Lester

Chris Baer, always running Almost Always

The Lester river is just north of Duluth Minnesota and makes a great after work run for the locals of Duluth. It is only about 2 miles long and after a couple laps you can run it in about seven minutes. The charicter is mostly shallow class 4 with two rapids picking up the pace. The first harder rapid is named Naked Man, and has a stout lead in into a funky seven foot boof into a very shallow pool. The rocks at the base of the seven footer dolled out a lot of pitons this year. The second big rapid is called Almost Always, for years it was walked on a almost always basis. Now days this great rapid gets fired up almost always. Almost Always is a near vertical 20 footer that allows a awesome air plane boof at the top.

The Cascade

Long John

The Cascade is one of my favorite runs of the North Shore, there is a wild variety of drops from long technical slides to a very steep stacked set of waterfalls. I managed to get a ton of laps on this gem, with flows ranging from negative 1/2 to negative 6 inches, I am a firm believer that more is better, and after getting comfortable with this run, I could imagine running it at stomping high flows.

Tango checking out the bottom drops

Entering the banking turn of Long John

beware the icicles