If you’re new to Boulder Drop and maybe trying to figure it out for the future, here’s kind of a play by play to go along with the video:

Section 1: The Entry

Right when the title says “Boulder Drop” he’s heading towards the entrance.  That rock he goes to the right of just there is what I call the pillow rock – you can go to the left but it’s way less squirrely on the right.  At higher levels it’s covered and a nasty backed up reversal forms on the back side of it – I plopped right into it at 4200 cfs and had plenty of time to contemplate not just that bad decision but also many others.  It will spit you out eventually though.

Section 2: The Picket Fence

Where he eddies out on the right is what we call the Bubble Pool, and from there you can either do Airplane Turn (a ferry move to the far side), Ned’s Needle or the Needle.  Greg does the Needle, the slot to the left of where he goes is Ned’s, which at under around 1100 cfs gets really narrow and can remove your elbows on the way down.

The nice thing is that the Needle is friendly up to around 1700 and then gets pretty sticky around 2000 cfs, Ned’s is high enough above around 1300 cfs to do without banging your elbows and doesn’t really get sticky until around 2500 cfs (not very sticky, but definitely sticky around 4,000 cfs and up), and above 2500 cfs the Needle is less sticky, it just starts getting bigger.  So there’s always some kind of option that doesn’t have to involve flailing around in a hole forever.  If you’re just starting out the Airplane Turn ferry might be the easiest of the three up to around 3,000 cfs, but if you can it helps to get out at Airplane Turn eddy (river left, at the end of the ferry) and scout if you can – that’s very easy to do in the 1500 cfs range, which I think is a great first-time level for this rapid.

Section 3: The Last Part

Greg doesn’t go through the two big House Rocks on the left in the last section (that’s the typical route), he goes to the right, FLIPS (sorry Greg, I couldn’t resist.   I flipped in Cable Drop yesterday, so I have no room to talk), then cuts back left to do the last drop, which at that level is easiest to do if just as you go over the lip you angle yourself off towards the right instead of straight downriver - you can see me do that just behind him.

Clear as mud, right?

I always tell people to join the Washington Kayak Club too, because even if you don’t see runs at your level on their events calendar you’ll end up getting on some big email lists with people organizing all kinds of runs, often in the II+ and III range.  For some odd reason people often don’t take my advice (a recurring and disturbing theme – but I digress), so now this thread should at least make it somewhat easier on the Professor Paddle side.

Speaking of beginner runs, this is a great season (August to September) to get used to running Boulder Drop on the Skykomish River, it’s much less pushy under 2,000 cfs and we run it all the way down to 500 cfs.  Just a heads up that it’s much less fun to swim at lower levels, especially that last drop after House Rocks.  But it’s always a simple portage too.

I don’t know if I’m allowed to say how long this swim really was due to him and Rob both going after his gear and ending up on opposite sides of the river, but let’s just say it’s pretty impressive that by the end of it he was throwing those loops (or almost-loops – whatever, they looked good) on Split Rock wave.

Speaking of high water Skykomish runs, Joe Sauve posted this video on Professor Paddle that he took when Rob, Adrian Wigston and Sam Grafton ran the Skykomish a few weeks ago when it was in the 55,000 to 60,000 cfs range – well above the flood level range of 30-something thousand cfs.  The first is in Quicktime and the second is in MPEG format:

http://professorpaddle.com/media/videoview.asp?File_Id=6142 - Quicktime

http://professorpaddle.com/media/videoview.asp?File_Id=6143 - MPEG

Sam’s in the blue boat, Adrian is in the yellow boat, and Rob goes down between those two but he’s really easy to miss because the waves are HUGE and he’s in his little red Dagger Kingpin – as usual.

Here’s me and Jason Conlon going through:

Here’s Samson going through the Needle, not Ned’s.  At 2000 cfs it’s really sticky but the more right-to-left line that he takes appears to work well, Charles has said the same thing but a lot of people seem to go left-to-right (I’ve seen good boaters flailing paddles when levels are sticky):

And here’s Adrian going through Ned’s Needle:

Thanks Dave, for taking the videos!  It was an awesome day on the Skykomish, we are so fortunate to have such an interesting Class IV rapid less than an hour from Seattle.

Self-taught and unstoppable.

You might recall that a few months ago I posted about Stephen P., who joined us on a Class III Skykomish run after having done just a couple Class I-II runs before that, and who amazed us all by having a self-taught roll that turned out to be a really good hand roll (he would just ignore his paddle or toss it completely.)

Well, about a month ago when the Sky was still pretty low I was getting out at the Split Rock take-out when I thought I saw a familiar face pulling up and there was Stephen, getting ready to do laps of Boulder Drop with a friend.  It totally cracked me up because I asked him what lines he had been taking, Airplane Turn or through the Needle, and he just goes, ‘Umm, I don’t really know the names, I’ve just been going around that one big rock and past that other one…’  With all the analyzing and sweating that most people (myself included) do over that rapid I just love hearing that someone simply shleps down there and runs it.

Anyway, thumbs up to Stephen, he’s apparently progressing at the speed of light.  I think he’s even finally taught himself a paddle roll.

a)  I finally made a clean run on Boulder Drop and arrived at the bottom right side up

b)  One member of our group, Stephen, was a new paddler whose only previous river experience was the Class I/II run from Big Eddy to Monroe.

Fearless Trip Organizer Kiran and Hand-Roll Whiz Kid Stephen

Driving up to the put-in Kiran told Stephen that he was either going to be a natural and astonish us, or a huge source of entertainment.  I said ‘Maybe both’, and to my surprise I was right.

What was really funny was that when Stephen started practicing his self-taught roll at the put-in we all looked at each other with big eyes, because it turns out he had ended up teaching himself a hand roll, and would just leave his paddle slack in the water or let go of it altogether.  It was really a crack-up, because he popped up like a duck pretty much every time – and he’s so new he didn’t even know it was a hand roll!

The first rapid after the Cabledrop put-in is probably one of the more challenging ones, and Stephen ended up missing two rolls and swimming, so he took out a bit further down and rejoined us at Split Rock for the trip down to Big Eddy.

By the end of it, however, he was so used to hand-rolling in moving water that on the last II+ rapid right before the Big Eddy take-out I watched him roll up twice, once in shallow water bouncing off of rocks, and the last time in some significant froth that plenty of beginner paddlers would have found challenging to roll up in even using a paddle.

I brought up the rear and laughed the whole way down.

So nice to arrive at this point still in my boat.

Anyway, big thanks to Kiran for taking the time to get out at the Airplane Turn eddy on Boulder Drop and point out the lines (scouting from Airplane Turn is probably a really good idea for first-timers, by the way.)  I’d always done OK up to that point, but it was the first time that I felt like I had a clear idea of the line from there on down, even though I’ve looked at it from the bottom several times.

Between that and the cfs being about 1000 lower (at around 1500) than the first two times I tried it, it felt WAY easier, although still really fast.  And as always, a ton of fun.  Further on down Dave dug out someone’s Dagger playboat that had gotten caught between some rocks just below Lunch Hole two weeks earlier – apparently there’s a pretty nasty sieve on river left at some levels.

Anyway, good times, good people, and an 85 degree day on the Skykomish River – it’s hard to go wrong!

(I could explain further, but it would make me sound really, really dumb. Let’s pass.:)

Anyway, Greg Nicoll, Mike Peele and I portaged Boulder Drop, and Sam and Adam ran it doing a line through the Needle.  Here’s the video: