After a nice week of warm weather water levels had risen. On Saturday Austin, Tim, Jason and I ran the Green Truss at 4ft, it was a good pushy level with everything relatively clean. After a nice run on the truss Jason and I decided to run the Upper Wind River on Sunday, we figured it'd be a medium flow and just have a good time.
Sunday Morning I started heading towards the Wind, and as I passed the Husum Gauge I saw it was at a solid 5ft. I was really surprised that the White Salmon had jumped a solid foot overnight. This was getting me excited, if the White Salmon rose this much the Wind should be at a great level. Dan Gavere and I met Jason at the takeout, we went down to look at the level and it was high. The Gauge rock you normally base the level off of was gone, under a wave somewhere. We decided it was a great flow and headed up to the top. At a medium flow the railing you see is about three feet out of water.
We dropped into Trout Creek boat scouting our way down, it was really fun, there wasn't a rock in sight. We did come to one portage, two downed trees across the river, other then that it was clean. After a short time we dropped into the Upper Wind, it had about 3,500 to 4,000 cfs in it. As we entered Initiation we hopped in the flow and started going, Jason in the lead I was following right behind and Dan right behind me. At this level it is a solid class V rapid starting from the top of Initiation to the bottom of Screaming Right, there are no pools between any of the drops. Partway through I needed to hit an eddy to catch my breath, as I caught the eddy Jason continued downstream and out of sight. Then Dan passed me and disappeared into the waves down stream. I pulled out of the eddy and tried catching up with them, I found Dan in an eddy and pulled up next to him, he hadn't seen Jason in a while either. We went downstream swapping the lead until we reached screaming right where we eddied out and finally caught up with Jason. He was out of his boat enjoying the sun.
At this point we all enjoyed the sun and caught our breath for a little bit, Jason and I were talking and both decided it was high but we ran it a little higher last year. We finally put in and ran the next rapid, juicy but fun. After this we only had Climax left. Finally we reached Climax, Jason said he was going to run the gut of the drop, which I had decided to be a bad idea. As we approached it, Jason was going straight for the middle and I started heading left but still watching him disappear over the horizon line. I saw him go over the drop and I waited and waited and waited until he finally came into view down stream. After I met up with him down stream he realized that he just went through the biggest hole on the run, which at this level it Huge! After Climax the run normally mellows out to class II-III, but at this level it was solid III-IV big water, huge waves and holes the rest of the way down. Everyone had a great time and we would all do it again.
~Nate~