click photo for C2 video
THE PADDLER

I spent my summers growing up on a lake (most of the day on/in the water) and the winters in a home with a creek in the back yard--I've had a passion for water my entire life. I've been a competive swimmer, intercollegiate water polo player, water safety instructor, and a canoer/kayaker.

While I grew up canoeing I always wanted to kayak and when living in Japan in the early 90's I got my start on the Tamagawa River just outside of Tokyo at Mitake. I love all types of paddling. My favorite is C2 bow right (nothing matches the beauty of two paddlers totally in sync running a class IV rapid), but usually you can find me in a kayak. I do it all--river running, play boating, steep creeking, waterfall jumping, exploratory, slalom, K1, K2, C1, C2, OC-2, and sometimes you might even catch me in a sea kayak.

My favorite river is the Animas at 4000 cfs--24 miles of continuous class IV+ with three nice class V- rapids. Don't let Animas-La Plata destroy this wonderful river--stay informed and read Cadillac Desert which is required reading for any passionate river person who wants to understand the politics and history of Western water.

I am employed at the University of Washington as research staff in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. My current research is focused on the importance of nutrients from returning salmon on stream ecosystems.

THE SITE

This site first began to take shape in 1997 when Mike Giddings assisted me with the technical aspects of developing an online guide to the Rivers of Wisconsin and Michigan and made space for it on the web. I have since moved to Seattle and the site continues to expand. Currently I use Adobe GoLive to develop and manage the site. It's a great web design program with excellent site management tools. GoLive does not add a bunch of useless crap to your html code and it's very easy to edit the code directly when you do want more direct control.

I do all of my web development on a Macintosh G4 with a Viewsonic monitor. I'm assuming most of my visitors have at least an 800x600 monitor with a decent graphics card (if you have an old PC a lot of the photos will have poor color saturation, even on a new PC the photos may look a little dark). I use the Nikon 990 digital camera, Canon A1 waterproof camera, and Nikon F1 SLR for photography and the digital DCR-TRV7 Sony Handycam for video. People ask how I get the video up on the web so fast (usually the Monday after a weekend run). The answer is iMovie software on the Mac--it's the best for quick editing of clips for web use, but is also great for making movies to distribute on VHS to your friends. Although I use Adobe Premiere for more ambitious video projects, iMovie is the quick and easy solution. I keep the video camera in a Pelican box behind my seat or between my legs and the digital camera in an Ewa Marine flexible plastic housing. Bogen makes a great little tripod for river use.

The images are either shot directly with a digital camera or scanned in from prints or slides. Adobe Photoshop has a neat interface for sizing your images for the web, but here's the method I've always used: size your image apporpriately (a good tradeoff between decent viewing size and effcient file size is 300 x 200 pixels depending of course on how you're using it on the page), save the file in JPEG format (I usually use a setting of 5 for compression), then use unsharp mask to really make the image pop on the screen (slide the scale until you find a setting that looks good). A couple other tricks are to select the boat or gear the paddler is wearing with the magic wand tool and adjust the hue/saturation settings to brighten up the colors. This brings out the paddler and works especially well when you have photos shot on grey days which is most of the time here in the Pacific Northwest.

The site runs on a Linux server.

For a great site that shaped many of my own views on what makes a good web site, check out Philip Greenspun's site at <http://www.photo.net/>. His guide to web publishing can be found on this site.

If you would like to use images or content from this site please ask. I'm very willing to share my work which I produce for all of us to enjoy but you do need to ask--or may the river gods have pity on your poor soul when they serve justice.

REALITY CHECK

This site intended to provide you with a menu of whitewater paddling opportunities found in Washington along with useful information from other parts of the country where I enjoy paddling. The information provided is not comprehensive and does not describe all the potential dangers associated with different rivers. For more complete information consult local paddlers or paddle shops.

The authors and contributors to this site assume no responsibility for any user of this service. It is understood that river running can be very dangerous and physically demading. The user should understand that boating the rivers described may involve serious injury or death. Users of this site must be liable for their own actions. The site is intended for those using decked boats such as kayaks who have obtained instruction in both whitewater paddling and rescue techniques.

The user of this site acknowledges both an understanding and assumption of risk involved in paddlesports. Know your ability level--this site is no substitute for a good guidebook, current information from local paddlers, and common sense.