welshkate

We paddled the Niagara section of the north Santiam again on Tuesday. It was a little lower than on Sunday at about 1400 CFS. At this flow, the narrows rapid was again looking a bit funky. James, Nathan and I scouted the rapid for about 20 minutes. The most-commonly run line on the rapid is the left line, indicated in the photo (marked in red). The right line opens up at the lower flows < 1300 CFS (red arrow indicates boof rock).

When we checked the rapid from down stream i noticed there was a rock sticking out in between the two boof flakes that could push a paddler off line (blue arrow). James and I were in our all stars and although feeling confident, we both opted for a seal launch through the 2 nd half of the rapid. Nathan , testing his new creek boat, and on the run for the first time, styled the second 1/2. We ran Niagara. It’s a really easy move, but classified a IV because the right wall is severely undercut with a cave.

Click on the Photo below to link to a short video of the only two rapids of consequence for the run; Narrows and Niagara

Photo: James and Nathan scout Narrows

The video shows how surgey the water is. Its one of those rapids, like double drop on the Truss, thats a roll of dice. As James says, you could do the same moves each time and 50 % of the time you are upright, 50 % upside down. James advised me to run the meat of the flushy hole @ the bottom of narrows and it worked like a dream (and I avoided that nice piton you see in the video)- thanks for the info James!