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First Canoe Descent of Husum Falls? First Canoe Descent of Husum Falls?
(A "Can You Top This" thread from rec.boats.paddle)

I ran my BlueHole 17A down Husum Falls (White Salmon River, Washington State) in June or July of 1980 (or 81) at the end of a day-long whitewater run from several miles farther upstream. At that time, I was one of only a few open boaters in the Pac NW, and after that run, several outfitters told me that as far as they knew, no one else had run it in anything other than kayak. Does anyone know of any earlier canoe runs of the falls? I'm certain there must be some, as 1980 is quite recent, but if not, that'd be fun to know.... riverman

Well now, back in '53, after getting out of a stint flying a Grumman Goose over the paddies of South Korea, I managed to stuff that plane into my stateside luggage, and when I got home I had enough aluminum to pound into shape a serviceable 21 foot canoe. With it stuffed with sawdust for flotation, a couple a seat-bottoms for paddles, and the plane's tires wrapped around our middles for life vests, my bud and I launched off that Husum Falls before we realized it was there. Trouble was, with such a long canoe the bow got hung up in the bridge, while the stern was wedged into the rocks at the top of the drop. Talk about aluminum canoes getting stuck at the wrong times! We sat there until the canoe filled with water, the sawdust got waterlogged, the hull folded in half, and all dropped into the aerated water at the base of the falls. Nothing of that trip, neither boat nor paddlers, were heard of nor seen ever again.
Brad

Acturrly, Brad, I b'leive me and a native brudder of mine 'n me wuz prababbly the first 'uns down that stretch in aught three. In late Spring, I thunk. You see me 'n Big Boil on the Butt (BBoB fer short) .... wail, we got ta lookin' at Hussiesum Falls AFTER Lil' Daisy Foot and Tiny Squaw with Big Mountains started arguin 'bout how thar warn't NO Brave alive that'd take one of our birchees (these were sum early Dagger designs made of this bark stuff, you see) off dem Fells' And they offered some "special incentives" to the 1st dumbass that'd do it !! Wail, you can only imagine how'd this got to BBoB 'n me !!! Whewweeeeee !!! I meant warhoppin' and mustard greens down the pants couldn't a stopped us !!!! 'Specially the thought of ... Big Mountains in our own teepee/condo. So ya see we made a race outta it. Wail I got to the lip first in my (dagger) birchee only to look over my shoulder 'n see BBoB rite on my arse with his birchee .... but cause he's such a fat sob his damn canoe wuz almost takin' water over them poplar gunwales .... that's when I realized I wuz gonna DIE if I went over furst and that overfeed BBoB brave wuz to come down on toppa me .... SO I guess you knowd what I did ..... Yepp dat's right. So you see Myron the Buck couldn't a been da furst, 'n we everdently had you beat by 50 sum years. ....BUT you'd a been da furst 'un in an aeroplain !!!
Barnett

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Now just a consarned minute here, Brad & Barnett (sounds like a good name for a hardware store, eh?). After we had to abandon our keelboats in the upper reaches of the Misery River (a headwater stream known today as either the Buttis or the Beaverhead; I cain't rightly remember which) and crisscrossed the Great Divide at Lemming Pass, Lost Trail Pass, and finally into the Bitterroot Mountains at Lolo Pass (on Forest Service Road 500) where we took almost a month off waitin' fer the snow to melt. Once Spring had finally set in, we cobbl'd us up some of them big ol' thirty-foot hollow-log war canoes and headed down the Clearwater, the Snake, and the Columbia, and finally found the Pacific Ocean, just right about where it should have been. But what I'm gettin' at is this: we took a lotta side-trips and detours (I mean, "Discovery" was our last name, eh?) and on ONE of THOSE trips, (I remember it was just like yesterday -- 'course, I cain't remember just what exactly it was I had for breakfast yesterday) I was paddling bow, Meriwhether Lewis was in the back seat steering, and ol' Bill Clark was kinda hunkered down in the middle, hangin' on fer dear life. Well. As the bow paddler, I was the first one over the Falls, so it seems perfectly clear to me that ***I*** made the first descent of... what was the name again, of that little rapid? -Ol' older-than-he-looks Darth

I'll have you know that one of my ancestors - "Oarman" went over that drop with Leif Ericson back in the middle ages. Naturally, they did it canoe made Viking style out of heavy oak with broken oars as paddles. They did, however, have the same motivation as Barnett, as there were 2 beautiful fire haired wenches, and a native American Princess offering their gratitude to the successful runners of the drop. Sorry guys, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-Grandaddy beat y'all!



Ah, ya bunch of green whippersnappers with yer newfangled birchees and hollow logs and oaken longship-canoes. Me and my pal Ugh crossed over the Bering Sea during the year of the "big ice", chasing a herd of mastodon. Chased them shaggy bastards all the way to what yer calling Husum Falls before Ugh managed to bring one down with his pointy stick. Personally, I'd always thought them pointy sticks was just a passing fad, and stuck with my trusty rock, which never needed sharpening. Anyway, Ugh drops this 'don right up near the lip of the falls, and while we're skinning it out and tussling over who gets the liver, Ugh gets this strange look in his eye. I thought maybe he'd eaten some of those funny mushrooms again, but he commences building a frame outa saplings, tying it all together with mastodon sinew. I'm just kicked back on my haunches, scratchin' and watching. You never know just what ole Ugh is up to. I remember when he caught that lightning strike and set it in a pile of wood shavings. Pretty yellow dancing magic. I don't think he really knew it could jump into his beard like that. Ugh looked better cleanshaven anyway. Then Ugh commences wrapping that mastodon skin around the frame he made, chanting the mysterious words "Planing hull or displacement hull?...planing hull or displacement hull?". Soon he's got a giant bean pod with a round opening on the top. Ugh picks up a long piece of wood that is flattened at one end, carries the shaggy bean pod up to the edge of the falls and gets in, kneeling in the middle. He pushes the bean pod around on top of the water with the stick. Now that I see how this is working I find a longer stick that is flattened on both ends and offer this to him. He looks at me disdainfully and twirls his single flattened-end stick over his head. Ugh is kinda quirky like that sometimes. While Ugh is twirling his stick the bean pod floats down to the edge of the falls and, to my horror, Ugh disappears over the edge. I run to the base of the falls to find see the bean pod floating upside down. Ugh is nowhere in sight. Suddenly the bean pod flips over and I see Ugh, still floating in the pod with a shit eating grin on his face. When he gets to shore, I'm so impressed that I give him my half of the mastodon, and offer to keep him in victuals and provide skins for more bean pods if he'll keep going over falls like that. So, you see, not only did Ugh make the first descent of Husum, but he was the first C1 paddler, the first to roll and the first sponsored boater too.

Mike "Gurrr" McCrea

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