Big Brother and the Little White Salmon

Hood River, Oregon
February 16, 17, 18

by: Christina Russell

Last thursday I drove up to Hood River to do some paddling and support my friends Nate and Heather Herbeck....they were premiering their new film, Toxic Waters on Saturday night.
On Friday Josh and I hooked up with fellow paddlers, Jared Jackman, Jesse Becker, Jason S., Ryan Scott, and Nate and Heather Herbeck for a paddle on the Truss. It was reading 2.5 on the gauge but this translates to about 3.25 in reality. When asking Nate Herbeck what he thought of running Big Brother at this flow, his response was, "well, it's on the high side of juicy". OK so the truss was fluffy- that's good.

We put on the rio around 2:30 and found the run to be nice as usual. Lots of fun lines to be had. For the first time ever, I looked at Big Bro with the idea of running it. After watching my good friend Josh fire it up, I decided to give er'. After three false starts, I dropped Big Brother for the first time ever and didn't even visit the cave. It just so happens that it was the most fun I've ever had on a waterfall...I'm definitely firing it up again :D

Here's a sequence shot of my run just for kicks :)
The sequence was shot by Jesse Becker


Below Big Brother and Double drop is Zig Zag. The Upper portion of the rapid is just fine but as you get to lower zig zag you will notice a big log right where you need to go. In order to run the drop, you must paddle under the log and over a submerged log. I'm not a big fan of wood so I portaged but just fyi, you can run this one.


Everything else went great after Big Brother and we capped off the day with a visit to Sebu- a great place to eat....it doesn't get much better than that!

Saturday:

Today we woke up pretty stoked from the day before and decided that we would fire up the L-Dub AKA the Little White Salmon. It was sitting at 3.5 feet the day before so we weren't sure if it would go up or come down- only one way to find out. We all drove to the put in and were surprised to see the level sitting at something close to 3.3 feet. Perfect.

Dave G. flying through S-Turn
Photo by: Dan Gavere

keepin it real above Wishbone
Photo by: Dan Gavere

Sadly I did not have my camera and this was my first time on the creek. As my sis and I like to call it, it was a "business run". ha ha so next time I will have more pics!

This spring break the list of goodness includes: Little White, Eagle Creek, Mckoy Creek, Hagan Gorge, Copper Creek, and toss in a bit of ocean surfing...woo hoo! :) I will be posting video and pictures from these runs so stay tuned!

Keep your gear wet and moldy...and make sure it's Peak UK gear you are using!
-Christina :)