Video - Ernie's Gorge

Help save Ernie's Gorge from a hydro diversion project.

Join AW and let them fight the good fight for us. Check out the North Fork of the Snoqualmie river page on the AW website for more info on how and why you should be concerned about this peoject.

Stay Stoked. Stay Safe.

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.

Rider of the Year - Carnage Entry

Here is my contribution to the Rider of the Year awards.


Dan Patrinellis - Carnage ! Entry - Elkhorn Canyon on the Dosewallips River, Olympic Penninsula, USA from Rider of the Year Awards on Vimeo.


But after watching some of the other carnage entries, I feel like I should have had training wheels on my boat...

Video: Fall in the Wall

Fall in The Wall is a tributary to the South Fork of the Snoqualmie river here in Washington State.

Coming right off the pass, the water is cold and fast, and the creek has a very short window during late spring. I was able to meet up with some friends early Saturday morning and got a solid 5 or 6 laps in.

This run is not worth the drive if you live in Seattle proper, but it is the perfect stop if you are on your way over to Wenatchee or Leavenworth. Or, this season, the cooper! The run very short, probably less than a half mile and its got an unrunable waterfall at the end of the run. It's also a very stacked run, so while it carries a class IV rating in difficulty, this creek could cause some serious problems for someone who is not confident on slides and working out of holes and dish out some class V thrashings.

Enjoy:

Video: Matt Kurle's Rodeo Session

Matt Kurle is a sick, sick boater.

He also edits some badass videos.

Robe Canyon - High Water Run

Prior to this morning I had never run Robe higher than 5.9.

There are a handful of boaters in the Seattle area that regularly boat Robe above 6 feet but I could never say I desired to be among them. At 5.8 and 5.9 the holes get much bigger, the wave trains steeper and the pucker factor magnifies by a factor of around 20.

I kept hearing it was "good to go" and "almost fun" above 6 feet, from a couple of locals, but I wasn't convinced.

Then the day finally arrived; Nothing else was in (at a reasonable level) and I HAD to get on the water. Darren had called earlier in the morning and told me that there would be a decent sized group on the river, so safety would be less of an issue. I tentatively agreed to join.

I called Joe and his response to my inquiry as to the intelligence of the undertaking at hand was: "what could go wrong?"

By the time we got to the takeout I had worked myself up to walking T1 and probably Sunshine, as well as the possibility of walking Hotel California (the longest rapid on the run). I told my rumbling gut I would give it a look.

Some Bellingham boys joined us and all in all we had close to 10 kayaks in the water at the put-in. This time last year I would say it would have been wishful thinking to get 10 people to join you on Robe at a more agreeable level of 5.5 or so. The class V community in Washington is expanding rapidly!

We put on and I was surprised to see that there is a sneak line on RL of T1. The boof at T2 is a must make and the hole at the bottom of Last Sunshine looks like the Boogie Man, Pinhead and whatever demon lived under you bed as a child all rolled into one massive mosnter. The video speaks for itself, it was an amazing day. My only out of boat experience was the portage at Landslide and I got a huge boof off the left side of Off Broadway.

The 6 foot and higher realm is actually a fun place to be... if you're on line.






Robe Canyon - 6.3' from daniel patrinellis on Vimeo.