Skate Park!

Summit creek was discovered last year by a young group of Washingoton brothers known as the Wells Bros. They live in Trout Lake only 5 miles from the put in of the infamous Green Truss run on the White Salmon and have been searching the area for little stashes like this. We had two good days on this creek last season getting the second run down the Skate ramp falls and the first descent of the huge top canyon falls...Those updates can be seen here Summit Creek.

The basic deal with this run is that, you need a bit if rain to pump the normally dry river bed up to enough water to scrape down this high mountain drainage ditch. Once you get the water you need it is an amazing place with two very steep and clean basalt gorges to run. This day we got a bit of a later start and the water only looked good for the lower gorge…so we rallied up to the Indian Reservation to get some “Skate Park” action.

Getting down from the put in to the goods on this river is kind of a task, as the river is littered with bad trees and sticks slowing your down stream progress. Once the trees open up and the river bed goes to bedrock, all is well. The sort of un-seen Skate Park drop is the main course in this bottom gorge. This drops a total of about 60ish feet, with a huge transition and flake about 10 feet above the pool, where you catch some serious high speed air time. It can look very intimidating from the top, but normally runs better than it looks. Stories of bad lines and huge hits from this Spring had us scared to give her a go… I read this quote on Facebook of the first runs from this year;

Rush Sturges- kicked the season off with a bang... Filmed Boomer running a burly low volume 60-70 ftr on Summit Crk... then Boomer, Lane + LJ all taking massive hits on the 60 ft tranny drop. Burl gnarr. Carnage segment is off to a good start... No more please.
April 1 at 11:45pm · Comment · Like

Those are my boys as well, so I know it was for real. I had that in my mind as I said I would go first, but after a few moments of scouting and checking the scene, it looked the same as when I had been there last year. So I went for it.

Having a very smooth line throughout the whole drop. It's over before you know it. You just end up flying through the air, hopefully up right and straight.

Todd Running second with a cool line through the trany.

This is what happens if you go too far left on the drop...its just not smooth over there.

This has got to be one of the easiest going big drops in the world when run right. With no hit or whiplash you free fall for 50 feet and smoothly go from vertical to flying horizontal through the air. I went off with a good line off the flake at the lip and had a fine very soft line down to the pool. It had been a whole year since the last time I had run this drop and it was just as exciting as the first time. Watching all my friends run down the falls after me was a good time alone. 3/5 of our group had good lines the other two took crazy bounces off the bottom transition, but ended up being just fine.

The next set of slide keeps you on your toes as well. The first of which is a drop named the ”Well” because it drops into a deep crack where you can’t tell what will happen to you if you go there. Only Todd had a good line down this rapid..,the rest of us almost flipped in the crack leaving us discombobulated and out of control through the rest of the boxed in section.

Myself in the gnarly crack falls they call "The Well".

After that the creek pretty much totally looses its quality elements and turns in to a shallow tree infested mank-0-fest once again…but it is all worth the hassel to get in there to run and see the beautiful gorges. This was a run that I didn't think I was going to get on this year, but thanks to all the rain we got out there and had a good time with Parker, Erik, Grif, and Todd. Thanks to Candace for the sick shots once again. She has just been killing it, these shots weren't photoshopped at all just taken right in good light conditions. Here's a little parting shot...

Gringo and I chilling in the Glenwood valley overlooking Mt. Adams.


Later E.G.