Robert,

Back in my crazier days in my 20's I looked at that narrow boulder strewn whitewater section of mini-falls below Big Eddy on the 'Shou many times before I got up the courage, actually the crazies, to run it in high water with Kevin McKinley (his dad is the former Mayor of Tillamook). That first quarter mile has a hell of a gradient! We put in wide eyed with me on the oars in a custom framed old '6-man' wide tube raft with a special coating from 'Andy & Bax' (they were actually 3-man rafts; 2-man, should be no man, in class 5 rapids as these). We somehow made it down thru there, having to kick off some boulders and using other boulders as intentional pivot helpers. We had on those huge 30# bag rated orange life-jackets, but luckily didn't flip the raft - I don't know how. A game cop who had checked out our truck later saw us pulling the raft out down below this harried section. He told us we were crazy; and that he had helped pull out drowning victims there before. He was really mad at us and let us have the lecture. ... Never again. But we did make it once!

RT