Brooke Hess

TOUCHDOWN PACIFIC OCEAN!!!!!!!!!!!

“She’s idle… and what else is she doing? She’s a busy body.” #CouldNotResist #AudioIsSpotOn #ImABusyBody

THE GRAND SALMON IS NOW STREAMING!!! Click the link in my bio to watch it now, or go to fawesome.tv and search for “The Grand Salmon” 💜

We’re thrilled to welcome Brooke Hess as the new Director of Communications for the Columbia Snake River Campaign! Brooke has a bachelor’s degree in geoscience, a master’s in science journalism, and she wrote her master’s thesis on the declining salmon populations of the Snake River Basin. You might recognize her from her work on The Grand Salmon, where she and two other women spent 78 days kayaking the Salmon River from source to sea, following the natural migration of anadromous fish. Brooke was a cinematographer and co-producer for their resulting documentary film, which dives deep into the necessity of removing the four lower Snake River dams. Brooke’s background includes experience as a science writing intern at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, a reporter for The Associated Press, and an athlete on Team USA for whitewater kayaking. Join us in welcoming Brooke to the Columbia Snake River team! 📸 1: @johnjwebster 📸 2: @davegardnercreative #salmon #whitewaterkayaking #columbiasnakerivercampaign #riverconservation #salmonconservation

🤌🏼

Six years ago to the date I crashed on Huka Falls. I never thought this injury would be as life-changing as it has been, but here we are, six years later, and I still experience symptoms every single day. I’ve spent the past few years pouring all my resources (and a lot of my parents’ resources) into the medical system - trying to find out why I am still struggling. I have flown across the country for medical appointments and procedures ten times in the past year alone. A few months ago, I saw a POTS specialist in Georgia after a year and a half on his waitlist. My insurance decided not to cover it, so I paid out of pocket. He was medical provider #65 that I’ve seen on this journey, and he finally gave me the root cause diagnosis to all my health problems. I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome - a rare genetic connective tissue disorder that causes my collagen to be faulty, and is the reason my concussion symptoms never went away. This answer has been simultaneously helpful and hard. Lots of new treatments but also lots of grieving the easy and able-bodied life I used to have. I’m embracing the low-impact lifestyle and working on accepting the fact that I will be disabled for the rest of my life. It’s hard and I’m bad at it. Thanks to everyone who has gone to doctor appointments with me - especially my mom, who has flown across the country more times than I have, so I wouldn’t have to go to scary procedures alone 💛

wAiSt dEeP cOrN oUt tHeRe RiGhT nOw 🌽 ⛷️ ☀️ #wienerdog #dachshund #sausagedog #hotdog #theskiingween #dogoftheday #skiing #zoomies #minidachshund #skidog @weratedogs

A little happiness for your feed today because sometimes the news is too upsetting, and you just need to watch a wiener dog going Nordic skiing to bring a little bit of the sparkle back ✨ #wienerdog #sausagedogs #skidog #skiing #theskiingween

🥜2025 69th Annual Peanut Butter Mile World Championship🥜 It’s like a beer mile, but instead of drinking a beer every lap, you fill your mouth with peanut butter each lap. This year we gave athletes a choice: crunchy or creamy. Both of the world champions used creamy. Keep that in mind.

At my 5th grade career fair, I gave a presentation about how I wanted to be a photojournalist when I grew up. I think I saw some National Geographic magazines laying around our house and decided my life goal was to get paid to take photos of penguins in Antarctica. Fast forward 20 years and I found myself earning a master’s degree in journalism with a focus on science writing. Since then, I’ve reported on salmon and dams, gold mines, NASA missions to Venus, COVID-19, and have recently had the crazy opportunity to freelance for @apnews under a freaking Pulitzer Prize winning photo editor 🤯. I’m not taking photos of penguins in Antarctica (yet), but here are some of the news stories I’ve covered around the Lake Tahoe region over the past couple years that have gotten picked up by the big dog news outlets. Really proud of this and really grateful to @marciojsanchez for the opportunity and mentorship. First slide is me taking a photo of a future nonexistent dam🤞🤞🤞 📸 by @elizabeth.tobey

Kayak tour (and other things…)

This shoulder is 10 months post-op and one year from initial dislocation, and look what it can do now!!! Because of all the other health shit I’ve got going on, my PT wasn’t sure how well my shoulder would heal post-surgery. POTS causes a lack of blood circulation throughout my body, and we were afraid it would prevent my shoulder from healing properly. My recovery was definitely slower than average, and I had to adjust my PT regimen for more rest days to allow my tissue to heal, but now I’m 10 months post-op and I can throw loops in my kayak, carry a 50 pound pack into the Middle Fork Flathead, ski fun lines, climb, and I even threw my first post-surgery kickflip a couple weeks ago! Shoulder surgery was a bummer, and I’ve still got some mild pain where my biceps tendon was re-attached, but it’s real neat to know my body is still capable of healing, despite all the other stuff going on with it 😎