Tomata at Flood

La Tomata Bonita!

If your following the story at all I left you at me being scared as we drove over the bridge seeing the swollen river. Well it was, HUGE!! We all hopped out of the car and ran down to see an amazing sight. The gorge was raging high spraying out mist and leaving us in the state of ´ahhh´ like the little kid in a candy store. Even though the actual falls looked amazing, good to go, and soft, the whole picture was very scary. The water was mocking into the next set of rapids which include a nasty ledge hole, almost unrunable at these flows, and Second Tomata, absloutly hidious with water in it.

Anywho, most of us decided that it was just too dangerous to risk a possible swim off the next falls, meaning almost cirtin death, but Tyler Bradt and Raffa Ortiz saw the bright side of things. Tomata one was much better looking with this much flow.

Tyler lining it up for the middle line, off the brown monster.

Everone got ready which took forever, with the cameras, and safety then they fired it off. Brooks Baldwin was actualy hooked on to the cable which crosses the river over the falls and shot video for their upcoming flic The Source. He got some very cool unique shots of the falls.

Ty went first, pitch-poling off the middle, imploding his deck, and losing his paddle to the mucky muck down river. He did make the river left eddy where Ian waited for safety.

Raffa half way down going flat already. clenching the cheeks!!

Raffa wemt next taking the left line with too much speed and boofing out landing flat off the 65 foot falls. We were all very worried for his back, but when he gave a big hoot, we knew he was doing fine.

The two of them including Ian had to asend out of the gorge about 80 feet which took forever. The lines I have seen off of Tomata make it seem like one of the hardest drops to stick. The lip of the drop is so vertical that finding that nice angle and speed is very chalanging.

Once everyone was out of the canyon we finally left and drove over the pass to Xalapa to met the rest of the group. We all went to bed early with thoughts of committing canyons and mandatory waterfalls in our dreams.

Later E.G.