Thompson River PFD

Thompson River AW BETA: https://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/River/detail/id/1133/

Dennis Gilfillan, Josh Dalton, Matt Dalton and I were blessed with the perfect day to get our Thompson personal first descent with bluebird skies, great medium level and temp over 60° in January. We met up with Dennis’ friend, Stephen, who had caught this run a few times. He was a good guide to help show us down this steep piece of whitewater. This run was by far the steepest piece of gradient I’ve ever fired down in a kayak!

I got into a little trouble in the third drop on the run at the rooster tail at the bottom of the slide and got knocked into the adjacent hole backed up by a wall on the right and a rock shelf downstream. I got window shaded, worked in the hole and had to swim. I cleaned up my mess with the help of my crew in the pool below and got my mind back in gear to fire down the first BIG slide (next rapid). I had a great line getting past the very gnarly sieve halfway down the slide doing about mach1. Then I clipped the dome splitting the current at the bottom sending me into the air out of control and landing sideways in the pool below. I was halfway ejected out of my cockpit upon landing while flipping over, so I took a second swim after getting the wind knocked out of me on impact. I was really feeling like a beater by this point… However the crew was patient and let me hit the reboot button one more time.

I finished the rest of the run in better form and I came away amazed from my first full incredible Jocassee run! There were some big drops to send thunder boofs and slides that were mind blowing! It was a big day for sure and I’m really pumped to catch this run with a great crew. It was awesome to catch up with another great crew while we were in there: Nick Fiedler, Micah Cox, Morgan Wright and friends.

Josh captured my line on the first BIG Slide in this video:

Wesley Bradley enjoying a relaxing day in the sun from Joshua Neal Dalton on Vimeo.

Check out my full photo essay of the trip at

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10156988674553205&type=1&l=aa398079f4

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