A WWW.RAFT.ORG XTREME STORY
Our run on the first weekend started with great anxiety as most of us had never seen this run before, but we had heard many stories. We had a great scout report from Guy Cables who had run this river commercially before. And when we arrived at put-in, we were happy to see some of our OU friends...
Since most of the year the river has a very low flow...there is a great deal of growth from plants, trees, bushes. Trouble is this becomes a great deal of strainer hazards at a suddenly high flow. Often our view of the river was obscured so we couldn't see very far downstream, adding to our anxiety and making us proceed with greater caution. Channels and paths downstream were narrow with all the growth. And the growth hid the water sometimes which is what we need to read the river properly.
OU reached Mr. Toad's first. We watched them sneak up to the first drop and saw how wildly and quickly the current pulled them down and then slammed them into a rock wall on river right at the bottom. We followed suit, easily, Bobby with Mike and Muriel in a self-bailing oar boat. Khoa with a self-bailing paddle team. Martin with a bucket boat full of dragon boat paddlers. Everyone managed to get down safely, but we damaged one of the oars on the rock wall of Mr. Toad's.
The second weekend we ran more interesting craft. Bobby ran in 12' NRS cataraft. Vlad and Sol took a Vlad's 2-man home-made Russian paddle cat down. One oar boat and one paddle boat piloted by Matt Frechette. Matt had a nice clean run, showing us how to avoid the rock wall at Mr. Toad's. Muriel stuck an oar which broke at Mr. Toad's in the first drop. Bobby had a clean, fun run at Mr. Toad's. Kieu went for a swim her first trip on the river guiding the paddle boat at Iron Box. Haunted House was easy for Khoa in the paddle boat, and the Russian cat. Bobby elected to go in the oar boat to avoid a swim, so Mike took the oar cat down and did a perfect vertical tube stand as the water sucked him back before tossing him out. Good thing the oar landed on him or we would have lost it. Martin ran the oar boat and did a tube stand against the pesky rock on river right that quickly tossed everyone, so Bobby got a swim anyway.
Perhaps we were a little too cocky, too much confidence from a great weekend the first weekend. Haunted House though would teach us to always "respect" the river. Normally you don't expect to take a swim in an oar boat or cataraft. The paddle boat would have a clean run. Mike Gong would run it in a 12' cataraft, but the reversal would suck the cat back and Mike did a vertical tube stand before getting tossed out with one oar, fortunately he held onto the oar or it would have been lost (oars sink). Our oar boat would run it and get pushed toward the big rock on river right at the bottom, then a pretty dramatic tube stand that would dump everyone into the rapid quickly and where people would stay under water for what seemed like an extremely long time. Martin came up by the boat and grabbed on. Khoa would alertly jump from the paddle boat to the unmanned oar boat as it went by. But Muriel and Bobbie would get sucked over to the "Room of Doom", a rock ledge with strong current that drops you in and pulls you under. Fortunately this flushes and eventually after they disappeared for a while, their heads popped up downstream in the middle of the river. We gathered our gear and people, and continued on.
WebMaestro @ RAFTWEB, Martin Wong.
