots with names such as "Clover" and "Neil's." At winter time flows, around 10,000 cfs (compared to the normal 2,500 cfs). Clover is epic. It is a series of waves about 12 feet tall with huge piles on them. LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of air time!! Next up, Neil's is a steep wave/hole with crazy cartwheel potential. These play spots make the McKenzie a big attraction in the winter for Northwest kayakers.

Kim looping at Redsides

Photo by: Christina Russell

But… It was August, so the water was LOW. Lower than LOW. Epically LOW. BUT a good low. :) After a thumb-wrestling match to determine where we would play, Christina’s thumb overpowered mine, and we decided to park it at Redsides, a wave/hole combo. Redsides has two holes: an upper and a lower. The upper hole was a wave, and looked good, but the kayaking on rocks part to get up to the wave and the death ferry in shallow water over rock to get ON the wave didn’t look all that fun! We tried to get up though, and after multiple face-plants onto rock, decided to call it quits, save our faces, and play at the lower hole instead.

Here we worked on blunts, loops, and cartwheels until we were so dizzy it was hard to walk when we got out of our boats (picture random people on the side of the highway walking/crawling around laughing, and that was us) haha. Christina was in her teeny boat and every time she would cartwheel, her boat would almost completely submerge! Kind of scary sometimes, but it got to be rather amusing for everyone, including herself. This is when we came up with some pretty sweet “Magnum” and “Blue Steel” faces.

Christina getting submerged

Photo by: Kim Russell

(In the movie Zoolander, Derek, played by Ben Stiller is a male model who has two signature faces, Magnum and Blue Steel. The rest of the movie kind of revolves around them) Anywhoo… somehow we got so every time Christina went into the hole, I would yell, “Blue Steel!”, and she would make a face then throw down. Every time I would go in the hole, she would yell, “Magnum,” I would make a face, and so on. Towards the end, when we both got super tired, and would flush fast, or just flip getting on the wave, it sounded something like, “Magnum! Blue Steel! Magnum!, Blue Steel!” all in ten seconds. It was pretty hilarious and after about 4 hours of hard play and laughing, we called it a day and went back to camp to celebrate Dad’s birthday. I’m not sure how it happened, but somewhere in the excitement that evening, dad caught a broom on fire, the family had a “cheese-it” war, and our dog Pepper, tried to eat our watermelon. SWEET!

Photo by: Sharon Russell

Photo by: Sharon Russell

Photo by: Kim Russell

The next day, we took our parents down the lower class three section in inflatable kayaks. Over the course of the day, Dad’s inflatable became known as "The Rhino." It is this fatty inflatable so wide he could barely get his paddle in the water, and the ends are turned up so much that from the front it looks like a Rhino. Go figure. It's a pretty cool inflatable I might add though! Bullet-proof in the rapids too!

Christina and Dad “inflatabling” (it’s our new verb)
Photo by: Kim Russell

Mom’s inflatable never really got a name, but it did get in some good surfing! There is this rapid called Mom’s Pies, where a good sized surf wave is, and Mom dropped in sideways to the runout waves and flipped her inflatable. She got back on super fast and shredded up a surf wave a little farther down like no inflatable has ever done before! YEAH MOM! After more shredding by the inflatablers (our new name for people who inflatable kayak), we took out around 3:30 pm and made our way home to even more cupcakes in the refrigerator! YUM! It was an awesome trip!

Mom and her sicky inflatable!!!

Photo by: Kim Russell

This is Kim Russell reporting from the comforts of my duct tape covered chair :) ! Over and out!!