McKenzie River: Neil's Wave

This past week, Christina and I returned to the McKenzie River multiple times for some more play at Neils. Check out Christina's earlier blog for details about the area, but here are some photos from our most recent trips....



Clover Point, McKenzie River, OR (Photo By: Christina Russell)


Christina surfin' Neils (Photo By: Kim Russell)

Eddyflowers Josh and Kim

Lane Jacobs in his Vision 56 (Photo by: Kim Russell)

Kim at Neil's (Photo by: Christina Russell)
Josh McKeown bluntin' (Photo by: Christina Russell)

Clean Blunt: Lane Jacobs (Photo by: Kim Russell)

Eddyflowers EJ Etherington and Christina


One day she's going to bite her tongue doing this.... (Photo by: Josh McKeown)


More blunts.... (Photo by: Christina Russell)

Dun, Dun, Dun... CHRISTINA AT NEILS! (Photo by: Josh McKeown)


Josh Goin' for the backstab. (Photo by: Kim Russell)

Lane Jacobs (Photo by: Kim Russell)

Kim (Photo by: Christina Russell)

Christina: (Photo by: Kim Russell)



***We went BACK to Neils yesterday and got a ton of good stuff... heading back tomorrow too! More posts coming soon and the wave gets bigger and better!***










Kim Russell

NUMA NUMA!

So the story goes, on the way to Hood River on our trip a few weeks ago, we got semi-bored, started singing to the famous Numa numa song and thought we'd make a video out of it. YES!!!

Our singing talents are almost embarrassing, but we think it's kind of funny and figured we'd share it with the world! ROCK ON!

AND>>> There is boating in this video...but you've got to get past 30 seconds of our singing :)

PS- You'll have to excuse the parts where our lip-synching doesn't match the song. After compressing the video, things got a little screwed up :( Hope you enjoy it anyway!





Cheers!





Kim Russell

Dillon Falls Goodness :)

When finals come up and you have to stay in town...here's where you go :)

Play Sesh on the Mckenzie

by: Christina Russell
Date: March 6, 2007


After a long day of school Monday, Josh called with a kick ass idea...hit the Mckenzie River on Tuesday for a play sesh. The flows were perfect for Baby Clover and Neills surf wave....2.77 feet. We agreed to meet at 7:30 Tuesday morning to load up his truck and head over. The Mckenzie is about an hour and a half away (in Josh's WRX, it's more like 45 minutes :P) This time we took his big trucko.

We got to the old Mom's Pies at 9:30. Probably 50 degrees out. Crystal clear and no one around...except for logging trucks hauling by. We packed our kayaks with the goods:a crapload of snacks, our video equipment, cameras, waterbottles, hot tea :) , shoes, and a lone apple that was screaming..."eat me! eat me!" (We must not forget Josh's smell phone which wasn't getting any reception...more on that later)

We hurried on down to Baby Clover to discover a recent placement of wood made it mandatory to hike back up after each ride... lots of work. After about ten rides we each decided to try the new hole in the center of the river which turned out to be perfectttttt. Emphasis on perfect. Steep, fast, deep hole with NO eddyline and perfect eddy access. yup, you need to check this one out for yourself!

After about two hours of play at the "perfect hole" floated on down to Neills. At 2.7 Feet and up, Neills is a fast,breaking wave with an eddy right nextdoor.

Here's mister Joshua rippin' it up. I'm currently trying to convert him to a Liquidlogic :)























Basically blunt and backstab 'till you want to barf. Josh was throwin some big blunts while I attempted to Air Screw. Unfortunately that wasn't happening for me so I resorted to working on my blunts, clean blunts, and backstabs. All good fun :D






For Scale...mind you I'm pint size but eh...












Bluntin...













I should really quit sticking my tongue out...








Remember how I told you that Josh's smell phone had no service? Yeah so he had to be at work at 5:00. We wanted to stay and surf WAY past five. Conflict! NO!! His plan had been to call in sick but with no reception, we decided to head on down to the take out around 2:45(We still had to run a 2-3 mile shuttle to get his truck)

3o minutes later, we arrived at the truck stinky, sweaty and ready to get out of the drysuits. Marinating in a drysuit is kind of grody. Can't say I recommend it.

At this point everyone needs to hear about the awesome snacks we munched on while coming home: 4 chocolate covered-melted sugar filled eggs, a bag of cheeze its, a bag of ritz crackers, a box of Nilla Wafers, my cliff bars, an english muffin from breakfast, almonds (cuz I'm a vegetarian) and lot of agua. That was all between the two of us. We were hungry :D

We had a kick ass day on the Big Mac and plan on heading back this weekend before I get hit with two math exams, an Anthropology final and a Psychology final. Eeewwwww. 'Till next time-

Happy Paddling amigos!

-C

Park Bench Kayaking and Dillon Falls
By: Christina Russell
Date: March 2, 2oo7




Welcome to Bend, Oregon where regardless of the weather, you go kayaking. If you waited for nice, warm weather, you wouldn't get out for months! So now you know, if you are ever in Oregon, expect there to be kayakers willing to go in hail, snow, thunderstorms, and of course sunny weather. According to once of those, "you know you're an Oregonian when..." articles- We Oregonians DO "Know the difference between a drizzle, sprinkle, and a heavy mist!"

It happened to be dumping snow when I called Josh McKeown to go kayaking at Dillon Falls.





Josh! Welcome to the Ladies Lounge ....








As I made my phone calls from the comfort and warmth of my room, I couldnt help but notice the giant snow flakes falling outside the glass...." Hmmmm....is that a snowman on the golf course?

When we arrived at the put-in, it started to snow.... hard. Josh opened his car door and remarked "well there's some snow out there." Indeed there was, about six inches in spots. Unfortunately for Josh, his pre-boating shoes were flip flops. As the snow came down, I was grateful of my recent investment in a drysuit! The single coolest thing of my day was by far the fact that I was wearing my surfing doggie pajamas on the water( On pajamas dogs can do anything- including surf)! YEAH! For all those questioning the comfort of the 'jamis' I say....there's nothing quite like feeling ready for bed, and ready to kayak all at once. :)

So....after gearing up we hiked down to the put in and out onto the lip of the falls to check out the flows and exposed rocks. The flow was at about 917 cfs....moderately low. (Our last run was at 1200 cfs). The top of the drop narrowed a bit and there were some f* you rocks poppin' up. NEvertheless it looked all good to go. Dill Hole as usual was sticky but if you stayed left, you were golden.


Me running safety at the top























Round #1
Josh Firin' it up....








And having landed...approaching Dill Hole









Josh came back up and we swapped jobs. He would film/run safety, while I gave it a go. Drop one didnt go as well as I had hoped, I pulled the trigger on my boof just a hair too early and missed out on a perfectly flat landing.


Me droppin' Dillon Falls



















Pullin' the trigger too early...










Approaching Dill Hole...
















Trust me...he's in this photo...











Josh's second drop was friggin SAWEET! :)









At this point I should point out that the take out was a small, boily eddy surrounded by ice and snow covered rocks. As we climbed out of our boats and hauled them out, we noticed the rocks we were standing on, weren't as solid as we thought. Snow covered the cracks between the rocks and I slipped through the cracks a couple times.

Around 4 PM we decided to call it a day. Josh had work and we were both happy with our drops. It was way too much fun. As we hiked back to the truck, Josh decided he wanted to pull me, my kayak , and his kayak...AWESOME!







Josh is STRONG!







Then...I found a park bench...he he he. Since it was there, I had to do something....




That ground was hard!











Hope you enjoyed the blog. We had an awesome time and will return to Dillon Falls again this weekend. Stay tuned for a video from this trip.....

Happy Paddling!

-C