A sick weekend in Hood River

The water has been low here in Bellingham, super low. After not kayaking since my last weekend in Hood Rio, I had to go back. Kurt and I rallied down from Bham to portland on friday night, and with no school on monday thanks to president's day we were stoked to kill it. Three days of paddling in hood river is super fun, some of the most concentrated, quality whitewater that I have ever seen. Saturday morning we had our eyes set on Ldub, but after a series of unfortunate events(gear being dropped off etc.) we settled for a lap on the Truss. I shouldn't say settled, the Truss is pretty under-rated in my book, it has some great quality whitewater(just not quite as good as LDUB). A big crew of my buddies from world class kayak academy were rolling in from Montucky to join us. It was gunna be a sick weekend.

Niko while waiting for gear, and waiting to go yakin.. sometimes dems gotta be patient.
We finally got on the river, here are Dan and Niko scouting big brother. Shortly after the stout crew of word class homies rolled up as well.
Chillin above big brother.
Davis Gove running big brother down the left.
Lil Dave Meyers having a clean line on big bro.
Me dropping in on Big bro.
Nate Garcia at the lip of Big brother.
Nate running BZfalls. Nate has a bet with lj to run it untill he swims....... he cleaned it.
Niko Peha on big brother, this guy kills it.
Erik Boomer and some other crazy rubber pushers styling big brother.
Sam Friehofer killin it.
Stylin BZ.
Stomped!
Griff Griffith a fellow CO paddler. This kid kills it.

After a nice run on the Truss, we started an evening of debauchery. The world class crew reunited had a killer night, needless to say lots of brown dancing went down. We awoke the next day not feeling incredible, but we still rallied to go do some kayaking no doubt. We checked out money drop, a nice 50-55ftr with a crazy fast lip. We scouted and decided it looked good to go.
The group hiking in.
Nate went first having a decent line, but landing a little over the bars and ejecting.
The paddle toss.
Davis Contemplating the stout.
He then ran, and ended up going over the bars as well.

I went, had a nice line folding into the seam, and plugging nice, but my skirt imploded and I ended up swimming. Check out the vid for some more footage.


Erik Johnson had a sweet line, but his skirt blew and he ended up swimming.
Sam Friehofer had a super sick line, but a blown skirt again made him swim.
A common sight at the bottom. Out of the 8 of us that ran it, 7 swam due to blown skirts and ejections. The other person boofed it.

Check out the video here

Money Drop from Fred Norquist on Vimeo.

Hiking back up to the car.

We went back to portland that night, went to bed early and got a lovely run on the LDub in the morning, then headed back to Bham. Tuesday dawned, and it only made sense to go get some Robe Canyon as I dont have class till 5. The level was 5.8 and it was super fun. After a wednesday of classes, we celebrated western wednesday, and I woke on thursday for my 8am geology class(which is a sick class but 8am is rough). Then I decided it only made sense to go run robe again before the water was completely gone hit it at 4.9 which is pretty low, I recommend more water. It was a good weekend/start to the week, I paddled 5 out of 7 days so I was stoked!