View of the top of Wino Swim Rapid

The top of Wino Swim rapid was a big flat pool before the river “v’d” together forming the very swimmable rapid waves below. How Wino Swim got it’s name is a bit lost to history, but one can imagine the basic idea. The rapid was incredibly popular as a place to jump out and float down through the waves – and the runout below was calm and easy to recover people who had swum. In this image, the rapid is the whitewater just peeking out in the middle of the photo which was taken at moderately high water.  Interestingly, Boatman’s Rock used to be in the middle of this flat section, but was dynamited sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, possibly by the dam builders who didn’t want a big rock interfering with power boats after the reservoir flooding took place.