I've been thinking about Metlako falls ever since I heard about it. It's always been in my mind that I would want to run it sometime but I never thought that I would any time soon. Then one weekend a crew was going up to run it and unfortunately I couldn't go but my brother went with the group. It was an exciting day for lots of people, including Christie Glissmeyer who set the women's world record and my brother Todd Wells (toddwellswhitewater.blogspot.com) who set the junior world record waterfall.
A long way from the bottom...
A long way from the bottom...
Both ran it clean and had great lines. After my brother came back stoked about the stout drop I was anxious to get there. Pretty randomly Eric Boomer called up my brother yesterday (5-21-09) to go and get some more pictures of the drop. We headed out there and met up with the Huckin Huge crew and started rewarding hike up. When I got to the first view point I saw that the flows were perfect and knew I was gonna give 'er. After scouting the lip and getting your line dialed in my brother and I hopped in our boats and ran the 10ft. boof before the drop. We sat in the pool and waited for all the cameras to get set up then we were ready to go. I was pretty scared at the lip looking over the huge horizon line and watching my brother disappear so quickly but confident that I would stick it. After Cody Howard gave my the OK I peeled out of the pool and paddled slowly toward the lip. Giving a little right rudder and slowly tucking forward as I fell over the lip I let go of my paddle to prevent injuries and kissed the deck. I counted to about 3 mississippi before feeling the hydraulic spin me around a couple of times and flush me out. I really don't remember taking much of a hit at all but resurfacing quickly and sticking my first hand roll, stoked. As soon as I came up I saw and grabbed my paddle. I was happy to come up with my skirt intact and no injuries at all. After a nice paddle to the take out we headed home with a great end to the day.
