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First Descents
A section devoted to boaters telling stories of virgin river runs
with Scott Underhill
It was a snowy day during hunting season in 1989. Four of ‘em, all in Dancers, put on to Moxie Stream. It was Scott
Underhill’s first time down the Stream and he was carrying much expensive camera gear inside his boat. Why? Who knows…
but he was.
“I got down through Junior’s Falls up near the top, but then I got into this big hole on the right side. I was side-surfin’ it and
got flipped,” Scott recalled recently at a local watering hole.
Scott ended up pulling his skirt and swimming to shore just above the group’s planned take out, which was just above the
imposing 90 ft. Moxie Falls.
“John rescued my boat and brought it to shore.” But on the river’s edge, the boat did not stay.
“It splashed off from shore and the next thing I knew I was chasing it down the trail. I was on the boardwalk overlooking
the falls when I saw it go over. ‘Holy Shit! All my camera gear’s in there,’ I said.”
To make matters worse for his gear, his Dancer loaded with his expensive camera gear recirculated in the frothy boils at the
bottom of Moxie Falls for 20 minutes. Scott and his buddies watched from above. “I was thinking, ‘Damn, my camera gear’s
probably banging against my boat and getting’ trashed,’” he said.
They left for the car to get climbing ropes and a harness to somehow pull the boat away, but when they returned it had
already worked itself out of the nasty recirc.
“It washed out, went over the next drop, then we found it in the little rapid below. The boat was fine and the only damage
to my camera gear was one broken lens filter.
“Then it got around town that somebody had run Moxie Falls. It was funny.”
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