I’d been to Pamplona for the encierro – the running of the bulls – twice before, but it still scares the bejaysus out of me. People keep asking me about it, and the same questions keep coming up. For such a famous festival, there’s a lot of misinformation out there. First of all, here are the answers to the questions frequently asked of me:

• No, it’s got nothing to do with tomatoes. That’s somewhere else and it’s just a bunch of people throwing tomatoes at each other for half an hour. Leave me alone about the tomatoes.
• Yes, it’s incredibly stupid to put yourself in harm’s way like that. What’s your point?
• The bulls run through the streets early in the morning; they die in the evening at the bull fight. It goes on for a week, so it’s a new set of bulls every morning.
• No, bullfighting is not very sporting. Nobody ever said it was.
• No, I don’t know why every New Zealander in Europe under the age of 30 is there. It must be a visa obligation.
• No, it’s not as dangerous as you heard – the last guy to get killed by a bull there was in 1995.

If you go there yourself, it won’t be very long before some local explains to you that only the foreigners get injured in the run. This is nonsense – statistically, Basques are just as likely to get injured as anyone else, despite what they will tell you. Seriously, what? You think because you grew up Basque, you’re genetically better at running away from large animals than I am?

So preamble and FAQ out of the way, here’s how it went for Donnie, Razz, and I in July 2008 when we went to the Basque country to see the sights and run away from the bulls. We spent some time on the beach, at the Guggenheim museum, and so on but you don’t want to hear any of that, do you? No, you want to hear about stupid people being chased down by angry bulls. So, onwards. Ola!

First of all, there’s the dress code: white pantalones, white shirt, red sash, red neckerchief. Ridiculous as this get-up looks, you’re more self-conscious dressed otherwise, when the whole town looks like a ‘Where’s Wally?’ convention.

Razz, the very picture of sartorial elegance:

At the opening ceremony, the txupinazo, on July 6, the mayor makes a brief speech, sets off a firework (the titular txupinazo)…

… and everyone sets about demolishing the European Sangria and Red Wine Reserves.

On the night before their turn in the sun, the bulls wait in the pen at the bottom of Santo Domingo street. It’s always strangely calm and quiet down there, regardless of what party mayhem is going on just up the road.

The origins of the running of the bulls is that it was the most practical way to get the bulls for the evening’s bullfighting from the corrals at the edge of the town into the bull ring in the centre of town in the early morning. The colour scheme stems from the uniform of first people who thought it would be a laugh to run through town ahead of the bulls – the butchers.

San Fermín is the patron saint – a bishop of the area martyred back in the day. This is your host and protector:

Ahead of the run this statue sits in a little niche in the wall above the street where the run takes place and everyone says a little prayer:

“A San Fermin pedimos, por ser nuestro patrón, nos guíe en el encierro, dándonos su bendición. Viva San Fermín. Gora San Fermin.”
(“We ask San Fermín, because he is our Patron, to guide us through the bull run, giving us his blessing. Long live Saint Fermín. Long live Saint Fermín.”)

I’m not religious but I’m hoping the guy’s looking out for me too. I’ve adopted this prayer as my drop-running mantra on the water too, but I usually only get as far as “A San Fermin pedimos…” before the lip.

First of all the six bulls are run through the streets in the morning from the corral to the bullring. They are accompanied by about six steers (they’re the ones with cowbells) that make the journey every morning, adding a calming female influence. The theory being that an orderly pack of animals being lead by steers that do this all the time will result in less carnage. Single, isolated, confused bulls are really dangerous and apt to do all sorts including turn back and charge the other way back into the crowd. I’ve seen it and it gets ugly, because you have a horde of people running one way having been over taken by the bulls, only to have one of them come back at you. The look of horror on the faces would be comical, but when you’re close enough to see those horrified ashen faces up close, it doesn’t seem all that mirthful.

In the morning Razz has procured more shiningly white attire and is ready to go.

For the duration of the run, all the side streets are blocked off at the sides with double rows of these stout fences so that the bulls can’t go on a complete rampage, just a location-specific rampage. The fences act as filters for the bulls, but can be surprisingly porous to people in a hurry. The no-man’s land between the fences is where you’ll find the Red Cross setting up shop.

Last-minute hose down for the course. The cleaning crews never seem to stop working all week, all hours of the day and night sweeping everything in front of them.

For the runners, it’s a long and tense wait…

About half of the run is along this street, Calle Estefeda. It’s fairly crowded, as you can seen, but space does tend to appear when the bulls get close. Balcony space is at a premium – literally – with local residents and businesses renting out these viewing spots. Ernest Hemingway watched the corrida from his hotel balcony further up this street on the right.

Anyone can run, all you have to do is be on the street by 7 AM and sober enough to avoid being removed by the police. There’s an unofficial, halfhearted ban on girls, but only if the police are feeling macho. There’s a ban on intensely stupid people too – a few years ago a pair of Chinese rollerbladers were prevented from participating. Bulls, crowds, rollerblades, and cobblestones – can you imagine?

Contrary to what you may have heard, most of the crowd is not drunk – the drunken ones tend to be passed out at that stage. That said, most people on the street have been up partying all night, but sobering up rapidly as they realise what they have got themselves into.

Sorry to be so long-winded, but I’m trying to clear up some of the misinformation you hear about Pamplona. That things that the locals tell you (no, boast to you) that it’s only foreigners that get injured, because being born Basque somehow gives you an insight into the mind of the bull and allows you to run safely, really bugs me. Everyone quotes you this as a fact, and it’s just not true.

The police closing off the street to latecomers is a great excuse if your courage fails you and you need an ‘out’ – this is the excuse used by a certain Cork paddler for partying all weekend in Pamplona, but never coming within breathing distance of a bull. There’s no shame in not running (clearly it’s a stupid idea) but the elaborate stories you hear from guys telling you how they would love to run, but didn’t, are great. The best one I heard was a local guy who’d never run because as a kid, he told me: ‘I promised my mother I wouldn’t.’

So anyway, at eight in the morning they signal the release of the animals by firing a rocket. The popping sound you hear from halfway up the road around the corner makes the heart jump. If you weren’t awake and sober before, you will be now. A second rocket lets you know that the last of the bulls has exited the corral. The closer together those first two rockets, the better it is for everyone. It means the animals are running as a tight pack.

The street section is about 800 metres from start to finish. Bulls are really fast and get total right-of-way. You can’t run the entire course with the bulls – you’ll get left behind. Most people pick a section and try to stay the pace as long as they can. Imagine thousands of people running one direction in a narrow street, while looking over their shoulders. People are falling over other people, tripping, diving to the side – it’s not a sprint, it’s a hurdle race. And bulls are not very tall, so sometimes you see them too late as the crowd parts behind you.

At the top of the course there’s the bullring, and everyone streams through the narrow gate into the arena. This is traditionally the most dangerous part – because the gateway is so constricted, mounds of bodies build up in the alleyway, and then the bulls arrive and try to force a way through.

That said, the feeling of elation when you emerge out in the sand-covered bullring ungored and wheel away to one side or the other is the reason you’re here – the parallels to kayaking are fairly obvious here. You know how it feels to break into the eddy below some rapid or waterfall and realise it’s over, you’re not going to die today, and you’re going to be just fine. It’s exactly like that.

I have no photos from the run itself, due to being kind of busy with self-preservation issues. It all went according to plan the two days we ran, and the three of us met up again in the bullring at the end of the course; I was never so happy to see Donnie and Razz. Here’s how Spanish TV covered the first encierro of the 2008 festival. We’re in there somewhere.

In the bull ring…

In case being chased down the road by bulls isn’t enough fun for you before you’ve had your breakfast, there’s a little extra item on the bill. Once all the bulls are safely secured in the pens located in the bowels of the bullring, they release young bulls “toros bravos” back into the crowded arena for a while. They whizz around and around tossing people up in the air for sport. They are not anywhere near as big as full-grown bulls, but it’s quite exhilarating.

Thanks to Lee for the picture above from his Flickr stream.

Jim and Razz contemplate a good morning’s work, still being alive, sudden overwhelming tiredness, and the need for breakfast…

Some people we know from the states and other parts – regular visitors to San Fermin:

Kelly (from work), husband Jonathan, Pamplona author Ray Mouton, John Hemingway (author and grandson of…), and Micheal. Read about their Pamplona experiences here: Pena de Los Gatos.

Razz befriends a purple bull, to show there are no hard feelings.

Giants – Los Gigantes de los San Fermin.

In an annex off the old bus station in the center of town, for most of the year the giants sleep. For the festival, these massive depictions of kings, queens, and assorted nobles of the court parade around the town. There’s a king and queen for Europe, Africa, Asia, and America.

The procession is lead out by the European king and queen, followed by the American king.

The Gigantes are accompanied on their leisurely strolls around the streets by a court of Cabezudos (the Bigheads) and a band. The children follow them around, in turns delighted and terrified as the medieval cabezudos ‘attack’ them with spongy maces. It’s traditional and the meaning is lost in history.

Here’s Donnie, posing awkwardly with what looks like a certain legendary footballer, I think.

Nightly fireworks…

When it all gets a little too much, there’s also sangria and siesta in the park.

You should probably go this year; you’d love it.

Life’s an incremental process…

…but sometimes you get two increments in the one day.

Congratulations to Daithí and Fiona. Nobody else could hope to keep up with either of them, so they’re a pair that deserve each other.

Two weeks back we got out to the Inchavore, one of the lesser-run classics of Wicklow boating. It’s a bit of an unknown quantity in terms of water levels and predictability. The put-on is reminiscent of the Source of the Liffey – when you get there, you think someone is winding you up, so narrow is it. It’s true ditch paddling for a good while, again similar to the Source.

Since the put-on is near the Sally Gap on the road to the Glenmacnass you never really get to ‘pass by’ and check it out. Maybe it’ll get run more often now that Warren has put up a river description over on IrishWhiteWater.

We took a chance that it would be running and headed that way when the Dargle was running at one-and-a-half blocks (or ‘bananas’ if you prefer). Another reason the Inchavore isn’t run that much is that the shuttle is perhaps the longest one in the country, with the usual takeout being the bottom of Lough Dan. Yes, you have to paddle the length of the lake after the river.

It turns out there wasn’t really enough water to run it, but we were a way into the forest before we accepted that it wasn’t going to pick up sufficiently. That said, there are no bad days on the water. It’s quite the remote and beautiful stretch, dropping away through the forestry, picking up water as it goes, before eventually and gradually becoming a proper river, with rocks and even some drops. Many, many rocks at the low level we experienced. There was plenty of practice pulling boats off rocks, and even a little two-point broach extraction ’scenario.’ I love the use of the word ’scenario’ in kayaking. It’s like a management buzzword.

For comparison, this little drop had to be portaged last time I was in there, due to a horrible towback. That’s Dave Cox…

Although most of the group were unhappy at being dragged down some low-water rockfest, the Inchavore is definitely one of my favourites in the country. It just needs a tad more water to show its potential.

When you take the time to look back up the valley, you realise just how beautiful the place is. Actually, the main reason I’m posting this at all is that I like this next photo – I got exactly two pictures this whole day, but this one makes it alright.

Daragh Power on the island section…

When the river widens out further down you catch a glimpse of the slopes of the hills around dropping down into Lough Dan. The final section of the river meanders around bends before feeding you into the lake. It’s a long slog across the lake, but we had a trailing wind and it was a fine afternoon.

With huge water spilling out of the other end of Lough Dan we pushed through the overgrown entrance to the Annamoe and on for a big water run down to Annamoe Bridge. What’s the worst thing you can do on the longest shuttle in the country? Leave the car keys at the top of course, which is what I did. I got off at Annamoe to try and figure a way back to the top, and most of the group pushed on for a full trip to Jacksons to pass the time. Huge, huge thanks to Paul Armstrong who happened to be finishing his own shuttle and offered to run us all back to the top, a long, long way. In the end we were back at Lynham’s with the vans before the paddlers.

If only the summer rain would continue and we got a run on the Cloghoge Brook, this might be the best Irish summer ever.

There’s a fantastic rant by ‘tomas’ over on IrishFreeStyle and if I’m honest, I’m one of the people who are guilty of talking about foreign trips and never posting about Irish boating. Well, it’s a fairly moderate rant, but he’s spot on when you think about it…

What The Fu$% is wrong with this site??

With all the recent rain, surely people have been out paddling?Why are paddlers not talking?This has to be one of the shittist summers on record but a boom for kayaking. So why is this site not buzzing? Whats running? When? Where?What are paddlers experiences?

This weekend alot of rain forecast, why are kayakers not talking?

In recent weeks I have run various rivers purely on gut instinct and Met Eireann forecasts, surely as a supposed kayaking community it should be better than that?

It seems to me we buzz about all the sh1t abroad,and yet fail to talk to each other at home.

He’s right, of course, and we really should make a better effort. In response here’s a quick account of what some of us (well, me) have been up to with all the lovely summer weather we’ve been having…

I haven’t been out much myself lately despite it being the wettest August in the recorded Irish metrological history, mostly for family reasons, but I did manage a run down the Dargle last week. A classic six-and-a-bit-blocks level made it clean enough to be cruisey, but dirty enough to knock the rust off your paddling.

Don’t you love the colour of Irish ‘white’ water?

Then on Sunday after a second trip down the Dargle, a lovely time was had by all on the Annamoe all the way from Lough Dan. The Annamoe was running really high turning pretty much everything into big old wavetrains, with plenty of scope for zipping around the river.

All that made for an incredibly quick trip to the top of the run-in to Jackson’s Falls, where we halted for a confab. With eight in the group you don’t want any confusion about where you’re getting out to look at the drop. Sorry, but we’ve no photos at all; you’ll have to judge yourself from the Annamoe gauge. The screengrab below is marked…

I may in the past have run the Annamoe higher, but certainly not Jackson’s. For the record, two lines were probed and both go – hard and fast down the middle works if you hit it like a freight train, while riding up the curler on river-left works also, but requires that you moderate your speed and focus on hitting your spot exactly right.

Warm summer boating with lots of water and daylight. Would that it were like this all the time…

UPDATE: The boat is sold.

This is not really a post, just an ad…

I’m selling my Pyranha S6X 185 as I don’t need it and I have no clue about playboating. It’s in good nick, with the usual scratches, but with new ratchets too! I’m looking for €350. If you want to try it out, the boat is in Dublin but I can have it in Cork easily too.

I’ve put up some pictures; and there are some specs and information on Playak and Eddyflower.

Give me a shout if you’re interested.

‘Ya falta menos’ is the unofficial slogan of San Fermines, the bull-running festival in the Basque Country’s city of Pamplona. It’s Spanish for ‘there’s not long to go’ and it’s what they say as the count down the months and days left to when the craziness begins again on July 6th. At the time of writing, it’s two days away, and I’m going back again this year. With Norway cancelled for me this year, it doesn’t look like there’ll be any whitewater fun for me for a while, so you have to figure something else to do to keep the heart rate up. And there’s nothing to simulate running hard whitewater like an early morning sprint in front of a herd of 600 kg bulls.

I’ve done this before a number of years back, with mixed results. The picture below is from Diario de Navarre, the local paper, in July 2001. That’s me right there in the middle wearing the completely inappropriate sandals, photographed moments before I become aware of the bull on my shoulder.

I have a cool picture somewhere of me a short moment later, after being hit by the damn thing, where I’m horizontal in the air about to make violent contact with the cobblestones. The photo is somewhere in a box (this is from the days when photos were actually printed onto paper), but I can’t find it.

One thing I do remember being warned about at the bull-running is that if you fall or get hit, the safest thing to do is stay down until you’re sure the bulls are gone and the noise of the hooves diminishes. Kind of like in kayaking when you stay tucked up until the water around you gets quiet again before rolling up.

Since I got hit by the frontrunner, the best plan was to curl up like a baby and wait until the entire herd had hurdled over me…

That was all a long time ago, I’m sure I’ll be better at it this time. On that cheerful note, wish me luck next week…

On the Saturday, the big event was the premiere of the new video from local boater Tao Berman. The kayaking talent in and around Hood River is fairly amazing. I think myself and Johno were the only ones in the bar who didn’t have videos on the market. Really must work on ‘pushing the brand’ – maybe mañana.

Sunday was the last day of boating for me – the Wind River Race. I’d run the race section of the Wind River twice during the week, once taking the longest swim of my boating life. Thanks for the rescue Jay; I appreciate that. Stupid swim really, coming off nothing more heinous than a crashing lateral and a failure to roll up. Embarrassing, and it was only a long-distance swim as it took me ages to get to the bank because I was trying to swim the boat and blades with me through decent volume water.

Anyway, let’s never speak of it again…

On race day, Austin opted for a friggin’ sea kayak for the speed, Christie in an old-school T-Canyon.

Tactics discussion…

Finally, the weather in the Pacific Northwest was turning out as I’d been told to expect: cold and rainy. This was the pre-race setup at the put-in:

The guy pointing, Tim, was running the show. He runs a rafting race team; check out their website at Oregon Rafting Team. If you prefer, you could look up the other rafting crew – California Womens’ Raft Team (I wonder which link you guys will click on?).

The race in the general class was a lot of fun – I opted for mid-table mediocrity, thereby providing myself with a bunch of blind probes in the rapids. That way I got to see some fairly stylish personal rodeos in some of the holes right in front of me, and then avoid them. A cunning strategy that got me safely down, but ruled me out of winning anything.

Looking back upstream from the finish line…

Two-person rafting team…

Cataraft dude threads a line between two blobs of water on the camera lens…

Oregon Rafting Team on the paddle-out…

From the ‘Gosh, isn’t it a small world?’ file, the guy on the right is Kabe the Yeti, former California raft guide, current EMT guy, with whom myself and Mick Moore boated in Costa Rica eight long years ago. I was talking to him for five minutes before we figured it out.

If my company’s office in Oregon ever goes on fire, Kabe will be the guy rescuing people. Cool, eh? That’s his wife on the left.

After that, the rest of the crew packed up and headed to Vancouver Island for what appears to be even more excellent boating. I headed back to Portland to fulfill my obligation to The Man, but did manage to catch up with Declan and Gavin (stars of Mañana Mañana back in 2004)…

…and…

It’s good to see that they’re still climbing the walls.

A week later, and it’s back to sunny, cheerful Dublin…

Why is it always like this when you come home? It’s hard enough coming home in the first place, but to look out the window at that dreariness…

And that was Oregon – thanks to my sponsors for this trip: The Man, of course, but mostly Austin and Christie for putting me up and plugging me into the local scene. I’m already looking forward to the next trip.

Off to the Canyon Creek they go…

Myself, Austin, and Christie headed to Canyon Creek back towards Portland and then an hour northeast. With just one vehicle we were standing around playing river poker on the shuttle options. Everyone was feeling lazy and inventing reasons why they should be the one to run shuttle and not paddle.

The conversation was verging on ridiculous when Eli and Tony showed up, on a similar one-vehicle mission. Problem sorted, and as always once the laziness was thrown aside, it was another fantastic day on the water. God, I love this sport.

Austin charges off, setting the early pace…

Eli and Tony above the same drop. Eli, although he didn’t know it at the time, was inspecting his line into a scary swim…

Tony follows the centre line, pushing through the hole. Eli’s line dropped him into the river-left hole and both he plus boat disappeared for a while.

He washed out quickly enough, but the boat reappeared just behind where you see Christie doing rescue – washed under the rock on which she’s standing. Not nice.

With everyone still intact we headed on. This is one of Christie’s fav rivers in the area. Lots of boof ledges and clean drops. Austin boofs…

Tony went for the line on the far side, driving hard to cut the corner…

He cut the corner a little too tight and squirted out along the far wall. All good clean fun.

I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, but it’s Eli running something backwards. Deliberately I’m sure.

This is me on the lead-in to the same drop. Most of the river valleys in this part of the world are like this – steep-sided and forested, with this amazing water – if you were going to sell bottled river water, I’d suggest the Pacific Northwest for your bottling plant.

The water’s mighty cold though, hence the shiny drysuit. I take back all the slagging I ever gave anyone about wussy drysuits. Wussy drysuits rock!

The final drop is a clean (I’m really overusing that word, but it’s appropriate in all cases here) horseshoe fall into a lake. Eli takes the plunge…

By this stage I’d been messing around with the new boat and with the seat moved all the way forward, I was feeling snug in there. Just need to sit a little more forward…

The paddle out is down the lake to the dam and then back up a different river for a half-mile, climbing out at this bridge…

Then it was off to Portland to eat some fairly amazing Thai food and borrow a T-Canyon for Christie for the upcoming Wind River Race. It turned out that the guy loaning out the boat was Rob Kerr, grizzly old-timer who wrote the Oregon river guide book. An interesting guy, still fired up about boating.

With a bigger group (three…), we went back to the Green Truss section of the White Salmon. It’s not as intense as the Little White Salmon by any means, but a lot of fun nonetheless. It’s an excellent piece of water to have as your default river in this part of the world. This is probably the most-often-run harder river in the Columbia River Gorge.

Austin ran Big Brother, but neither myself nor Johno (New Zealand paddler passing through town – check out his scurrilous blog) were up for it. You have to hit the flake just so or you face ending up in the river-right cave.

From there it’s either a self-rescue up the cliff or hope for a rope from the river-left bank. Austin hit the spot, eh, spot-on, but still came within a foot of the cave. Here he is on the exit drop, which is a nice ledge in its own right…

There’s a tricky abseil put-on that puts you back on at the base of Big Brother on a perch of rock. Doing this allows you to run the exit drop. Here’s Johno doing exactly that…

Double Drop does exactly as it says on the tin. The only thing the name doesn’t tell you is that the ‘pool’ between the two drops is about two meters in length. It’s hard to get a clean boof off the first drop, so by the time your bow has resurfaced, you’re on the lip of the second drop. The horizon line of the second drop is only visible from the lip of the first drop. On my first run down this drop I was airborne and upside down on the second drop. Austin gets a belly laugh out of newcomers crashing over this thing and rolling up in the huge pool below. This is one of several drops in the area that come with deliberately limited beta at the start, just for the amusement of the knowledgeable. Consequently, it’s one of several drops in the area I’ve renamed ‘Fuck You, Austin.’

Somewhere on the way we picked up another pair of kayakers out on their own. Here’s Megan working her way out of Zig Zag…

Zig Zag is a cool pinball rollercoaster of a ride – essentially it’s an on-sight, read-and-run mini-canyon, where the line is a big green twisting tongue, but don’t even think about falling off it…

Micah (not sure about the spelling) exiting from Zig Zag…

From there’s it’s a case of a quick portage around BZ Falls (sketchy undercuts and holes) and seal launch back onto the water for a short wind-down stretch to the take out at BZ Corners. They have excellent tamales at the grocery store across the road from the take out.

On the way back to town, we stopped off to check out Condit Dam, in lower water than the last time you might have seen a picture of this one.

With the dam slated for removal in the summer of 2008, it’s pretty certain that Austin’s first descent, when the water was spilling over the top back in December, will be the last descent too. It’s not like there’ll be enough water again or that anyone else is queuing up for a crack at this one.

The 100-year-old dam will be drilled out at the base, draining the lake behind in about six hours, and turning some nice rural lakeside houses into hillside houses perched above a river.

It’s probably one of the few places in the world where people are campaigning against the removal of a dam.

Up until myself and Austin went out to run the Little White Salmon, my topmost best-favouritest ever creek ever in the world had been the Codi in Corsica. There are a couple of other classics on my list too – the Castro Laborario in Portugal, the Gol Gol in Chile, the Toro in Costa Rica; but Washington’s Little White Salmon is an amazing thing, to put it mildly.

First of all we had to stop off at the AT paddle factory to do a little boat repair. Check out the ’squishing’ tool.

Nice, eh? I’d imagine Simon will be looking for one of those for his birthday this year. What better way to test out a new plastic weld than head to the river? The ‘L Dub’ as they call it.

Catching my breath halfway down I mentioned to Austin that this was perhaps the best creek ever. He agreed, saying that the Little White, running all year, was the reason he moved to the Pacific North West. Again, you couldn’t argue with that.

The first rapid is called ‘Getting Busy’ and it’s a full half-mile long. A half-mile of boulders, holes, boof ledges, must-make lines, and a paucity of eddies. It’s also got Spirit Falls, the whitewater beauty of which is almost wasted on this river because there are so many other eye-popping features. This river, half an hour from the town, is much of the reason Hood River is such a draw for kayakers, both resident and passing through.

Austin knows the ins and outs of this river like I know the ins and outs of O’Neill’s of Pierse Street, and with just two of us on the water, we were able to make good time. Without local knowledge this would have been a full-day mission. He would describe every coming section in concise form, with no drama, and finish off by saying ‘you can follow me as close as you like on this bit.’ Thus each section was like a boatercross race, with all the appearance of me chasing him down to the wire. I lost sight of him once all day…

According to OregonKayaking.net, the excellent online river guide:

The Little White is fed by an enormous aquifer that stores rain all winter and then slowly releases it late into the summer, making this a world class playground for class V paddlers when almost everything else is bone dry.

The day we were there it was running at 3.8 on the gauge (conveniently located right at the put-in). This is apparently about as big as you want to go, and I met plenty of locals well impressed at that level for a first time down. That’s the kind of news you only need to hear after you’re safely back in town. Thanks again, Austin.

My instructions here were ‘get close to the tree and boof’ – if I had gotten any closer I would have been open to accusations of being a tree hugger.

The Disco must be reading this post and thinking ‘thank Christ I wasn’t there for any of this.’

This next drop is called S-Turn Fall, I think. Dear sweet Lord, I don’t even remember running this one, but run it we did…

Waiting for me to get my act together, here’s Austin’s self-portrait. A happy boater, in his element…

There’s some nastiness over on the right, but I was moving too fast to see it.

Safety out the bottom of this one…

Our only portage was at Spirit Falls. The problem with running Spirit Falls, apart from the really obvious one that it’s a really tall waterfall, is that it commits you to a very sketchy ferry glide across the top of something known as Chaos. Austin had committed us to the portage before we even got on; at this water level, that’s a good call.

Plenty of paddlers, far better and more travelled than me, rate the Little White Salmon as the best creek in the world. If it’s not, then let me know what is…