One of my least favorite things about scuba diving (despite all of the things I love about it!) is all of the gear required to get into the cold water up here in the northwest. It takes so long that by the time I finally get all of my stuff together I almost don’t want to go anymore! Jason and Ian have been freediving and spearfishing for years now, so Jason bought me my own wetsuit and told me that I was going to give it a shot. Turns out that the boys might be onto something.
Ian had been driving around for a few days while Jason and I finished up our week at work and found this super cool spot in a small river to dive in. Actually getting into the water was a super sketchy scramble down a loose cliff while holding onto tree roots. However, at the bottom there were a lot of nice flat rocks to set stuff down on and it was easy to walk out to the edge of the rocks in the water to jump off into the deeper parts. I, of course, brought my camera because why try something new and possibly terrifying if you can’t take pictures of it by lugging around 20lbs of camera equipment, right?
I also got the opportunity to play with “over/under” shots. My camera has a huge dome over the lens and I can take (or try to take) pictures with half land and half underwater. Which is way harder than it looks! Ian pointed me towards some flowers growing out of the cliff and dangling into the water. They were fun to shoot!
Now this is where this post gets a little more interesting. We had spent quite some time in the little pool swimming around and exploring. It wasn’t a large creek by any stretch of the imagination but further down there were some small rapids. Ian mentioned he was going to go down that way so Jason and I meet up and start swimming towards them because we saw Ian go through them. The creek was only a few feet deep at that point and all was going well until the current picked up… So here I am in some rapids armed with only a snorkel and trying to protect my expensive camera with my body while tumbling like a dead fish through the rocks. Excellent life choices were made for sure… >:/ I ended up bashing my knee into a rock pretty good but otherwise unharmed. Annoyed as hell, but unharmed. I did get some neat photos from that side of the rocks, but I definitely hiked my way back upriver.
Jason had a pretty good idea and suggested I try a motion blur shot with the rapids coming off the big rocks. It led to some pretty interesting shots!
Overall, freediving was really fun and I couldn’t have asked for a better spot to start! I got to swim down to the rocks and pretend to be a mermaid. After diving, we drove down the road a ways and found a little camp spot right by the river with room for both trucks. Ironically, after months of no rain in the northwest, it started raining as we set up camp and began to cook dinner and didn’t stop until the next morning. The forest needed the rain, but really?!!?!?