Another AWESOME day on the Falls at Rock Island!

By Stephen Wright

With the dam releasing a BEEFY 11,000 cfs, the surfing wasn’t great so we headed-out for some high water falls lines and Sieve City action! At this level there are tons of great lines to run all over the falls–probably 20 or more runnable falls here. EJ, Ruth, Clay, Dane and I headed up to the overlook to scout out our lines. Clay and Dane decided to run the tallest single drop–just over 20 feet– while Ruth, EJ, and I would run the sweet double drop a bit farther river left. I headed down first and scrambled-out on an island right on the lip of the falls to shoot photos of the others. I chose a long lens today, which did great things for Dane and Clay’s line, but were a bit tight on EJ and Ruth. It was awesome to see Dane and Clay get so much separation from the curtain with their boofs! Great lines were had by all, so I packed-up and ran down the double drop.

We all then headed-down to scout Sieve City, which was PUMPING. It’s a huge Zambezi-style rapid with massive holes and lots of push. EJ, Nick, and I ran it at around this level 3 days ago in our All Stars. We were all pushed all over the place and went under a few of the holes after CLUTCH quick-time rolls. Check out the video from 3 days ago here. I decided to run first today, and it all went great until the bottom hole, where I tested-out my Hero’s hole-surfing ability. 5-6 vertical feet of foam gave me 30 seconds in heaven before I was almost out of breath and had learned my lesson. Fortunately the hole then let me loose in time to roll up and fist pump-sorry but I don’t have the video of my beatdown yet–it’s on Dane’s camera. We then headed-out to get to work at the JK Plant, having enjoyed another magical high-water day in paradise.

Live from Rock Island, TN,
Stephen Wright

Sieve City video