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.

Random People on Random Rivers

Adrian Wigston put together this great clip of some of last season's adventures.

Check it out: