Robe Race 2013

2013 Robe Race of Champions

The Range Life crew started a race on our local canyon run a few seasons back and every year the competition has gotten tougher and tougher.

The Robe Race is a two person team race from the rapid T2 to the pool below the rapid Mrs. Robinson. This roughly 3.6 mile race covers around 43 rapids (depending on water levels) and one arduous portage over a landslide. The race course forces you to paddle all out, as hard as you can, through 14 class V rapids, 21 Class IV rapids and 9 laid back class III's. The largest hole is also one of the last ledges you run after about a half hour of charging. Always fun to look forward to...

As Spring flows here in Washington can be hard to predict, you have to keep events like this mobile. You can't lock into a specific weekend without running the risk of dooming the event to either high or low water.

The week prior to the race saw river levels all over the place; from the low side of the spectrum in the 5.3 foot range, all the way up to the 6.5 foot range.

There's more than enough beta on Robe Canyon on this blog so I will dispense with any descriptions of the run other than this: Robe Canyon is rewarding but can punish with impunity.




With sun beating down on us, we rolled into the takeout about 45 minutes late. But, as we had the defending Champion Scott Waidelich with us, we did not fall into the normal social constraints pertaining to timely arrivals.

Moods and ambiant temperatures were soaring by the time we consolidated gear, boats and bodies for the short drive up to the putin. The hike down the trail was definitly unique for me. This is a run that I know so well, but I had never raced up to this point.  A lot can happen when you are exerting yourself. A lot can go wrong when you're pushing. A lot can happen when there is an audience eager for carnage and the river has provided a level that is conducive to to hair boating.










Robe was sitting just over 5.9 feet on the online gage. This is a pretty healthy level and not a volume of water to take lightly. At 5.9' the lines get a little bit cleaner, the holes get bigger and the boofs pad out like a sophmore in a sorrorety.

By bigger holes I mean massive holes (for this guy at least).

Irene Nash grabbed a couple of actions shots at the second rapid of the race "Last Sunshine". This is the start of a quarter mile of intense read and run whitewater. A swim here has a high potential for a totaled creekboat.

I think I learned a lot from this race. I learned that my lines are not as clean as I thought they were. I learned that I let go of my paddle a lot. I also learned that I have a lot to work on. But I'm stoked to have been part of the race.



Robe Race 2013 results:

1st Place at 25:41  - Darren Albright & Andrew McEwan 
2nd Place at 27:01 - Scott Waidelich & Ben Hawthorne
3rd Place at 28:37  - Fred Norquist & Eric Parker

The mortals:
4th Christian Knight & Brock Gavery 31:17 (not really mortals, but they pretended)
5th Dan Patrinellis & Jeremy Bisson 34:10
6th Alex Podolak & William Griffith 34:28
7th Leif Embertson & Chris Totten finished
8th Sean/Mike DNF




While it's still being verified; Darren and Andrew set a new course record for time. In 25 minutes and 41 seconds, these two guys charged through 3.6 miles of class V whitewater and completed a grueling quarter mile portage that takes a normal crew and hour and a half to finish on a "fast" lap. Well done.

Jah Bisson came up to race with me and while I feel bad that I killed his time; I had a great time racing with him. We both took helmet cam footage so keep on the lookout for a quick edit in the upcoming weeks.

One of the fun traditions of the Robe Race is the Robe Gnome.



The last place finisher wins the ultimate prize and gets to take this guy around with them throughout the year on their boating adventures. This year Sean Lee and Mike Nash took home a third teammate.






Huge thanks to Leif Embertson out of Bellingham, WA. Leif organized the Robe Race and even brought us cold beer for the takeout. Stand up guy in my books. Massive props to Shauna Hawthorne and Joni Randall for keeping time for all of the racers; this wouldn't have happened without volunteer help.

Until next year!



Many thanks (again) to the volunteers who came out and made this race possible.

Thanky you Irene Nash for grabbing some photos of the race for me.

Its not often that we get photos as good as some of these of our boating escapades. All of the amazing photos on this trip report are curtesy of  yo_tuco from Flickr. You can check out more of his amazing photography on his Flickr account HERE

Last weekend - The Foss and the West Fork Miller Rivers

With an unusually light work load and more water in the rivers than I know what to do with, I'm quickly falling behind on media.



With that in mind, I'm going to start posting the highlights from every weekend and do less of a narrative and more of just a visual report.



With so mush snowmelt coming from this amazing weather we are experiancing here in Washington right now, we are getting multiple laps on all of our favorite runs.  This past weekend was no exception.  Monday felt like a sick day to me, so again the crew piled into the car and headed back up the skykomish drainage to get on the Foss, Miller and Skykomish Rivers.

Entrance rapid on the Miller River:

There is lots of quality boogie water on the Miller, we needed a little bit more water and a little less direct sunlight though. But I'll take what I can get.

Time to head upstream to the Foss River.

The "Ken" half of Ken and Barbie on the Foss River.

The "Barbie" half of Ken and Barbie on the Foss River.

We finished off the day with a cooldown lap on the Skykomish at 10,000cfs. A solid end to an amazing 3 day weekend.

Stay Stoked. Stay Safe.

Video - Sam Grafton runs Sunset Falls

Imagine a peaceful toboggan ride with your friends on a sunny afternoon. Now imagine instead of a sunny, snow filled slope to toboggan down, you have a 275 foot ramp of death and destruction, and none of your friends want to have anything to do with said death ramp. Now you have Sunset Falls in Washington state.

Sunset Falls is the largest and the final stage of the three major waterfalls on the South Fork of the Skykomish River. The cascading drop falls about a 100 vertical feet over a 275 foot long, sloping granite chute of raw power.

Al Fausett ran Sunset Falls back in 1926 in a 30 foot canoe. They don't grow balls this big these days. Apparently Al used to charge admission to watch him do stunts like this as a means of passive income, charging a  crowd of around 3000 who gathered to watch the show.

Sunset Falls was run by Rob McKibbin back in October of 2008 (while on a lunch break from work). After cracking a couple ribs, he lost a paddle midway down the final chute and was forcibly ejected from his boat. Rob tried to pull himself back into his boat, but was unable to do so.

Then in April of 2010, Tyler Bradt stepped up to the plate. Despite running the slide on his head and breaking his paddle, Tyler made the first successful kayak descent of Sunset Falls.

Then, in comes Sam Grafton. Sam scouted and thought he saw his line. Then destroyed it. Sam has an ability to stay out of holes and hydraulics that is not natural. I have no idea what kind of a deal Sam made with the Devil, or Poseidon, but it goes contrary to the same deal that Rob made. While Rob is blessed with the ability to fight out of holes no one should be allowed to exit, Sam never even touches them.

I wasn't able to be there on the day that Sam ran the waterfall, but I was able to get my hands on the footage for a little bit of editing. So sit back and get ready to squeeze out your adrenal glands.

Video: The Cooper River, WA

 The Cooper River, just outside of Cle Elum here in Washington state, is a late summer resource that starts to come in as everything else is starting to drop out. It's also a great place to start scratching that creeking itch.

I spent a two day weekend on the Cooper, last July, with some awesome people. Old friends and some new friends came out to show me the lines and generally have a great time. Theres a decent amount of CaRnAgE to be had on the Cooper...

Music Credit:
Pretty Lights vs Summertime  &    Latyrx - Lady Don't Tek No


This is a quick edit to get the footage off the hard drive and into the internets.

Cheers

Dagger Mamba 8.6 long term review - 1 year with the Green Snake

Don't mess with this Mamba:

Mess with this Mamba:

I got my hands on the Mamba 8.6 in April of 2012, and it has been a great boat for the past season. I bought the Mamba 8.6 thinking that this would primarily be a big water Idaho or extended overnight boat. I didn’t really see myself pushing a 90 gallon creeker on a regular basis, then I took it down Robe Canyon on the South Fork Stillaguamish river; I’ve been sold ever since.

Mamba 8.6 stats son!!
Length: 259cm
Width: 70cm
Boat Weight: 22kg
Volume: 337L or 89 gallons
Paddler Weight: 79-118kg

This is probably the largest boat I’ve ever paddled. At 90 gallons of displacement, this thing (for my body size) is the whitewater equivalent to a Chevy Tahoe. This thing is a beast, and destroys waves and holes accordingly. That being said; it’s a very easy-to-roll boat and has crisp, clean edges. The rise of the cockpit gives you a sunken feeling if you’re under 6 feet tall, but I think this can be easily remedied with either foam shims under the seat, or a foam pad over the seat. That sunken feeling only lasted for about a week while I was getting used to the boat.

The Mamba 8.6 doesn’t have the rocker that you are used to seeing on some of the newer creek boats these days, but that doesn’t stop the nose from coming back to the surface when pushing through a hole or hitting a nice delayed boof.  The hull has a very pointed, slightly upturned nose with sharp, crisp edges that run back to about where the seat meets the thigh hooks, then they smooth out into more of a displacement hull shape.  The stern is large volume and flat, but not slicey.

There are always pros and cons to any hull design, so while this boat is much wider than the Nomad, it’s definitely not as nimble. The planing hull helps you turn pretty quickly in big water, but on lower volume rivers and creeks it’s not as fast to change direction as the Nomad or Shiva (IMOP). The upside to this is stability. This thing is very stable, to the point that I really can’t say much about it’s secondary stability at all. I’m always upright and the few unplanned rolls that I’ve had in this boat were generally initiated by either a plugged boof or an Oprah sized hydraulic. Neither of which care one bit for the width of your craft.

The outfitting for the 2012 was awesome and while I haven’t gotten my hands on the 2013 outfitting yet, I hear it’s even better. The boat boasts a movable bulkhead with a generous helping of predrilled holes for your leg accommodation. The “out of the box” boat comes with a pretty solid foam kit that is pretty easy to install and has proven durable in the long haul. Neither of the foot foam blocks has even come loose after a year of use and the hip pads are still tight and have held their shape.

The boat has 5 metal hand holds that are pretty evenly spaced for rescue scenarios as well as normal boat strapping escapades. One of the things that I like about this metal hand hold design is the width and placement of the band holds. Too many times, in a rescue scenario or sketchy portage session, the cloth grab loops on other boats can be a pain. Another boat I’ve paddled has small, almost finger hole type, grab loops at the base of the rear cockpit. You can generally only get a finger or two in there and a well-aimed carabineer. The Mamba solves this problem by giving you a full handhold. Very easy to rig webbing or rope to. Very easy to hold onto while stabilizing a buddy or recovering a boat.

Scott Waidelich grabbed a couple great shots in Robe Canyon. Robe Canyon on the SF Sillaguamish river is a great place for a large volumed boat.

  Last weekend I was able to finally put the Mamba's big water specs to the test and got out on the Tumwater section of the Wentachee at about 6500 cfs. The Mamba made it a breeze. Enjoy the photos by Scott Waidelich and Jeremy Bisson.

Adrian Wigston sacraficed a lap for us on Sunday and shot some video of teh "Dam Rapid":

The Mamba is kind of like the Oklahoma version of the RPM. Corn-fed and burley, but no buck teeth as far as I can tell… You can take her home to mom and be proud of your choice. My overall opinion of the 2012 Dagger Mamba 8.6 is that this is a great all-around kayak. While this isn’t a single purpose creek boat, it covers all bases from river running to creek boating with a little bit of green wave surfing to boot. I think that this would be a great beginner boat as it is very predictable and stable and for the same reasons I think this would serve well as an instructional craft. The Dagger Mamba 8.6 would be a solid addition to anyone’s whitewater quiver.

A huge thanks to the guys who sacraficed time in the saddle to get these photos:

Photographer : Dave Costello
Badass : Adrian Wigston
Jah Himself : Jeremy Bisson
The Living Legend : Scott Waidelich

Easter in the Hood

Sh*t happens:

Especially in the Hood with Scorpion Bowls on the loose.

For Easter weekend a friend decided to instigate and rally a crew back down to Hood River. We wanted to get on a few different runs and spend time with friends.

Truss was in, so was Little White, the weatherman said it was going to be in the 70's. Life was looking good.

Saturday morning greeted us with slightly overcast skies and a little more water in the riverbed below where we camped. Again, we abused the good nature of one of the local boaters and a crew of 8 people crashed in and around Jeremy Bisson's abode.

As none of us had been on the Truss section of the White Salmon since it was destroyed with wood two seasons ago, we opted to head to the put in first thing in the morning. For whatever reason I didn't bring any cameras on the river and only had my gopro in my dry bag, so these are the only photos from the Truss run.

As the combination of a large group, plus massive wood portage and "new to us" whitewater did its work on us, I was personally getting a bit bummed out that our plan of a double dip session was not going to come to fruition.

We were at the parking lot for the put in for the main section of the White Salmon River around 4pm. Beers were out and we were on the seesaw, decidimg whether or not it was time to take the drysuits off and drink more beer or leave them on and rally. Scotty made the call and we all piled into the car and headed out to the Little White.

And thank god we did. As we drove to the putin, Jeremy mentioned that as long as we were in the water by 6pm we would be safe. Thats when I looked down and my watch said 6:10. Oh well. As it turns out, we had plaenty of time. We banged out a lap in just over an hour and we were off the river and dry before dark. We didnt have time for photos or video so all of these little white shots are from Sunday.

A long night in Hood River and some lost dignity later, we were back up and heading for a morning session on the Little White. The photos speak for themselves:

Boulder Slouce action:

Jeremy getting SICK in Sacraledge:

Sunshine in the Gorge:

S-Turn:

Wishbone:

And then there is Spirit Falls:

Dan Rubado had an interesting line here, worked out well though:

Chaos:

After an amazing lap and more smiles than I think my face could handle, we drove back up to meet the better half of the crew to get a quick lap on the Farmlands section of the White Salmon. Again, no photos, but I swear we had fun!

All in all, an amazing weekend. Sunny skys, beautiful women, Scorpion Bowls and whitewater. How do you beat that?

Stay Stoked. Stay Safe.