Middle Santiam: The Concussion run.

With all the water out of our rivers and into the ocean, Eric Arlington, Chris Arnold, Gary Truyens, and myself headed down to the M Santiam for some dam released action. The gauge indicated that they were releasing around 2100cfs everyday around 1:00pm. We got to the river around 3:00pm, and it was flowing. The gate to the dam was closed, so we had about a quarter mile hike in.

(gearing up at the gate.)

(The hike.)

When we got to what we thought was the put-in, the gate was locked with a "no trespassing" sign. There was, however, a trail just outside the gate that led to the river without having to trespass.

(Locked gates can suck.)

The run starts off pretty mellow, and gradually increases in difficulty the further downstream you travel. There were some fun playspots up to Swiss Cheese.

(Eric on the first decent play wave.)
(Chris drops in.)





Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of Swiss Cheese or Scrawleys Wall; and the pictures I snapped of Concussion do not do it any justice. I found out about this run while parusing Oregonkayaking.net, and subsequently knew about the extremely dangerous sieve in the middle of this drop. We scouted the nasty sieve, and then ran the rapid without problems. This was a really, really fun rapid that had some huge waves and holes in it. At the bottom of the rapid was an awesome wave with decent eddy service. We played on this wave for about an hour.

(Concussion from downstream. You can see the boulder pile that creates the sieve in the middle of the river.)

( Gary, Eric, and Chris eddied out at the bottom of Concussion, getting ready to surf it up.)
(Eric.)

(Chris.)
(Eric.)


(Gary.)

(Chris.)
(Myself.)

(Chris.)

(Chris trying to loop; which he almost did. It was almost retentive enough to do so. Maybe if we were better playboaters!)

Although this run is short (2 miles), it was well worth the drive from PDX. You can do laps, and it's a relatively easy bike shuttle. You can also extend the run by spending some time on the huge waves that litter this run. I'd say this is the best low-water, summer option we have right now.