KnowWhereManNW

Neils is a better boater than I am.  This is obvious, but as he yanks on the front of my inflatable kayak, turns away from shore, and strokes into the current, I try to remind myself that his being exceptional does not affect my being adequate–my mantra as the kayak bucks over rocks and along the current.  The creek is fast.

I’d been on the Wenatchee today at record height (in my experience) of about 15.5k.  An average summer run will swell between 7-12k—plenty of water for holes and big hits, but the warm weather and recent rains had bumped up river levels to a point where guides were muttering “17 grand” in superstitious tones.  Would she get that big?

I’d run the IK behind Neils, who was in his mini me with several other guides.  Despite the tiny size of my craft, I found most of the river largely doable, save for a foolish attempt to run rodeo hole, which flipped me over a few times in the washing machine to remind me who was in charge.  But I’d stayed on my lines through the larger rapids and had ridden up and down the enormous faces of the seldom-seen big water waves.  I came off the river feeling confident, and that’s when Neils started talking about Peshastin Creek.

Peshastin Creek is a technical tributary to the Wenatchee, running from highway 97 north into the larger Wenatchee.  Being a river it possesses the standard hazards, but, I was told, since it was high water, most obstacles were not really an issue as they were covered by water.  I just had to follow Neil’s lines and stay upright and I would be fine.

Despite such a serious game face, I was no match for this water.

Bouncing along the river I began to feel a heightening sense of dread.  As Neils dropped a rock and cut left I followed, but the feeling of focus I experience on the river never came.  Not comfort, but once on the river I’d always feel a sense of ease; concentrating on the task at hand was easier than chewing on your lip right before shoving off.  But this river was moving so fast that I didn’t have time to calm down.  Being used to the wide, evenly spaced Wenatchee River, I found myself scrambling to readjust my position between obstacles in the narrow creek.  The IK pitched and rolled, but I held on, intent on sticking with Neils.

The first flip happened on an innocuous pourover that caught my tube.  (@~3:00 or so on the lowest video)  I flipped over and began the game of flipping it back and attempting to crawl on top without rolling over again.  This is where only the Wenatchee is forgiving; there were no flat recovery spots or deep water on this run, and as I attempted to pull myself in, I hit another small pourover and flipped over the other side.  Each time I’d get my belly onto the IK, I’d roll the boat over when I tried to get onto  my back.  Successive attempts grew slower, my body becoming dead weight below my arms.  As my legs ping-ponged along the submerged rocks I made another unsuccessful attempt, and huffed at Neils.

“I just can’t.”

Per usual he calmed me down, steadied the boat, and I climbed back in with a whole new set of bruises to compliment those from mountain biking.

The adrenaline crash and cold water had sapped my energy, but I was determined to finish the run.  I would keep up and just follow the line.  My arms, however, had slowed; I was paddling through molasses.  The best I could do was half-heartedly follow Neils, who smashed through waves and looked as comfortable as an otter playing in the current.

The crux rapid of our route, Fresh Squeeze is a class IV series of drops over several hundred feet.  We’d scouted it from the river before putting in and it did look possible with focus and a little luck.  As we stared down into the whitewater Neils had mentioned that Peshastin was generally run between 500-750cfs; today we were at 950.  The fates, it seemed to me, would need to be a little more generous with the luck.

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They refer to the rapid as the “S-bends”, the largest of the three relatively benign rapids on the slow-moving Skagit River.  Snaking left and right, then repeating, it resembles a skier’s line in fresh powder, a fairly simple line that requires a little foresight and knowing where to point your raft.  These were two things I lacked when I was the first one offered The Stick in raft guide training in 2011; I took us down backwards.

In my defense, paddling from the back of the boat is a little counter intuitive, but that didn’t matter to my instructor.  3 minutes of turn practice in the eddy at the put-in should have been sufficient, and like the first penguin pushed off the iceberg, I was placed in the driver’s seat, leader of the green guides, focus of ire.

From his spot sitting in the middle of the raft the instructor pointed left, so I paddled to position the boat, only to have it swing the opposite direction. The finger jabbed the air to the left again, hard.  I pulled on the paddle harder, and spun us completely around–we bounced over the waves, bucking, the sound of rushing water pierced only by the growl from the middle of the boat “What are you doing, river guide?”.  His accent on the “d” the way a cartoon character says “patooey”.  The rest of the boat was silent, and I offered up, simply, that I’d gotten confused.  “Paddle forward,” came the reply.  The discussion was over.

And thus I spent my first day on the river with Kenny, a man capable of instilling the same fear in me–a grown-ass man–as my little league coach who would take breaks from screaming at us for striking out to make us run laps for missing catches.  Quiet and somewhat unassuming, I  hadn’t realized at first that he was our instructor.  He spoke unhurriedly, and assessed us from behind dark, thick aviator eyeglasses, the bottoms of which poked out from from beneath the rim of his Navy baseball cap.  The lectures were simple, the instructions sparse and direct, and the silent hang time you’d be left in after asking a question, near unbearable.

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