Truss Tales

This is an old trip report that Dana Kopf posted.

From: riverrunner at gmail.com (d.a.n.a)
Date: Mon Mar 7 09:37:49 2005
Subject: [whitewateraddiction] Trip Report - Green Truss, White Salmon

The Green Truss section of the White Salmon is a class V+ waterfall run in Southern Washington near Hood River OR. Yesterday Keith Pearen and I from Corvallis I finally went up to run the truss with some great Portland boaters. It was kind of a circus, there were half a dozen hard shells, 5 IKs and two rafts. Keith and I ran R2 in his 13 foot raft and neither of us had ever done the run. We just ran Tumwater Canyon a couple weeks ago so we felt pretty good about the whole thing.

Val Shaull was the mastermind behind the rafting end of the trip and he set up a nice rope lowering system which the kayakers gladly took advantage of also. At least two kayakers told us we had balls or something like that for taking a raft down there. We said we didn't know any better since it was our first time which was good for a laugh.

There are many class III and IV rapids which I don't recall, but I will highlight the IV+ and V's which I remember pretty well. The first is Meatball, where the river squeezes around a boulder. Of course the rafts got wedged but a shove while out of the boat got us through.

Next we had a 10 ft waterfall called Bobs which we ran cleanly on the right. It has another nice 5 ft mini fall just downstream.

After that you come to Big Brother - a 25 footer with a cave at the bottom. I didn't really think too long about this one and we portaged, although some of the kayakers and IKs ran it without too much trouble.

Just below Big is Little Brother which is a 14 footer - steep and verticle on river left and more sloping on river right. Vals raft ran right but we decided on the hero left route. Something went wrong, I can't say what, but we both swam and I got my bell rung. I remember pushing off the bottom under the falls and once on the surface swimming hard to escape the boil.

The next rapid is called Double Drop, an 18 foot two teir waterfall which graces the cover of Washington Whitewater. From what I can tell no one has any problem with the first drop but anything can happen going into the second drop. We had a little sideways action in the second fall but managed to pull it out. You may be able to see a photo of this here http://www.pdxkayaker.org/photos/). Look for the red raft.

Next are two longer more traditional rapids called upper and lower ZigZag. Below lower ZigZag is where Val and crew got into trouble. They got turned sideways against a boulder and filled up with water. We had no time to stop and boated right over them as did three kayakers! They managed to get out onto the wrap rock and the rest of us spent the next hour setting up Z-drags and getting their boat unwrapped.

After that excitement Vals boat opted for the ghost boat run of BZ falls (a V+ 15 footer). Keith and I decided to go for it. Our plan was simple. Get to the lip of the falls and get down and hang on. It worked, except at the bottom we started getting sucked back in to the hole. This is where the draw stroke comes in handy and some cheering from the bank, so yeah we made it! The only thing left was to carry the boat out the middle white put-in.

Flow was 2 ft on the Husam guage (low but not bad). Some photos from this trip can be seen at pdxkayaker.org on the recent photos section. Some other, photos and description of the run can be seen here http://www.oregonkayaking.net