Location: Wenatchee (after the dam)
CFS: 8,500 !!
Who was there? Me, Brad, Craig, Wendy
The story:

If Homer were alive today, his next epic might very well be about this trip.

Ok. Not quite. But man was today quite the adventuresome day.

Today's story is the epic story of one man and the true bond he had with his boat. A bond that not even nature was able to break. A bond so strong, that it had to break something else altogether in order to prove just how unbreakable that bond was. This is the story of that bond.

And of that man.

Every story has it's beginning. Here's the boring one...

The Beginning
I wasn't supposed to go onto this trip this week. I was informed two weeks ago that I would have to work this weekend. I got a wee bit depressed whenever I heard Craig trying to make plans for this weekend, because I knew I wasn't going to get into my boat. I got even more depressed when I found out half-way through the week that the plan was for Craig, Brad and Wendy to go down the Wenatchee (my new favorite river since last week). Well, last minute Thursday afternoon I found out that my work shackles had been unlocked for the weekend, and that I'd be free to go.

Friday morning. 9am. I arrive at the ungodly hour of 9am on a weekday in order to load up my boat and gear for the trip. We'd be leaving for the campsite directly from work, so we needed to have our boats with us at work. I took advantage of the early morning with my boat to attempt a second camera mount on my helmet. As you may be aware, we learned last week that the mount was angled too low so that half the screen was the front of my boat, and you didn't get to see enough down-river perspective. After some fine tuning, I got the second mount onto my helmet, and I was off to work. At work I let a number of people go into the parking deck before me, because I had no idea if my car with kayak would clear the height requirements (it did, but I drived damn slow the whole way because I still didn't trust the height clearance warning).

Around 2pm, "work" tried to put those shackles back onto me, saying that I would be needed for the weekend. Luckily I have truly a great friend, George, who was willing to take the burden from me so that I could go off and be stupid on the water. Thanks George!

Left work around 5pm and followed Craig to Brad's. We picked up Brad and off we went to the campground. We met up with Wendy at the Safeway off Exit 84 on I-90 and we picked up some stuff for dinner / breakfast.

Setting up camp was pretty uneventful, and the majority of the night was Brad making a mighty-healthy bonfire, Craig and I searching the woods for wood, and Wendy sitting on her ass. Can't complain much about that though - she provided my tent for the evening (Thanks Wendy!).

Dinner for the Brad and Craig consisted of hot dogs (at least, the ones that Brad didn't drop into the fire), and Wendy and I made potatoes (which apparently do a good job of burning the roof of your mouth) and corn on the cob. I did once again try to warm pre-salted, pre-roasted peanuts, and once again, they turned out absolutely terrible. I have no idea how the hell they do it at SafeCo Field...

The New Day
We got up at the even more un-godly hour of 7am, mostly due to our bladders. We eventually packed up camp and headed onward to the put-in. We ran into Garrett (the instructor that Craig and I had for our kayaking class, and the same guy who took us down Boulder Drop for the first time). He's now a part-time instructor for Fluid Adventures, a playboating instruction school. How very random. How very random, indeed. Garrett mentioned that he'd probably see us later that day at Rodeo Hole (that's where they were going to do all of their instruction).

Well, around 10am we loaded all four boats onto my worderful, trusty car, and headed to the put-in. As usual (especially for trips that Wendy is on, heh), I had on my trusty tow-kit. Additionally, I had my helmet cam all set up, and I was super-ready to properly record some "gi-normous" ((c)2004 Craig Ziegler) waves on the river.

The Run
We put in at the dam like last time. Order was Craig, Brad, Wendy, and me batting clean-up, as usual. I didn't notice it, but Craig swears that Wendy and I were very far left during the start of the dam section. I felt fine the entire time. I was just enjoying the absolutely gi-normous waves that I was on. Man they were big. Definitely bigger than the biggest ones we've had during AquaGasm on the Sky. Rode a couple straight-on, side-surfed a few, and even ran a couple backwards just because I was in such a darn good mood.

We passed under the first bridge, and I came very, very close to the hole of Gorilla Falls. I actually kept considering running it (it was massive -- probably equal to Lunch Hole the day it ate me), but in th end, I barely just skirted it to the right.

Next up was a wonderful wave train starting from the right. I saw Craig and Brad way up ahead running it and they had already reached the left side of the river. I kept my eyes on Wendy just to make sure she was doing fine. As I got to the top of one of the waves in the train, I suddently realized that there was a big and long log covering my line, coming from the right bank and stretching across half the freakin' river. The waves were giving me a strong forward momentum which made slowing down very difficult. I turned left and tried paddling pretty damn hard to get away from it, but in the end, I got pinned right against the fucking log about one third away from the end.

We've talked about logs before and the danger that they can cause (read: death), so of course I was mildly concerned about my precarious position. It was further compounded by the fact that all three of my boating buddies at this point had reached a bend in the river and were pretty much out of site. I was pretty sure that they'd eventually notice that they were missing someone, but I knew that there wasn't much they were going to be able to do, so I decided to attempt the self-rescue (something that I started to get good at before I mastered my roll).

Now, I'd have to say, if you're going to get pinned against a log while stuck in your boat with big waves crashing into you constantly, the way I did it was definitely the most ideal. My bow (front) was facing the direction I'd eventually want to go, my whole hull was above water (except for when the waves splashed), and most importantly, I had all the air that I desired. Therefore, this meant that I had all the time in the world to make a decision on what the hell to do. Had I, say, been upside down, or stuck suck that my head was constantly getting submerged due to the waves, there would have been much less thinking going on (which could have led to a bad decision).

I decided that the first thing to do was to get out of my boat; I wasn't going to be going any further on the river in my boat given my current situation. Fortunately, the river was kind-of shallow on the right bank, and there was a pretty big rock behind the log, right near me, so I knew I'd have some good footing once I got out. Now, I have to say "fortunately" about this situation with a grain of salt. Had that big rock not been there, or had the water not been so shallow in that area, the log probably woudlnt' have been there. Well, I guess it was lemonade-making time.

I got out of my boat and sat on the log. It was pretty comfortable actually. It was very solid, secure in its position, and definitely wasn't moving. Unfortunately, the same could be said about my boat. Holy hell. I was pressing on that boat with as much force as I could muster without losing what little balance I had on that log, but it wouldn't budge. The was one fucking strong log hydraulic that my boat got stuck with. At this point, is was fully within my ability to carefully navigate along the log until I got to exposed rocks that I could walk on until I got to shore. Yes, it was.

But I wasn't leaving my boat.

You don't leave a wounded man in the field. Everyone comes home.

So, I decided to see if drowning it might help the situation.

I couldn't push the boat away from the log because the force of the waves crashing into it were too strong. The next best thing I could do was to press down on the boat, hoping that it eventually sink into the hydraulic, float under the log, and then float on down the river. Well, that's pretty much what I did, and pretty much what happened. After I saw it float by, I decided: "Okay, I guess it's my turn." I didn't have to drown myself or float under the log as I easily accomplished the same task by climbing over it. Once I got onto the keeper rock, I jumped back into (or maybe I slided back into -- I definitely didn't fall back into) the river. Once in though, it only took a couple sudden uncomfortable bumps to remind me to go into river position (face up with legs up and leading forward).

At this point, my boat had a good 100 yard head-start, and I was swimming with one arm (as the other hand was holding my trusty paddle (yes, everything I use that is involved in kayaking is "trusty"). As I floated around the bend I saw Wendy had eddied-out on the left, and I saw Craig and Brad on the right bank. I also saw a lot of white up ahead and decided I'd rather run that in my boat than in back of it. So, I swam like hell, and happily caught up with my boat and swam it, myself, and my trusty paddle into a mini-eddy behind a rock, right before the next rapid.

I gave a few toots on my whistle to let everybody know that I was ok. Then I saw Brad and Craig continue on down the river. In actuality, this wasn't exactly what was happening, but that's what it looked like from my perspective. I could see very little with that big rock in front of me.

I think that now is a good time to try to re-create a conversation that happened as we were getting our boats ready at the put-in.

Me: "Hey Craig, you didn't pack my float bags?"
Craig: "Didn't you grab them? I put 'em with your other stuff." (Craig had formed a pile of stuff next to my boat that was waiting for me Friday morning."
Me: "I grabbed everything that you put there."
Craig: "I dunno then, man. You can have mine if you want. I have no plans to swim today."
Me: "Well, I don't plan to swim either. Eh. Whatever. I don't need them today."

I introduced this little flashback in an effort to explain why my boat was so g**damn heavy. I'm not entirely sure how heavy an RPM can be when it's completely full of water, a float bag, and a darn nifty med-kit, but I'd put in a rough estimate of ~150lbs. There was no real shore in the mini-eddy that I was in. I unscrewed my drain plug and tried to get some leverage in order to start the draining process, but I quickly lost hold of the boat and back into the current it went. I lunged after it, grabbed it, and quickly screwed the drain plug back in (didn't want to lose it. [Digression: I bought a spare drain plug back during the PWS liquidation sale, but I later discovered that it wouldn't work in my boat. Anyone with a Riot need a drain plug?.] After that though, it decided that it didn't like floating with me (but RPM, I treat you so well?!?!) and it decided to head down the river without me by its side (what a sad, sad thought).

Wendy was still on the left bank, most likely wearing a blank stare of disbelief or a face of complete and utter horror. Here she was, on the very same river that she was too scared to run last week, and now me, her normal recuer, was floating down the river (with my paddle thank you very much -- you can't use that old saying) without my boat. There was another event that had transposed that would have amplified said expression, and that event was very soon to come to my realization.

Right about....now.

I passed under the next bridge and I saw Brad standing on the right bank. I thought he was setting up a rope for me. But, he didn't really move as I floated by. "What? No rope?" I asked in disbelief. "I've got no boat." he replied as he waved his arms around him to demonstrate that, indeed, no boat was near his present location. "Ah. Gotcha. That sucks" I replied, and continued floating down the river.

As it was later explained to me, Brad was turning around in order to find out what was happening with me, and ended up flipping. A couple pitiful (Craig's words, not mine, I didn't see 'em) roll attempts later and Brad was quickly out of his boat. He eventually swam himself to shore while he yelled at Craig to chase down his boat (which would explain why I didn't see Craig down river -- he was already booking downriver to catch up with Brad's boat).

So, onward I floated. I will reiterate that I had a number of opportunities to get myself to shore while floating down the river, but damnit, I wanted my boat back (and despite its actions, I know it prefers to float down the river with me than without me). Plus, with my fleece and drysuit attire, I was rather comfortable in the water.

I floated through a bunch of wave trains that would have been big and fun in the yak, but proved to be a wee bit intimidating while whitewater floating. I don't really want to say that I was whitewater swimming, because with the exception of a few occasions during the run, I pretty much just floated down the river. I didn't really see how swimming down river (the exact opposite of river position) would have more benefits than potential negatives. My big plan was that the boaters at Rodeo Hole would see a boat without a boater float by them and that they'd retrieve it. Then I would eventually float it, and we'd be together once again. "Oh how I miss you RPM."

For the most part during this float I felt completely safe. Sure I was getting sucked under some waves every once in a while, but heck, that's part of the fun and adventure, right? When the cave came up on the left though, I started swimming kind of hard. I remembed reading about a kayaker's death that happened when he got stuck inside a cave (different country, different conditions, but heck, why risk it?). I avoided it after a bit of hand flailing. Another time I had to swim hard to the left bank because there was another small log on the right which I was heading straight into, and this time without a wonderful hard, secure boat to take the brunt of the impact. Again, I avoided it, but it definitely got me a little freaked out.

Finally I came to a river split. Apparently, everyone normally runs this through the left channel. That's actually the way I was planning to go until I heard

"Howard!"
Me: "doo doo doo doo doo...."
"HOWARD!"
Me: "Oh! Hey Craig!" (Craig was in the water and close to the right bank. He had his boat and Brad's boat. I swam over closer to him (i.e. the right channel) before the channels split)
Me: "Have you seen a wonderful red kayak?"
Craig: "It just floated by a couple moments ago."
Me: "Ok. Thanks a bunch."

And, with that, I floated on. Down the right channel. Down the channel that boaters (read: people floating in a vessel protecting their body) normally don't run.

"It's just ahead" I kept telling myself. "I'll catch up to it."

Well, about 10 minutes later, if you had been in the area, you might have heard someone moaning "Where's my boat?!?!?"

That was me.

Well, I started taking in the scenery at this point. I looked at the landscaping and architecture of the houses on the right bank, and then carefully examined the rock face on the left bank. I mean, what would you do to occupy your time if your whitewater floating down the Wenatchee. Ok then.

And then, something happened. I saw something that wasn't blue nor white bob up from the water, a little bit ahead of me and to the left.

"My boat!" It was back!

Or so I thought. After I got dunked again, I got back to the surface to see....Brad's paddle. I hadn't even noticed its absence when Brad was motioning his arms to demonstrate his apparent lack of boat. Apparently, he dropped his paddle in order to swim himself into his eddy. Well, it wasn't my trusty boat, but I now had a goal. "I'll save you, Brad's paddle!" I yelled to Brad's paddle. Seriously, I did actually yell that. Out loud even.

Of course over the next three minutes, Brad's paddle decided to take the hardest lines of that part of the river. So, I diligently followed after it. Goshdarnit, if I was going to float down the river with no boat, I was going to float down the river with two paddles and no boat. Well, I went through a nice, big wave train right behind the paddle, and it kept right out of my grasp. Right when I was going to grab it, I got pulled into a re-circulating eddy while it continued down river. "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo" I relented as I saw my goal literally slip from my fingers. After a couple whirls around the recirculating eddy, I threw my paddle arm out into the current asking it for a lift. It oblidged, and I was once again heading down river after the paddle.

Luckily, the Brad's paddle ended up in the next eddy. I grabbed it and threw my hands up into the air, one paddle in each hand, trying to recreate as best I could the picture of Brad after he rescued my paddle when I first swam in the Skagit (my second ever kayak trip). I think it lost some its luster considering that I was still floating down the river without a boat, about to go down a rocky chute with two paddles in my hand,

So, then I put my hands down and went through a rocky chute.

Ouch.

Ouchy ouchy.

Ouch.

I hope you appreciate it Brad. Man oh man.

So, right after that eddy where I retrieved the paddle (which had a couple logs by the way), another little island briefly split the river right before a bridge. I wanted to run it on the right, but I determined that as hard as it is to swim with one paddle, it's a wee bit harder with two.

Brad, after rescuing my paddle on the Skagit, circa 9/6/2003

So, I decided that I'd swim into the island and take a brief rest. So, I sat on a rock for a minute, reflecting on how well I had rescued Brad's paddle, and then realized that the longer I paused, the further my boat and I were being separated, and I was having none of that. Back into the river I went.

Ouch.

Oh yeah, river position.

So, as I continued my float down river, I discovered that if you're floating down river with two paddles in your hands, if you put one under each arm pit and rest your feet up on the ends of the respective paddles, you can essentially recline back and truly float down on your back with no effort. With this realization definitely came the most relaxing part of the river float, and probably the least exciting video (as the camera was pretty much pointing at the sky as I was lying back).

Finally I came to a river bend to the right. I grant you that I don't have the best of memories. It works great on many levels, but on remembering order of rapids on new rivers, it has yet to truly prove itself. I had run this river in a raft three weeks ago, and in a kayak a week ago, but at this moment, I couldn't remember if Drunkard's Drop was before or after Rodeo Hole. So, I thought I was about to go into Drunkards and wasn't really looking forward to floating through it, so I swam right.

Hard.

Turns out that Drunkard's is after Rodeo Hole, so I didn't have much to worry about. Go figure. Well, I eventually got my barrings and realized that Rodeo was right around the bend. By this point, I was really hoping that people were at Rodeo. As I round the bend, my excitement and hope started to dwindle because I saw no-one. "Shit. They're not there yet. I guess I'll be floating through Drunkard's too...."

But wait! As I round the corner more I saw one, no two...no no, four people on the cliff watching, fuck....twelve playboaters.

"Tweeeet!" went my whistle. "Tweeeeeeeeeeeeeet! Tweeeeeeeeeeeeeet! Tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!" No response. No one looking at me. Nothing. Ah well. Don't need 'em anyway.

I was right on my way towards reaching them when I got stuck in another fucking re-circulating eddy on the right bank. So close, but yet so far. At this point, the four yakkers on the cliff see me, but don't really do anything. I don't blame them of course, but I feel like a complete idiot not being able to get out of the eddy.

Two or three rafts full of people float by. What kind of surprises me is that they don't even ask if I need help. I would have thought that they would at least ask. Hell, Wendy got a lift by rafters when she swam on the Sky, but, again, I digress.

Finally, I got out of the eddy and swam over to the next closer eddy from which I was able to climb out. As I was scaling up the rock face, what do I see? My trusty RPM floating upside down right past me.

"My boat! My boat! Can you get my boat?" I yelled at the faceless kayakers. I then saw some pointing at the boat and eventually saw two kayakers take after my boat.

With a big satisfying grin from accomplishment, I climbed the rock face, expecting to then walk across to the others who were watching the playboaters, only to find that my rockface apparently didn't connect to their rockface. Instead, those two rockfaces decided to have a big cliff and some logs instead. Faced with this chasm between me and my trusty boat, what was I to do?

Well, what else but to climb down this new cliff, back into the water to float back on over to them. Well, I eventually floated right up to the oncoming face of Rodeo Hole where I was able to stop myself from progressing further forward by loding my foot against a submerged rock. I then climbed out to shore where two kayak watchers were waiting to see if I needed help and hear my story.

I met Heather (careful guys, she's already spoken for), who informed me that my boat was safely recovered around the next bend. After a wonderful reunion with my boat (my what a wonderful reunion it was), the rescuers pointed out what that two-timing log did to my wonderful boat.

Battle scar, courtesy of the log.

I'm pretty sure that I saw Dave (i.e. "I love you Dave! hole", or, Dick Bubkis), but I learned my lesson from last time, and this time, just nodded.

Heather graciously took me, my trusty boat, and the two paddles back to the put-in where my car was. On the way, I learned that Heather was from Portland, and had been kayaking for a year. She and her boyfriend had been playing at Rodeo Hole since 7:30am this morning and was therefore admittedly pretty tired for the day. She was originally a rock-climber because that's what they did in Minessota where she went to school. The week before, in a river in Portland, she smashed face first into a rock which fucked up her right eye (it stayed shut for two days), but was now getting better. We talked quite a bit for what was a 2 mile ride. Heather was definitely cool.

Why the hell did I tell you all of this just now? Well, partly to prove that I do have a working memory on some level. And partly because well, why not? Every epic story seems to have a female that the hero meets up with at the end. So what if she was taken. I still satisfied the proto-typical ending of the epic.

Alright. Anyway.

I got back to the put-in, and no more than two minutes later, Wendy's jeep (with kayak) rolls up with at least one passenger. When I see it's Brad, I quickly run and grab both paddles and throw them up in the air for a second time that day. He smiled a big grin. That definitely made the recovery (and, ahem, "ouch"es worth it). It seems that Brad got Wendy to walk up the hill and walk across the bridge. She hitched a ride back to the take-out and then came back to pick up Brad.

Now that the three of us were joined up, we had to find Craig and the two remaining boats. We drove back to the take-out, but his car was there and he wasn't. So, we drove back to Rodeo Hole. After some wrong turns, we eventually found Craig in his bright yellow paddle jacket standing near the road. We went back to the apple orchard that he stashed the boats in after scaling them up the rock face and finally got the car fully loaded up. Then we went back to the take-out once more.

Casualties from the trip: Wendy apparently lost her water bottle at some point. I don't know exactly how. She's the only one who didn't end up in the water for some reason on the trip. Ah well. Meanwhile, Craig lost a show (the right one I believe). It happened due to his desperation move to get Brad's boat to shore. He jumped out of his to push both boats to shore. I'm not exactly sure what exactly made him think that getting out his boat would make it easier to get both boats to shore, but, well, it worked somehow.

At the take-out, I removed the dry-box from my bag so that I could see how the video turned out. I was pretty bummed when I saw a bumch of water inside of it, and on the camcorder. I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but a water somehow entered into the drybox. A lot of it was soaked up in the bottom foam padding, however there was still a puddle of water on top of it, and there were water puddles over numerous spots on the camcorder.

My camorder is toasted. Looks like the water fried the circuitry. Nothing happens when I plug in the AC Adapter (besides a clicking sound that I hear whenever I try to turn it on). The tape is still stuck inside of the camcorder, so I have no idea how much (if any) of the whole float was caught on film, nor do I know if the tape is still usable. It's unfortunately stuck inside the camcorder right now since I need a working camcorder in order for the tape mechanism to dismount and eject the tape.

So, as I was leaving, a Canook approached me and asked for a ride to the put-in (I guess he'd just dropped off his car at the take-out and needed to get back). After Heather's kind help, there was no way I could refuse a fellow kayaker who wanted a lift that was almost completely on my way anyway. I got to pay it back which made me feel better. He was a nice guy, but my memory completely fades on his name. I did learn about a new put-in though which is pretty cool. It's right near a school (that you can park at for free and then walk to the put-in). The put-in itself requires the Fishing access parking permit.

I'm trying to deal with my insurnace company / warranty right now in order to get the camcorder replaced, and I'm in talks with the BulletCam people in regards to the defective drybox.

When we finally unloaded the gear back at Craig's garage, I took a quick look for the two missing float bags. One was out in plain view, and the other one (the duct taped one) was hidden underneath an inflatable kayak. While it was clearly my fault for not making sure I had them, I will at least point out that Craig either didn't put float bags with the rest of my gear, or never grabbed some for himself. Of course, I'm responsible for my gear and I have no-one to blame but myself for lack of float-bags, but I'm being so thorough here in this epic story that I wanted to point this detail out. Because, well, it was bothering me.

So, there ya go folks. An epic story (at least in length). I went for a number of swims before I had a roll. I've only had two swims since (Lunch Hole and then this one). I must say, this was by far the most fun swim of them all. I genuinely had a fun time on this trip. With the exception of the cave and the other big log that got me worried, I never had any fear while floating down the river. There was enough water in the river at 8500cfs that my butt didn't have to hit too many rocks while floating down, and, after I discovered the super-secret double-paddle-lounger move, I was very relaxed and comfortable on the river.

I can't wait for the next Wenatchee trip!

Photos:

No pictures from today.

Videos:

Trip fried the camcorder circuitry. Still trying to recover the tape and see how much it managed to record.