A spiritual experience on the Little White


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Spirit Falls on the Little White Salmon River is a great drop, probably the best I have ever run.

Nevertheless, this 33 foot falls will annihilate you if you end up against the right wall, so staying on the middle or left side is mandatory! Also, there is a riverwide ledge waiting just downstream known as 'Chaos' which has nearly claimed the lives of several swimmers. The pocket in the right wall at Chaos (where most of the current is going) is so nasty that there is a fixed line to assist swimmers. If you swim at Spirit and lose your boat you have two choices: Swim the line through Chaos (not easy, and extremely dangerous at higher flows), or do a tricky, slippery, technical traverse across the cliff face right above the worst part of Chaos...

Recently I had the misfortune to watch a friend of mine get the second worst thrashing of his life (and he's had some bad ones...) at Spirit. This guy is a great boater and he has run much larger falls than Spirit, but this was his unlucky day...

So, lets start at the beginning, shall we?


It was just another day on the Little White; most of us had just done the creek the day before and were happy to be on it again. It was snowy and cold, but the creek kept us warm with the usual non-stop barrage of boulder gardens and ledges. We cruised down through Gettin' Busy and into the waterfall section, and the sun came out; it was a good omen and we were all boating well. Everyone had clean lines over the falls and then we got to Spirit Falls, the grand finale.

Tim Gross, an accomplished Portland-area boater, didn't even scout Spirit; he just floated over it and landed no problem while we shot photos. The next guy up was another excellent sponsored paddler who was paddling a new creekboat. He got ready while we set up to shoot photos again and then he came down. He launched off and landed well, surfacing on the 4 to 5 foot tall pile at the base of the falls, no worries. However, before he could take a stroke the pile surged and threw him into the right wall, kind of behind the falls exactly like at the end of the video 'Twitch'.

"Oh shit!! He's in it!!" Kevin yelled and we all gaped in horror as a beating of epic proportions commenced in the hollowed out area against the right wall...

Coming off the top...

The seconds ticked by as he body splatted the wall; his boat was vertical, the bottom was facing us, and he was getting POUNDED. Only the very top of his bow was showing, so we knew he was underwater, unable to breathe.
He wasn't coming out, and everyone started to freak. How long was he in there? 30 seconds? 45? without a breath?
It was a long time- long enough to drown, it seemed.

We all didn't know it, but what happened was he COULDN'T GET HIS SKIRT OFF THE BOAT- he was forced back over his stern, unable to reach his grab loop, and his skirt was too tight to blow out with his legs!

Bad, bad, bad...


Finally, with a burst of strength, he punched both of his fists down between his legs and blew his skirt out. When he came out of his boat he got got brutally worked some more against the wall. I have been shooting kayaking photos for years, so I instinctively kept on shooting as there was nothing else I could do....

A paddle emerges, but still no paddler. That's Tim at the bottom of the frame, trying to get upstream to help out..

Eventually the falls sucked him out and drove him REALLY deep into the pool, where he popped up about twenty feet from the base of the falls. At this point he had been under a long time and had aspirated water. In spite of this, he managed to swim over into the surging eddy against the wall while his boat headed downstream.

Tim was struggling against the current to corral his boat and paddle and keep them from going through Chaos, and the swimmer climbed up onto the big rock outcropping on the right side of the pool. "Hey man!" I yelled from above. "Hang on, I'll be down in a minute!"

I went back up, got in my boat, and peeled out above the falls. I had run it perfectly the day before, and I was confident I could do so again, but Spirit let us off too easy yesterday and wasn't going to do so again.

I got to the lip and took the mandatory pivot stroke to keep me off the right side of the pile, and sailed over. I landed on the left side, went deep, and I think I had a not quite enough angle to clear the pile because I felt the water coming down from above while I was underwater, and it tore into me, ripping my elbow pad off, tearing my helmet nearly off of my head, and blowing my skirt. I emerged from the pile in a stern squirt (This is starting to become a habit for me, maybe I need one of those tight fitting kevlar skirts! =) ) and paddled over to the shelf on the right with a boat full of water, and got out on the shelf grinning at the stranded swimmer, feeling like a dork. "Wow!" I said. "A lot of help I am!!" I got my boat emptied and we got the boater out of there. He was an experienced rock climber, so he chose to climb around Chaos while I hovered in the eddy below in case he fell in. His boat had ended up going down through Chaos, and both ends were punched in pretty good, but it was ok overall.

The boater was a little worried because he had inhaled water, and that he might get secondary asphyxiation, but he was fine by the time we got home...