PADDLE BOATIN' BIG FALLS
SOUTH FORK PAYETTE - CANYON RUN
By Greg Briggs


Photos by Katie Hanson

In late September, I was contacted by my friend Steve Boren (of Bear Valley Raft Company) in regards to a late season South Fork of the Payette canyon trip.  I was unable to make it, but Steve ended up going and when he returned, he stated that he thought a possible line was developing in the rapid know as Big Falls.  He said it looked very tough, but wanted me to take a look at it to see what I thought.

On October 3rd 2000, we decided to go in and take a look with the outside chance of running it.  On the drive up, we stopped at the big falls overlook, and I could tell that even at fall flows, it was still going to be a difficult run.  We put in at Pine Flats hot springs and started our descent to the falls.  There were three of us in the crew:

Scott Hall (bow right) – Firefighter, member of the Boise Water rescue team, commercial guide for Mackey Bar

Steve Boren (bow left) – Part owner of Bear Valley River Company, excellent boatman with many years on the river.

Greg Briggs (Guide) – Also on the Boise Fire Water Rescue team and a part time commercial guide for Action Whitewater on the Middle Fork of the Salmon.

We also had a girl by the name of Katie Hanson come along as photographer.  She paddled the upper section but got out to do photos at Big Falls.

We were paddling a 12’ SOTAR raft with 18-inch main tube.  

We decided to do the trip as low key as possible.  We wanted to be able to make our own decision to run it or not, and did not want to have the pressure of 6 or 8 people lined up with cameras pushing us to go.

We arrived at Big Falls at about 1:00 in the afternoon and walked down to take a look.  It was much harder looking than Steve had made it sound.  Granted the river was lower than usual, but there was still a tremendous amount of power to be dealt with.  The water was moving very fast and violently.  Here is a brief rundown of what we saw.

Big Falls drops about 30 –32 feet depending on what source you read.  At the flow we ran it at (roughly 325 cfs) the rapid could be broken down into 4 drops.

The first one is about a 7-foot drop over about 15-20 feet horizontal.  If this drop were by itself with a pool after it, I would rate it at class IV.  This drop has a fairly tricky convergence of currents on the right side at the bottom.  A fairly powerful lateral wave developed off the right side, and while not gigantic, one would not want to commit an error here with the rest of the rapid still remaining.  The top drop looked like it needed to be run as far river left as possible.  It is more of a vertical falls on the left side, but you stay away from the tricky lateral.  I anticipated exiting this falls on a line that was left of center preparing for the middle two drops.

    

After the first drop is a quick moving flat section about 30 feet long.  There are some domers throughout this pool limiting the chances of maneuvering from side to side.  We were expecting to be on the left side here, but not too far left because the water is surging over a slanted slab of rock that leads into a crevice, that would just be a bad place to be.  If you are where you want to be, you will be about 2 feet off this slab as you line up for the second drop which is an eight footer (roughly) leading into a hole.  The water is traveling very quickly as it enters this hole.  The momentum in the water created by the first drop is building and the rapid starts coming real quick at this point.  At the base of this second falls, the water jets down under a boil created by a very large rock positioned in the center of the river.  This is what we determined to be the crux of the rapid.  While navigating this hole, you have to be very aware of the monstrous rock in the center because you have to ride up on it’s boil, and then execute a turn 90 degrees to the left to line up for the third drop, a 4-5 falls, undercut on river left.  Oh yeah, make sure you don’t flip on this huge rock as you are doing all the other stuff.  This second and third drop combo is real tough and hard to figure out from the bank.  Most of the current is under the boil and tough to read.  It is also moving incredibly fast.  If this drop stood by itself, I would have to rate it class V.  Just a real tough combo move.

        
After exiting this middle section, you find yourself lining up for a huge wall, and then once off the wall, you have the large falls at the bottom.  This wall has a fair amount of current going up against it but a solid "high side" will keep the boat level.  You just have to realize that as you are coming off this high side, you will have about 3 feet to start preparing for the final drop.  The bottom falls is right at about 11 feet of vertical.  It empties into a huge pool that is very slowly recirculating.  The boil line is also about 15 – 20 feet downstream, so it is not quickly punched.  The one benefit to this slow recirculating, is that even if you get caught in it, you can probably paddle through it and exit out the bottom.  All in all, we determined that if we run it we were definitely going to be real busy from top to bottom.  Due to the aerated water and limited buoyancy, a swim here would be very bad.
        
After our scout, we were a little hesitant to attempt the run.  We walked up and down several times talking about every scenario possible.  There were a lot of places where problems could occur and the swim would be not one little bit of fun.  We decided to try a partial run through the lower falls just to see how we felt about the boat and crew.  We put in right below the crux and paddled out the river left eddy right above the lower falls.  To increase our ability to "punch" the holes, we decided to move Scott and Steve back off the bow to a point where they straddled the front thwart.  By doing this (taking the weight off the bow), we were able to keep the bow from burying too deep after the drop. We ran it and had a perfect run.

I then went up and looked at the drop top to bottom and decided that I was wiling to guide it if my crew was willing to paddle.  We talked about it and then decided to try it.  I believe it was at this point that we also might have done another first; we did a reverse portage of big falls.  We got to the top and with our photographer ready, we pushed off.  I tell you, the scout and the beach scenes were really scary, and at times it was tough to even breath, but once we pushed off, my mind cleared and all you could see were the drops.

        

We hit the top falls perfect.  Our only problem was that on our exit, we did not get quite the push I expected from the lateral on the right, and the boat tracked quite a ways towards the right side.  This made our entry into the second falls a bit different than I expected.  We ended up dropping into the second falls about 8 feet further right than I wanted.  This set us up square for the rock in the center.  Steve and Scott did an excellent job through this part.  While scouting, I told them that should we hit this rock, they had to high side and then make certain that our bow got lined up straight for the third drop.  I was in back draw stroking as hard as I could to slow down the back end and Steve and Scott literally grabbed the rock and pushed the bow into the slot.  We ended up entering the third drop perfectly on the far right side.  Even with the perfect entry, we were still slammed into the undercut on the left.  This is probably the closest we came to flipping.  In the pictures you can see the boat on about a 40-degree angle as we get shot through the slot.  If your raft is off by a foot or more, this will probably be a flip and the swim would be very bad.  As it was however, we made the move.  We went into the wall above the bottom drop, and with a solid high side, we stayed upright and turned into the bottom drop.  I threw in one last draw stroke to turn us square and we were through.  What a relief it was to have that one behind us.
    
Over all, this is probably the hardest rapid I have ever done in a paddleboat.  I don’t recommend trying this rapid, and I will probably never do it again.  That second/third drop is just too sketchy in a paddleboat.  The cost of a flip or swim here are too great.  If you ever try this for yourself, remember to make sure everyone in the boat is very competent and is comfortable swimming in whitewater.  Each person need to know the game plan cause there just isn’t enough time to try to yell out "Hey Scott, would you push the bow off those rocks?"  All the strokes need to be talked about before the run.  We found that unlike standard class IV and V, on this drop we needed to have each person have a conceptual idea as to where we wanted to be and how we wanted to get there.  Very few commands were called in the water, most were decided on before we launched.  With two hours of scouting, we knew exactly where we wanted the boat and each person did what they needed to keep it on line.  With everyone in the same mind set, we had ourselves a successful run!
        

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