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

WHITE BUFFALO!!!!

HAGEN GORGE,

LACAMAS CREEK

AND

5-0 WAVE

Last week, Christina and I decided we needed to get out of Bend to do some creeking. It had rained almost everyday during the week, and the rivers were going off! Most were too high (read: lots of water and lots of wood- bad combo). Since this was the case, we settled on going
North to Hood River where things were good to go!

Friday:

We left Friday after my Economics class (b- o -r- i -n- g: only my professor talks like
Ben Stiller from Dodgeball so that is always slightly entertaining-hahah), and drove 55 mph exactly to the Hood. Yeah... we are going for gas mileage lately, and surprisingly, with four boats on the top of the car, we got about 17 mpg! Not bad for the Cruiser!

We arrived in the super good smelling Hood River (tons of rain=most awesome smell in the world besides green apple shampoo- yes they do make this kind of shampoo, and it rocks-- pretty much everyone should be usin' it). Anywhoo, we grabbed a pizza slice and set off to find a place to stay. We had kind of figured we could crash at a friend’s place, but one was out of town, and the other had family over, and everyone else we couldn’t get a hold of. Sweet. We decided to crash in the car in a parking lot, but decided hell, let’s get a motel room… let’s go plush for a night. So we did… or at least tried to.

We went to Riverview Motel, got Room 24, walked in, and…….. TOTAL sex bed. Cigarette butts on the floor, gnarliness everywhere. So we got our $$ back, and proceeded down the road to the next joint.

Directions: "Take exit 62, we are on the right." Sweet. Sounds good. So we take exit 62, and there is a beautiful hotel and its grounds COVERED in Christmas lights on our right. For some reason we thought this gorgeous hotel might be ours, the one where rooms are $20 a night or something. Yeah, it wasn’t. It was the Hood River Gorge Hotel or something like that… rooms are about $200 a night I think? Yea, we were wrong.

So while laughing hilariously that we thought this hotel was ours….we started laughing even harder as we pulled up to the Vagabond Inn (our next stop),which turned out to be a two room abandoned building with a life-size white buffalo figure out front. Now, who can pass up the opportunity to climb a buffalo in the dark while it’s raining and lots of traffic is going by? NO-ONE! So we set to trying to climb it only to find ourselves sliding off the thing twenty times! Maybe not twenty, but we tried hard man! And just FYI, if you ever are in Hood River and try and climb this buffalo, don't use the left horn... it's been glued back on and isn't so strong anymore.

After being unsuccessful in our efforts to climb the only Buffalo in Hood River, we got a phone call from our out of town friend saying we could crash at their casa. YES! Haha. No more wandering around aimlessly! WOHOO!

So, now we had a place to stay. As we were driving "home," however, we got side tracked. Wee noticed that there is a creek running through the Christmas-light hotel grounds next door. Yup… we pulled over and scouted it out. We had grand elaborate plans to sneak on it and go boating, but it turned out to be only about 2 inches deep and we decided to abort the mission. Apparently two inches is deep enough for rabid ducks to swim in and chase after you though!!

(don't ask)

Did I mention Christina is sick?

Saturday: Woke up early, went bageling, and checked out Mosier Creek Falls.

Mosier Falls

Photo By: Kim Russell

This Falls was run for the first time last year by Boomer (1st descent), and Nate Herbeck (2nd descent) via the left channel. This year, logs moved and are now blocking the entrance to the Left Channel. It was run again this year by Boomer and Josh Bechtel (First and Second Descents) via the right channel.

9:15: Met up with Lana Young, Ryan Scott, Keel Brightman and crew to go creeking on Hagen Gorge, Wa and Lacamas Creek, Wa.

Hagen Gorge is a Class IV/V run with 4 main rapids of which 3 are low-volume slides and the last is a 20-ftr into a narrow boily undercut slot.

Check it out:

Drop #1
Photo by: Kim Russell

Keel Brightman running the top of Slide #1

Photo by: Kim Russell

Ryan Scott running the falls on Slide #1
Photo by: Kim Russell

Drop #4
Photo by: Kim Russell


Looking upstream at the slot towards the falls of Drop #4
Photo by: Kim Russell

Next, we headed to Lacamas Creek, down the road in the town of Camas, Washington. This is a class V creek with some awesome waterfalls and slides.

The put-in that no one except Ryan Scott cleaned. It is very deceiving....
Photo By: Kim Russell

Drop #2
Photo by: Kim Russell

After a few drops, Christina and I ended up walking back to the car… We were both not feeling good or “on it” and didn’t want to take the risk or put anyone else in a bad position by being there when we felt we shouldn’t since it was getting dark. We went and got warm! Sweet! The rest of the run was awesome though for everyone else who kept going! We're Planning to go back in a few weeks and finish er’ up! Yee-haw!

Sunday: We woke up to a sunny gorgeous day. Okay, so maybe it wasn't a super clear bluebird day, but it was kind of sunny and raining slightly, but that was good enough!

Photo by: Christina Russell

This morning, we had to go across the bridge to Lyle, Washington (about 15 miles away), to pick up a paddle at Luke’s Winery. We didn’t really have directions, and couldn’t get a hold of him, so we decided to wing it. We got to the general area, found about 3 wineries on the left side of the road and decided to be smart, make a phone call to a local and figure out which one was which. Eventually, we got the right one and prayed Luke was home...Keep in mind it’s about 8:30, and it looks like no one is awake. Now, we hate being rude and we hate waking people up but this was the only time to get the paddle and Luke said he would be down for us to drop by in the morning. Long-story short, we didn’t wake Luke up, we got the paddle and saw a beautiful sunrise!

9:00: Breakfast at Keel’s: awesome eggs.

11:00: Decided to go surfing at the Hawaii 5-0 Wave on the Lower Deschutes River about 45 minutes away.

Sherar's Falls: Designated unrunnable. Super gnarly, wicked, sticky hole at the base and super aerated water. If you look closely, you can see a fishing platform that is used in summer when flows aren't so high.

Photo by: Kim Russell

Lana Young dropping in to the 5-0 Wave

Photo by: Christina Russell

Turns out, the wave wasn’t quite in, but the one behind it was! YEA baby! Tons of work getting to it and getting up the eddy against the cliff wall, but def. worth it.

Photo by: Kim Russell

After about an hour, we walked across the island to Trestle Hole for some more play. This hole is super wide with awesome eddy access.

Lana Young playing in Trestle Hole
Photo by: Kim Russell

We made it back to Bend just in time for an awesome dinner.... yumm. Did I mention I am sick now? YES!

Looks like we are scheduled for a ton of snow here in Central Oregon. We're supposed to be getting snow everyday for the next 19 days! wohoo!

Cheers!

Kim Russell