III

Rapid Rating

16.97

River Mileage

Sidewinder Rapid can be broken into two parts. This first section features a large tree island. Take your time navigating the boulder field before the island.

All Flows: Read and run either left or right of the island. At 1,000 CFS, the left side starts to get cut off. Watch for getting pushed into the trees on river right.

This rapid has the alternate name of Eat Rocks and Bleed due to how wide and shallow the river gets which only gets more prominent as the river drops. Previously to either name, it was called Bail More, which references back to the amount of bailing one had to do in this section before self-bailing rafts were invented.