The Epic Story of the Log in Dagger Falls

The first big river on this Spring's Idaho trip was the Middle Fork Salmon. Five of us launched on 5/19 and took off on 5/22, perfect to hit this year’s peak of 7.3 ft. Phil and Adam paddled their playboats, Jake and I were in our cats, and Amanda rowed a 14’ round boat with incredible style. The weather was perfect, the food was great, the group dynamic was as good as it gets, the hotsprings were the ideal temp, we met cool people, and the whitewater was awesome!!! All told, this was one of the best river trips I have ever been on.

In order to run the Middle Fork in the spring you have to start on one of it's tributaries, Marsh Cr. This is necessary because the road to the normal put-in is blocked by snow until early June most years. Marsh Cr. has a reputation for being full of wood and has been the site of many epic adventures in the past. This year Marsh was relatively free of wood and was actually enjoyable instead of just being a necessary evil for the rest of the trip to happen. The last drop before the normal put-in for the Middle Fork is Dagger Falls, a giant Class V monster of a rapid with a brutal portage.

We arrived at Dagger Falls to find the bank lined by freaked out paddlers with whistles and throwbags waving at like crazy fools to eddy out. My first reaction was, ‘Shit, someone died! Hopefully they just have ropes in the river or there is wood in the falls.’ The Dagger scout is pretty hard to miss. Bridge over river. Check. Giant eddy with stairs leading to it. Check. Thundering Class V clearly audible around the corner. Check. Why people were offering to throw me bags as I made the easy pull into the eddy is beyond me. Anyway, I looked at the first competent seeming person and asked what was wrong and if our assistance was needed. “Nothing is wrong we just wanted to make sure you guys knew this is the portage.” Portage?

I had a quick look at the falls to make sure it was wood free and to get my bearings. Jake and Amanda both decided they didn’t feel up to funning the falls. We had met three extremely competent Boise catboaters earlier in the day and they agreed to run Blue Angel style with me for safety and off we went. Four cats four clean lines. The three Boise cats agreed to set safety while I ran Amanda's raft through and Phil and Adam decided to fire it up in their kayaks. Raft and two kayaks, three more clean lines. At this point our group has just one more cat at the top of the falls and the Boise crew graciously agreed to set safety for me while I ran the final cat through the falls.

I jogged back to the top of the falls and took a breather for a second to get my game face on for round three then hopped in Jake's cat and pulled out of the eddy. I was in the swirly room above the falls getting boiled and swirled around similarly to my previous two runs when all of a sudden I experienced what can only be described as whiplash. It took a split second to realize that something totally unexpected was going on and I turned around to see the two foot diameter butt end of a 60’ pine tree between my tubes and pushing on my cat frame. At this instant the thing was lined up perfectly behind me and pushing me off line and sideways into a part of Dagger falls I had no interest in investigating. My first instinct was to get ahead of the thing so I started pushing on the oars like a crazy fool, but I quickly realized the insanity of dropping into Dagger Falls with a tree chasing me. My second instinct was, ‘Get me out of here before I die.’ I pushed harder than I ever have for the fish ladder on river left and abandoned ship in one magnificent leap. I mantled up onto the concrete of the fish ladder and turned around just in time to see the log mash Jake’s cat into the boulder that forms the lip of the falls. The log then released and chundered on through the falls followed closely by another huge tree trunk and a full tree with attached limbs and greenery.

All three trees disappeared around the corner and I turned my attention back to Jake's pinned cat. His boat was pinned, bow upstream, right at the lip of the falls with the only damage being a mangled oarlock and a broken oar shaft. Realizing that I would only be rowing with one oar over the falls backward I hopped back in the cat and bounced it a couple of times so it would release. I promptly flipped in the hole at the bottom of the falls and climbed into the cockpit of the upside down cat. My safety chased and we herded the cat into the eddy at Boundary Cr. We reflipped, replaced the oar and oarlock and proceeded to have the best MFS trip ever.

All told, I feel incredibly fortunate to have escaped the nightmare situation of being pushed around by wood above a big Class V with only a broken oar and oarlock. This could have turned out very badly! I learned this lesson and learned it well, I will always look upstream before pulling out of an eddy!