I was boating with another guy from school who is much better than me down the Green Truss section of the White Salmon. Definitely has some class V on it, especially at the level (just under 4 ft.) Niko had run this river plenty of times, but neglected to tell me that this was the highest he had ever run it. I think this was probably to my benefit because I was pretty scared anyway. If he had told me, I might have tried to hike out.
This river has a pretty big drop, Big Brother, which I have been looking at footage of for a while. Its almost 30 ft with a cave thingy on the right and a shallow landing on the left. At this level, the normal river right line wasn't really in, but a left line between two rocks over a fold into a big slide opened up. It looked pretty stout. Furthermore, the next rapid, Lil Bro had a boil line at least 4 ft away from the base of the drop. Niko said he was walking, so definitely was too.
The river started narrowing up and had more of a big water creek feel than the creeky, manky southeast stuff that I am used to. Adjusting to the new style and feeling pretty scared on a new river, I followed Niko down every rapid. We scouted double drop, which as Niko described, is just one of those rapids where you roll the dice on flipping. Niko styled it, but I was still a little confused about how to run a rapid like this. It looked flushy, so I have it a go. I flipped after landing the first drop and make friends with a couple rocks and rolled up in the pool. Not exactly fun, but it was nice to hit some rocks and not freak out.
Eventually we got to Upper ZigZag, which Niko said was pretty hard to describe the line. I followed him into the tight gorge walls to see massive curlers and reactionaries. I passed a flipped Niko who had gotten eddied out by the most massive curler I have ever run. I ended up having a pretty good line, which I attribute to my Remix that is probably too big for me, but works great in big water.
Next rapid was Lower ZigZag. Lower Zigzag used to have a big ass log leaning on the left wall, which added some difficulty and made the rapid pretty classic, but, due to the floods that cleaned everything else in the area, the log was gone. I was kind of bummed that I couldn't run the exact rapid that I had seen in so many videos, but I was really grateful later... Niko pointed out this little flake that was mostly washed over on this decent sized hole along the right side, that was the line. I probably should have followed Niko more closely, because I was too far right, barely boofed, and ended up surfing the hole. I think the video can capture this next part pretty well. I felt a little frantic during my swim, but I got out all right. After quite a bit of hiking and attempted hitch-hiking, I found Niko, who had gotten my boat. My paddle wasn't so lucky, but my brand new breakdown made me feel pretty good.
We put back in, but I was getting pretty tired and my nerves were starting to wear. With light running out, and no set shuttle from the bottom, time was working against us. We portaged BZ Falls extra high, which was to my benefit, but involved a little more portaging, which always exhausts me. We got to the 17 ft seal launch that is the sneak of BZ and I was DONE. Niko had to hold my boat and push me off, I actually asked him how to seal launch (which I have done quite a few times) b/c I was losing confidence in my ability to perform. Luckily we got the bottom and Niko found us a ride with some local boaters before I made it to the parking lot. I was pretty wiped, and I think this picture captures it pretty well.
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