Falling 70 feet off of Tomata Falls
Tomata Falls is a 70 foot waterfall on the Alseseca River. It is one of my most favorite waterfalls . . . EVER! I first ran it back in 2005, so I was eager to return and share this experience with Nate.
On this particular day, Todd Wells, Nate and myself decided to fire this one up! Everyone had pretty good lines: Todd landed the falls and hand rolled up (after throwing his paddle); I plugged the falls as good as I wanted too, but landed in a little pocket of violent boils, which imploded my skirt, broke my paddle and tore the bracket – with my head cam attached at the time – off my head; and, Nate pretty much landed flat off of it, but coming out with only a tender rib and an imploded skirt.
We were all super fired up after this descent . . . we continued downstream and took out above 2nd Tomata.
Both Todd and Iker were determined to run 2nd Tomata. This drop consists of a class V lead in, into a slide, into a 40 foot waterfall. This particular series of drops have been ran by only a few paddlers. A clean line through this rapid is very, very difficult. Iker fired it up first, followed by one of the cleanest lines I have ever seen by Todd. Another awesome day . . .
Video footage available February 2010 in the whitewater DVD by Sheer Madness Productions – “31 Days of Living”. Photos courtesy of SMP.
Heather Herbeck
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- Preparing to drop Tomata
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- Rolling over the horizon line
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- Falling 70 feet off of Tomata Falls
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- The crew below the falls (you can see one more drop downstream, then comes 2nd Tomata)
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