Lewis River's Lower Falls had always been an exciting spot to visit, but it wasn't until this year that I'd heard of people kayaking the falls. After a summer full of creeking I thought that running this waterfall would be a great "next step." So one Saturday afternoon in August my brother, Tate Taylor and I drove up to the falls with boats, cameras, and safety equipment. After lots of scouting, and putting together a bomber safety set up, it was time to run the falls. This falls was pretty straight forward, but paddling over the 6ft. drop right before the falls was a little tough, and the rock jutting out from river-right at the bottom was quite intimidating. After the first ledge I got one last boof stroke in befor sailing over the 40ft. waterfall. Hitting the bottom straight on I could feel myself go deep as well as my paddle bounce off my nose. After coming out and rolling up I paddled to the take out; everything went well except for my bloody nose. (Unfortunatly, towards the bottom of the drop I didn't tuck as much as I had hoped and upon the force of impact, my paddle hit my face giving me a pretty bad bloody nose.) Next it was my bro's turn, so I talked him through the line and strokes as best I could, then went to set up safety. Watching my brother go down was almost as scary as going down it myself. My brother's boof stroke wasn't perfect, and it resulted in his barrel role down the falls. Brendan was quick to come out of the hole at the bottom, but I noticed that his skirt had imploded, and his boat was half full of water. Luckily he was able to swim with boat and paddle to the take out. All in all this was a killer trip, and I'm looking forward to running it and its surrounding drops in the future.
My brother and I set safety below the falls.
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