I know Rob has run this once before, but other than that I think the only other person was Tao Berman like ten years ago.  Jon Dufay and Scott Waidelich (Fish) were at the bottom, here’s Scott’s video of Rob’s run from that angle:

I seriously think I had a few years taken off my life from watching Sam’s entry to the falls.  Turns out it’s much harder to watch your friends run really difficult stuff than I would have imagined.  And of course it doesn’t help when they do it upside down….

But everything turned out OK.  Here’s Fish’s video of Rob and Jon doing Paranoia on that same run, with Sam giving his two cents about Log Choke at the end.

I’m probably not the first person to say this, but I really think Jon Dufay needs to be renamed Jon Boofay.

Classroom stuff at Central WA University

One of the really useful things as far as improving your own paddling during the class is that you get videotaped on the water and then everyone critiques you later.  When you take the class with Chris, the additional bonus is that you might also end up staying at her house, like we did because we ended up on the Skykomish River for the last few days, in which case pretty much anything could happen – impromptu haircuts, hanging out with a huge bird – you name it.  Pics below.

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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.

The funny part about this day is that the point was for me, Dave Moroles and Charles Graves to run Upper Icicle down to Ricochet or the Sieve with Rob and Sam, and then somehow we decided that after watching these guys run the Wall we would run the in-between sections of Tumwater first (skipping Chaos and POW), kind of as an afterthought.

Note to self:  Running anything in Tumwater at 4900 cfs is not in the ‘afterthought’ category, at least not for me.   It’s a good example of how sometimes things just escalate.

Anyway, not long after this video was taken Dave, Charles and I were putting in below the Dam.  Rob, Sam and Darren were a few minutes ahead of us, and Dave was looking a bit grim, understandably – he was in a playboat, and the highest I’ve done Tumwater is 1850 cfs.  Not surprisingly, about 7 seconds after getting on the water (and maybe 12 seconds after telling Dave in a chirpy little voice, ‘Everything’s going to be fine!’), I was upside down in Dam rapid taking what felt like mallet hits to my helmet.  I think I could have rolled up anyway because I’ve rolled up after some pretty massive hits before, but suddenly my paddle hit a rock and the next thing I know it was in two pieces in my hands.  It was a bit like, ‘Hmmm, never done this before’.

I didn’t try rolling up with half a paddle (although I realize now that’s a great thing to practice), so I got to swim pretty much all of Dam rapid – not recommended!  I was really fortunate to walk away with just some major leg bruises because the water is really fast and super shallow at the top – it turns out Darren had flipped there too and taken some major clonks before rolling up.

Anyway, once all the excitement was over (thanks to Dave for retrieving my boat, and Charles for making a solo run down part of Tumwater looking for my paddle that he didn’t know was broken) we ran Icicle from RV down to Ricochet (I walked Limbo, being pretty much topped out on adrenaline for the day) and Charles got this cool video of me, Sam, Dave and Rob running Roadside Attraction rapid.

Thanks to Charles Graves for filming this!  (Due to having to skip the paddle after tweaking his back out getting stuck in a hole for 30 seconds on Tumwater that morning looking for my paddle that broke in half and resulted in my swim through Dam rapid – ouch! But that’s another blog post….)

Anyway, Sam’s in the lead, I’m in the blue and white boat that flips (huge surprise) followed by Rob in the red playboat and then Dave.  Notice how I completely don’t paddle going into that drop that flips me, and then you can hardly see it but after I roll up I do the next drop backwards.  Which surprisingly often works out pretty well – I’ve done it enough times that I’m telling Rob my goal is to eventually do all of Tumwater backwards.  And now maybe Icicle too.   Anyway, first time on Icicle and it was definitely a stretch for my skill level but it was a blast and I would love to do it again, as scary as it was.  (If you haven’t done it yet, it’s definitely a lesson in the ‘it’s bigger than it looks from the road’ department.)

P.S. I should mention that we put in at RV and I walked Limbo and took out at Ricochet.  Then Sam broke HIS paddle on Son of Ricochet.  It was just one of those days when things break, I guess!  Also, Icicle was 875 cfs on the Professor Paddle virtual Icicle gauge.