Triplets...BC First Descents

More BC action!

The next two days, Thursday and Friday of last week, were no less exciting than our warm up on Wednesday. With first descents on two different creeks planned, I barely slept on Wednesday night. All I could do was visualize my lines on the big drops that were coming up in the next few days. The two highlights we affectionately named The Triplets and The Twins. The first, was a triple drop, only runnable at super low water levels which we definitely had. It drops 15feet into a cave, out of the cave over another 15+ footer and then directly into the big final drop. The last one is a 15 foot vertical then transition onto a slide dropping 35 feet more vertical at maybe 60 degrees. If you could forget about the scary and difficult cave move, this drop looked like nothing but fun. Add the 15-foot cave drop in and it was down right scary.


Scott runs Triplets.

Scott was feeling fired up after leading this crazy waterfall hunt and finding the sickness, the quality, and the first really big drop of the trip, so he went first. He ramped off the right side of the sharply left sloping drop in hopes of using his downstream angle and speed to avoid getting caught in the deep cave to his left. Maybe 60% of the water was flowing into the cave. Scott hit his planned line perfectly without a fraction of error, however, as we suspected may happen, the wall deflected him and sent him left into the cave. Rolling quickly he was able to lean forward to avoid the cave roof and take a few very strong but horizontal and low strokes to pull himself into the next stage of the drop. He aced the middle and lower drops and came out smiling!


Scott runs Triplets.

Next up I (Trip) decided to run the same line, but not catch the eddy above the first drop in hopes to power past the cave with way more speed than Scott had. This didn’t work. I suffered the exact same fate as Scott. Luckily while filming from the river right cliff I could see that there was an eddy in the back of the cave that looked safe and mellow, so I just rolled up and paddled to the back of the cave, regrouped and ferried into the middle stage. The bottom two drops were ridiculously fun, a perfect 15 footer right into a 45 or 50 foot slide. After the scary first drop was over, we could even enjoy them! No lipshot here, just fun boofing and super fast sliding.


Scott runs Triplets.

UVC student and very talented paddler, McCale (I don’t know his last name!) joined us that day as well and after watching Scott and I run the Triplets, he realized that he had 8 months of sitting in class to think about running the drop. Not wanting to wonder what might have happened if he had run it, he decided to find out. On his final scout I suggested that since Scott and I had both hit our lines, and they didn’t work, maybe he should try a different one. The only real option left was to boof left towards the cave, avoiding the slide on the right that kicked Scott and I into the cave. McCale looked a bit worried about boofing towards a cave, but did, and aced the drop with no problem at all, not even much of a speed check while paddling passed the undercut wall! Very impressive to watch, and he’ll have plenty to think about for the next 8 months.


McCale running Triplets

After the triplets we ran a few more great drops, slightly smaller in size and chose to stick around to run the final drop on the creek, a beautiful 70+ footer we dubbed The Twins, in the morning with perfect sunlight. It was worth it!…


Trip runs Triplets.

Peace,
Trip