Seasons are Shifting

By: Tyler Bradt

By KAVU

October 27^th, 2020

Summer '20

As the season shifts into a deepening autumn, and we look forward to winter, it’s always fun to reflect on the previous season, the adventures, lessons, and the KAVU days of Summer 2020.

Summer '20 is in of itself a chapter for KAVU. A new season of clothes rolled off the shelf and joined us all on a journey of long days, warm nights, high adventure, and the creation of some incredible memories.

Here are a few of mine:

Packing up to head back to White Salmon was bitter sweet. The rivers had already flowed through the spring season, the infamous rains of the region a distant memory.

The temperate gradient between the coast and the desert creates a world renown wind event of steady consistent Westerlies leaving only a few calm days for paragliding.... and with Covid putting the breaks on social life, I knew this would be a very different summer.

Adventure is good for the soul.....

In early June I loaded up the Jetta with my gear and headed West.

What followed was an incredible summer of work, flying, paddling, and KAVU lifestyle.

I managed to fulfill a paragliding goal by making it from one of our local launches.... back to town. It’s about a 45 km XC flight with some super fun, technical flying.

In the end I managed to make the flight twice. With views of five different volcanoes and beautiful country, these flights were personal, memorable, and amazing.

KAVU days!!

I also tapped into my annual SIV training course with Matt Henzi.

The abbreviation stands for: Simulated Incident In Flight and is important training to maintain a margin of safety and practice the skills necessary to recover the wing should things go wrong. We towed up over a Rife Lake on a beautiful sunny day to practice these skills with radio instruction, over water, and with two reserve parachutes.

Another gem of the summer was that as the snow line rises and rivers drop, one of our favorite rivers hits perfect flows. The Cispus.

Deep in a beautiful old growth forest of cedar and fir, the Cispus is one of the more scenic rivers around and the whitewater is top notch.

I attempted to open a line which I named ‘the Portal’.

Landing off the biggest waterfall into the river left pocket then attempting to paddle behind the waterfall into the pool on the other side of the river.

Ha ha ha!

I made it, but not very convincingly.

As the summer began to wind down, I headed back home to Montana to join my dad and brother on a low water Selway trip.

From a very high water descent at the beginning of the spring, it was amazing to be back here enjoying family, friends, sunshine, and many relaxing days on the river.

Dad, now 80 years young, had an amazing trip.

Kayaking all the rapids and winning more than his fair share of cribbage games from our home made deck of cards. Somehow we had forgotten to bring any but with a pen and paper we created our own and they worked beautifully.