INTERESTING TIMES

I'm the one in the red helmet, and this is the portage, not the rapid. A friend took the photo and just won a prize for it. Location: the mysterious Opal Creek in the upper reaches of the North Santiam.

(video removed)

The helicopter footage is gorgeous, especially the ways the trees glimmer when the camera zooms back out, and the views of Mount Hood. This is the legendary favorite local class V run. I haven't been there yet. The word is that there is quite a bit of new wood washed into the Green Truss, and in bad places, so perhaps this is where my boating crowd will shift to. I hope so. It looks like fun to me.

It has quite a reputation. Spirit falls breaks backs, and several caves eat boats from time to time. More than one person has died there. Whitewater boating is new enough in the PNW that wherever somebody has died, people get extra scared. Back east somebody has died just about everywhere already, so there's no point in it.

Lower Canyon Creek, which we ran twice last weekend, is a short creek run just outside Battleground Washington that I would call class IV, at least at the levels I've seen it (470-600cfs). I can imagine that at high water it would become class V. For years nobody (or almost nobody) ran it because there was a gigantic woodpile obstructing the run. But that woodpile washed out something like two years ago. Here it is:

( Notes on little white.... )

http://alpinewhitewaterfrancaise.com/
See a few pix from back when I went kayaking in France. The page hasn't been updated since 2007, but I'm glad it's still up. A little bit of history. I actually took this shot from the home page, with Mykl hanging on to a rock, and Janine standing by a ducky on the edge of the Verdon.

Kayak Session is French published, and quite beautiful. They usually don't put entire articles online but they put this one up because so many people were looking for it. (I notice today that there are a LOT more google image results for Lars today than there were on Monday.) Generally to see any of this magazine you must subscribe to the paper edition. The paper is quality and the photos are fantastic...we call it "paddle porn". If you're into kayaking, this is great stuff. Even people who know nothing about it really enjoy the photography. I used to subscribe and probably will again someday.

The rain started earlier than usual today. I was out walking in the recently shorn forest, taking picture of the big logging machines. There was one machine picking up the trees, sawing off their remaining limbs, and tossing the tops in one pile and the even-length logs in another. There was another machine with four claws that picked up piles of logs and put them on a semi truck. There were lots of guys in orange standing around beside their trucks. One of them said good morning to me. I was almost surprised that nobody chased me away.
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