Dougans falls section of the Washougal is a fun yet very short run. The run only consits of four drops, all water falls that can be run several times over. The section is only two miles long and fully pool drop the whole way.

The first drop you come to is Doc's drop, a fairly straight forward drop if your a solid class IV boater. Their are two main routs down this drop, far right or far left. The right side is a slide into a 4 foot boof ledge. Make sure you check your line because it can be easy to get mixed up above it, and get pushed to far left, into the middle. The other line is far left and definately more technical then the right side, but a lot more fun if your up for it. You come sliding in from the right side of the left channel, then once you in the left channel head left-center for a really fun boof!

The next drop is Reeder Falls, at the flow we had here it was much more of a ledge hole then a falls, it looked very sticky on the river left side and in the center, and on the right there was a line that flushed through, but it can be a roll of the dice if your not online. There is a bridge that crosses the river right before you get to Reeder Falls, scout on river right.

Heather and I scouting Reeder Falls.

After Reeder Falls is Naked Falls. This drop can be very complicated, most of the water pushes left where you really don't want to go. It seems on this drop the farther left you go the worse it gets. Our main line was to stay right and boof off the shallow ledge at the bottom, make sure you hit your boof or you will come out with a modified boat and/or soar legs. On the far left of this drop there is a 10-12 foot falls with one of the worst hydrolics I've seen on a river, it easily feeds back 20-30 feet from the base of the falls and into a cave on the river left wall. Stay as far away from this as possible!

After Naked falls come Dougans Falls, the last drop on the run. This is a very straight forward drop, go right and boof the bottom. It's a double drop falls/slide that you can just go right and slide down, really fun and really easy!

We ran this section when the Washougal was running at around 3200 cfs, it was a good flow but more water would still have been better. My overall veiw of the run is don't do it unless you in the area and you need a quick run with four drops. It's full on pool drop so you can set up safety below each one, it should be very easy to do.

Description by Nate Herbeck