What a great year this has been for boating on the Green. This was my 6th trip on the Gorge this year, and my 9th in 6 months. With the heavy snowpack and problems with the dam, we should have lots of opportunities to run the Green this year. This trip had one of the higher flows this year at 1600cfs. We had a good-size group: 2 catarafts, 1 paddle raft, and 6 IKs. There were several swims (one new boater had around 10, but he got back in his boat every time, and he did fine on the toughest rapids) but I was lucky enough not to have any this time.
I did come close to swimming, and the results were pretty spectacular for me. After Paradise, there is a rapid where there is a huge rock on the bottom right. Just left of this is a rock that creates a huge hole. Normally, I run a smaller hole to the left above this and then skirt the huge hole on the left. This time, the first hole knocked me to the right, just in line with the huge hole. I had no choice but to get my boat straight, paddle hard, and hope for an easy swim after the inevitable flip. As I went into the hole, I was covered with water. I felt the boat go up, but instead of getting sucked back down, I popped out of the hole. I spun around to see what happened, and saw that one IKer was swimming right behind me, and another IKer was right behind him. The guy who swam had pushed me out of the hole, which caused him to flip, and the guy behind him pushed him out of the hole. I wish I had video of that pileup!
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