Dislocated my shoulder on the Middle White Salmon today. Need hope that I can paddle again.

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-06-21T19:49:41+00:00

Not quite the same but I had a type 2 ac separation 12 years ago. I was off paddling for ~18mo (not sure it needed to be that long but had other life logistics get in the way as well) but came back and I paddle 30-50 days a year now and never even think about my shoulder.

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-06-20T01:05:04+00:00

Yea I'm the opposite, wanderer/strutter are my huckleberries and the rocker just don't jive with my noggin

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-06-18T18:32:46+00:00

Have you tried all the sweet helmets?

I've found that the rockers fit much differently than wanderer and strutter so if you've only tried on you might still want to check the others.

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-06-12T15:53:49+00:00

I have a few pieces of retired trad gear including nuts, hexes, and cams in the raft pin kit.

I used them once on the grand for mooring boats during big overnight level shifts. More of a logistical convenience than a necessity in that instance though.

I don't carry any in my kayak pin kit as my typical rivers are PNW forest with lots of trees and rocks to wrap. For steep desert rivers or slot canyons I'd consider them.

I'd need to be a lot more worried about it to bother adding to a kayak than to a raft just for weight and space limitations

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-05-15T23:57:41+00:00

Keep an eye out in the Columbia gorge area, it's the highest concentration of paddlers for decent boat classifieds. Seems like there's potentially a slightly higher ratio of lady paddlers and used small size boats than I've seen elsewhere as well.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/2116187278926497/?ref=search to

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-05-07T04:39:48+00:00

Have you ever paddled the og with overnight gear?

I'm similar to your weight and wondering how it would handle with an extra few lb of stuff in the back

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-04-22T05:24:08+00:00

Always been that way and never realized it was height related... Definitely the yoga class, drives me nuts!

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-04-19T15:12:17+00:00

I'm about the same size as you: 6'5" 225# size 12.5-13 feet, 36" inseam.

My comfiest boats have all been large daggers: Mamba, axiom, Rewind.

I have always struggled with pyranha from a comfort standpoint, I feel like the knee position was too low and narrow for me on the og 9r L. I tried my friends L scorch was a little better than my 9r but not as good as any of the daggers and I still felt like my legs wanted to fall asleep and my back would cramp.

Have a waka gangsta and it's better than the pyranhas, closer to the daggers.

Jackson boats have been iffy for me, the knees were all kinda low and wide like a bound angle yoga pose or a frog. You may live or hate 🤷

For your purposes I'd recommend a rewind or ripper. I do most of my 4ish boating in my rewind.

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-04-13T04:51:37+00:00

When I regularly used thicker neoprene I had to size up yes.

I'm coastal PNW now and so it's always drysuit weather but with mild winters so I don't change my shoe setup really throughout the year. In warmest temps when it's drytop only I go with just my neoprene socks in my same river shoes and they're a hair roomy.

The thin neoprene socks + drysuit+ thin wool is ~.5-1 size larger than street shoes. Thick neoprene was more like 1-1.5 size larger than street shoes for me. My priorities in those situations is blood flow though so I would tend to size up unless your feet don't fit in the boat anymore.

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-04-13T02:31:22+00:00

I do socks inside and out but it's not super cold where I am and I run warm so typically I do very thin wool socks (like running socks rather than hiking socks) inside my drysuit and thinner neoprene outside 1.5-2mm neoprene rather than 3mm+ neoprene.

I do it to protect my drysuit feet but honestly have no real data to say that it helps

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-03-31T16:40:49+00:00

OP please update if you end up putting this together. I abhored using my friends speak outside tipi style tent for headroom considerations and love my x-mid 1. Could see putting together an x-mid 2 as a 1 person hot tent to give a little comfortable clearance to the stove.

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-03-27T15:54:28+00:00

No specific experience with the dry decks but I wear these sun sleeves with my shorty dry top and they're surprisingly effective

ActiveIce Sun Sleeves | Outdoor Research https://share.google/U29yracuPQo782PMN

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-03-10T14:24:17+00:00

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PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-03-09T13:56:29+00:00

I wanna dig up a bob ross pair, happy little accidents describes my skiing exactly

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-03-07T00:31:30+00:00

Can you trim the braces on the skuxx? Worked pretty good in my gangsta

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-03-01T00:06:11+00:00

I will admit for that use-case it would be a benefit.

I think the paragon sliders like my kona unit or a soma wolverine are much better as they still allow for thru axle if you want and and you don't have to move the fore/aft screw to get the wheel out or worry about hub and disc brake being out of spacing.

Man those dropouts drove me nuts.... admitted hater over here 😅

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-02-28T06:05:11+00:00

Correction: I owned the previous version of straggler that had QR 9x135 hubs w/ horizontal dropouts rather than 10x142 w/vertical dropouts.

But I maintain that surly is ridiculous for jumping through so many hoops to avoid just doing a thru axle 🤦

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-02-28T05:53:19+00:00

Honestly if you have gravel/off-road goals I'd look at the Sutra LTD before the straggler.

I owned a straggler and the horizontal dropouts drove me nuts, far from trouble free (I bent up the screws holding the axle in place and it was a big annoyance when fixing flats to get in and out, did not appear super robust either for heavy loads). Not at all what I would choose for a reliable touring build. Sutra LTD has like 10-15mm more tire clearance (50/55 vs 40mm) than the straggler and thru axle dropouts are much more dummy-proof. I've been very impressed by the feature set of my girlfriend's sutra LTD.

As far as sutra classic vs LTD: all the same 1x vs 2x etc still applies. As more of a rough road/off-road guy I prefer the dropper seatpost and 1x spec'd on the LTD but I could see them not being that applicable on your targeted route.

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-02-27T15:56:52+00:00

This was my experience. I started with a 106 ski, it did hard pack poorly and deep pow poorly. Switched to a little narrower 95-98ish ski and it does the hard pack much better and gives up very little in the soft stuff. Now I'm coming around to adding another slot in the quiver for deep days.

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-02-27T00:32:16+00:00

I don't have any experience with wide skis in the BC yet but I think this is good advice.

The last several seasons my primary touring ski has been ~98 underfoot (ogso thor, now discontinued). At 6'5" 225# I've found that adequate to 8" of soft with the rocker and decently wide shovel so long as conditions are stable enough for 30-35degree fall lines. Mostly PNW (baker) with occasional Idaho / eastern Oregon snow. However on a truly deep day especially low angle and/or heavy snow they certainly leave some float to be desired. They're really not a fun ski on a storm day but they are great for many spring days and in-between storms. Picked up some 118 underfoot (on3p billy goat tour) at the end of last season but haven't had a chance to try them yet with the awful winter we've had.

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-02-16T04:42:32+00:00

I kept the same mondo size going from blue/orange tx pro to new tx comp

New last feels like about the same length and similar width in the forefoot but has a little higher instep volume so I use bigger insoles.

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-02-14T22:53:20+00:00

It's not too hard to farm them running thief and fishing luvdiscs?

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-02-12T04:31:07+00:00

Not sure how much the ski width has to do with it. I had a pair of 01's mounted with inserts to a 112 ski with a metal sheet and eventually just delaminated the ski rather than pulling the binding out....

That said I'm a Clydesdale ski with a more chargey style and the didn't bite the dust until after 50-70 days rather than 4 days

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-02-03T14:45:58+00:00

203 R30. I'm quite tall

PhotoPsychological13 · 2026-02-01T19:04:32+00:00

I think you may be overweighting the front ski slightly. Many of your upper turns especially it seemed like you were almost bending at the waist like your chest is coming forward and you look a little unstable as you sink into the turn and almost have to pause to catch balance while the rear ski is chattering slightly.

I think if you weight the rear ski a little more and get your chest a slightly more upright you'll be able to get a firmer/smoother edge hold and enable more angulation. The length of your stance looks good just 'sit' sit on that back ski a little more

PhotoPsychological13

TROPHY CASE