Kalama

I was one of the lucky few to get invited on a spring Upper Kalama Kampout by this year's permitholders. The river is a delightful with fantastic water quality, good clean rapids, and pretty scenery with cliffs and eagles. The bigleaf maples were just leafing out, and the dogwoods were in full bloom.

We ran it two days in a row at 440 and 420 cfs on the gauge below. I would call this low, but not very low, because there are still multiple clean lines through every drop. You could certainly go lower--not sure what the minimum is. Before the gate was closed we used to come in here without a gauge and run it high--it has a lot less playful features when high. This time I brought my half slice and did not regret it; there were lots of fun surfing waves and moves to make in the rapids.

The URL for the gauge changed last year, and currently it's https://www.licor.cloud/dashboards/public/4c98589d-ef81-4d4f-9573-bc6062d4aae0/true?filters={%22davra-timeselector%22:{%22type%22:%22relative%22,%22unit%22:%22weeks%22,%22value%22:1,%22live%22:false}}.

Double drop is, IMO, more challenging at low water than high. Perhaps this is because folks told me to run right: I found the right side of the ledge terrifying due to perceived pin risk (between R wall and whatever rock is causing the water pile in the middle). On day 2 I ran left and it looks to me like left or center can lead to a good boof and controlled exit. Some folks went straight over the woop-dee-woo (pile of water) in the middle and of those, a high proportion got awesome backenders and more excitement in the hole.