Whitewater Rafting on the White Salmon River
Our family has gone on a few whitewater adventures, perhaps our earliest experience dating back to our honeymoon in 1995 just south of our location from July 31st. Before that, it was in July of 2012 that we hit up the Cache la Poudre in Colorado and had a small world coincidence when it turned out our river guide was born in Cebu, just like Emily.
For this local trip (just a 1+ hr drive from east Portland) we headed to White Salmon, WA and parked at the rendezvous spot in Northwestern Park. We planned on a full boat with Gabe, Romy, Naomi and myself as well as my cousin and his wife. I did a bit of research and ended up booking our trip with Portland Rafting.
After arrival to the park, we got situated with an orientation talk on the region and the removal of the local dam as well as donning our wetsuits, helmets and booties. (Good thing too knowing the water would be too cold to safely sit in for very long without some deleterious effect.) We boarded the yellow school bus and headed up the river about 8 miles for the put in at the BZ Corner Launch Site. We all lined up to use the bathroom one last time to ensure we would keep our wetsuits clean, then received a more in-depth safety talk. From there the boats were taken down the metal guides to the river…and adventure was had from the very first minute.
Our tour guide Frank was awesome. He had a lot of experience guiding and on rivers throughout the region as a lover of the sport. We had another small world experience as his dad attended Wabash College where Gabe goes way out in Indiana. He expertly trained us to work together as a team and guided us flawlessly (at least it seemed to us) down the class II, III and IV as we headed downstream to Husum Falls (class V). We had opted for the appropriately named “Splashes and Smiles” package (8+ miles, 2.5-3 hrs on the river).
Frank had nothing but good to say about his employer PDX Rafting and shared with us that he appreciated that they were among the smaller outfits who rafted this section of the water, and that they didn’t match inexperienced guides with more challenging guests as can be the case in some other outfits (kinda like hazing the newbies).
Right before the falls, where the boats backed up so the section could be run safely one by one, Naomi hopped out and walked across the bridge to meet up with us on the other side of the falls. The rest of us stayed in the boat and hoped for the best, practicing in our heads a few final times the moves that could save us from disaster. We had already practiced a few times moving our body down to the bottom of the boat, holding our paddles and side rope, and dipping our heads down to brace for impact as we went over the edge. So, we hoped we were ready for showtime.
If you check out The 5 Tallest Commercially Rafted Waterfalls, you’ll learn
“Husum Falls may come in at #4 in height, but it is certainly the steepest commercially run waterfall that is available each summer to run.”
There was a bit of healthy fear and trepidation building up to this class V, but like Frank told us once we had made it through we’d likely think that it wasn’t as big a deal as the buildup to the big event. I remember a brief moment of being completely under water, face and nose solidly blocked by a wall of it even, but then that moment of breaking through to the surface and elation at having run it without falling out. In fact, we had avoided any overboard experiences.
Shortly after Husum, the boats mingled on the waters edge and a few folks jumped from the bridge into the cold river. Eventually we left the rest area with a few in the boat ready to “ride the bull” on the next series of rapids. I remained a paddler, ready to assist the bull riders.
One of the big differences for us when comparing our experience to other whitewater rafting adventures comes from the river itself. It was much more narrow of a river, with high walls to our sides and rapids packed pretty solidly from the very beginning of our run. Around every bend in the river came its own mystical beauty, with misty multilayered moisture settling in within reach of our hands above. The air was much warmer in the mist, so we took advantage several times to a quick warm up as we floated serenely in calm patches not so secretly wishing we were owners of some of those original cabins set up ages ago along the river banks.
