Alberton Gorge of the Clark Fork River was a year-round local favorite of Jesse's so I was looking forward to seeing what it was all about. We ended up running from Cyr to Ralph's, a 8 mile run sampling the best whitewater. Kristina and Jesse kindly ran shuttle for us. Wow the put-in was busy. I've never seen such a busy put-in with literal raft traffic and limited waterfront space. Lots of commercial groups and a fair bit of families but few kayakers.
A few riffles and flatwater stretches were interspersed with a few fun rapids in the open Upper Gorge. Here we made decent time paddling past curious rafters. We then turned a corner to see Triple Bridges and the rapid underneath them. This would be the start of the narrower Lower Gorge which housed several very fun rapids worthy of laps.
We took our time playing around, in particular on Fang Rapid, the last exciting rapid that was easy to portage. I ran it three separate times and then worked on surfing its main wave. Although I didn't think I would have a chance sticking on the fast and powerful wave, I managed to have a few longer rides approaching ten seconds. This was good fun! The video below contains footage from my best ride.
After a meal and tasty ice cream with Kristina in Missoula we drove back to Hamilton to retrieve Jeff's car and then suffered through another late night Idaho drive, camping on the way to Teton Gorge, our next stop on the whitewater tour. Thanks to Kristina and Jesse for running shuttle.
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