It looks like the road to Mt Hood Meadows will open Saturday morning which is good news all around. To celebrate, there is a party at River City Saloon in Hood River on Thursday, December 7th at 8 PM that benefits the PNW Amateur Snowboard Series/Tour. The cover is $5 or $3 if you have a Meadows pass.

The Pilgrims beat the Indians 49-42 in a championship football match yesterday. The pilgrims dominated the first half, heading into the beer break with a 35-14 lead. The second half was dominated by the Indians, until the last few minutes when the Pilgrmis pulled out the win.

The play of the game was a 30 yard diving catch on fourth down which tied the game 42-42 with just seconds left. This was quickly followed by an interception and touchdown for the Pilgrims to win the game in sudden death overtime.

Today we ran the Dee to Tucker section of the Hood River with a couple of rafts and our new friend Amy in a safety kayak. We put in on the East Fork of the Hood River and ran that for a mile or so down the confluence with the West Fork, which was beautiful.

The East Fork was pretty narrow and continuous which made it fun. Once we hit the West Fork, the action eased up for a while and Geoff was claiming that he could (and was going to) duckie this run. His attitude changed a bit after some of the more exciting rapids near the end. We took out at Tucker Bridge where the gauge read five feet which Amy said was a medium-high flow.

This afternoon Zach and I went for a bike ride. We drove over to the Washington side and attempted a trail near the sincline. I was riding Hata’s bike which is out of tune and way to small for me. Getting ready in the parking lot I felt very under geared. Zach and everyone else there had their cool fancy mountain bikes, helmets and crash gear. Then there I was with a beater bike with a duct tape seat and my beanie, I forgot my river helmet.

We proceeded down the road and past the first trail. I didn’t notice it but Zach said, “I think that’s the trail.” We turned around and started up. I got about 100ft in the lowest gear I could get the bike into, and that was slipping. I jumped off and started to push. I pushed that damn bike most of the time. I would get on for the flats or occasional down hoping I could control my speed with brakes that hardly worked. My front brake worked much better than my rear, which is “suck” for going downhill. After pushing for the better part of about forty-five minutes I let Zach continue without me. He asked one of the other riders we saw out there if there were other trails and found out that we were going up one of the steepest downhills. I love being the new guy in town. I made it back down at a conservative speed and felt like I got my butt kicked. I’m looking forward to trying this again on a different bike on one the easier trails.

So we thought we’d try podcasting and put together a quick video about our first week in the Hood.

Check out Livin’ in the Hood One.

Today we drove to Washington for our first run on the White Salmon. We did the normal run that starts at a place called BZ Corner and takes out at a bridge below Husum Falls. The commercial companies do runs that put in above and take out below where we did, but we think we did the best part of the run.

We think we did the run at about 3 feet on the gauge. At this flow, whitewater starts off with fun, continuous rapids and some meaty drops. The tight gorge and beautiful forest make for some prettty nice scenery. We were most impressed by the fun roller coaster boat ramp down to put-in.

At the end, we decided to run Husum Falls. This isn’t like Tappan “Falls” on the Middle Fork or Black Bar “Falls” on the Rogue, it’s a legitimate 14 foot waterfall that is run by some commercial companies. Big fun.

This morning we woke up early and paddled the three miles below some dam on the Hood River and took out in town. We like to think that we did the post-flood first decent of this mighty stretch of river. We heard someone did the run later in the day, and we’re stoked to have beaten them. First D, baby!

The flow was about 2500 cfs and the river was a muddy brown. We were all impressed by the continuous nature of the run and the fun rapids. We thought the river was Class III, but very continuous at these flows so near Class IV.

There was a sketchy part near the end where the sediment had filled in the riverbed below a railroad bridge. Just above this railroad bridge is a rapid that runs up against a wall on the left bank. Below here, the river has a weird feel to it and it funnels down towards a railroad bridge. It was tough to eddy out above the bridge on the right and it would have been scary to run under it. Luckily we all were able to get out and portage on the right hand bank.

The drive from the take-out to Adam and Hata’s place was clocked at four minutes which made us all extremely happy.

We arrived in Hood River last week in time to be a part of the biggest flood anyone can remember with the Hood River near it’s banks, with dark brown water, and huge trees floating down. By the afternoon, the Columbia had a huge debris field just below the confluence with the Hood River.

Adam and Hata went to go check out the White Salmon. Where they “got to watch 30 f*$&# foot longs surf Big Brother. [They] also got to watch the upstream dam spill.” We then joined kayak water polo at the pool.