4848'

Occurred January 27th and 28th, 2007

In a quick Friday afternoon decision, I decided to surprise Shannon with a trip to Snowshoe, West Virginia. We talked about hitting the slopes all week, and the weather forecast looked great. There is no time like the present, so I began to make phone calls to find a place to stay. Everything was booked. I checked Canaan Valley first and then thought of Snowshoe. The conditions were much better at Snowshoe and the forecast called for 6 new inches of powder over the weekend. Sweet. Luckily, there was one room available at the lone bed and breakfast, the Morning Glory Inn, at the base of the mountain. We were going boarding.

Shannon came home and I told her the news. She was excited. It had been a few weeks since we had done something just the two of us, because I was busy playing in the kayak. We went to bed early and got up even earlier. The alarm rang at three o'clock in the morning... we wanted to try and leave by four. Shan slept the first two hours of the trip, while I methodically drove in a straight line down 66 and 81. I was getting sleepy by the time we hit Staunton, so Shannon took over. The most difficult part of the drive is the forty miles from Staunton to a little town called Monterey. You must cross the Alleghenies through a treacherous section of road that twists and turns its way through mountain pass after mountain pass. It is a crumpled terrain, left over from geologic activity hundreds of millions of years ago. I woke up up in the middle of some hairpin turn, feeling the gravity gently plastering my face and complimentary drool over the passenger side window.

We were chagrined to find snow covered valleys as we passed through Monterey in Highland County. The winds were fierce and drifting snow covered the road a few inches thick in many places. The sun filled the valley with the onset of morning and we stopped to take a few pictures. The region is quite remote, filled with livestock, abandoned roadside houses, and oddities such as the largest steerable radio telescope in the world, in Greenback, West Virginia. Its collecting dish occupies a space of 2.3 acres!

The weather looked great. We stepped out of the Jeep to blue skies and a chill in the air. We purchased our lift tickets and met Rusty, a former health and biology teacher from New Jersey who since retired in the paradise of West Virginia. We had much in common and he seemed to like the two of us, going so far as to offer Shannon a complimentary snowboard demo. His arms were dribbled with tattoos and told us of his adventures in the local mountains riding Harley Davidson motorcycles. He had long gray hair in a pony tail. I could have sworn I was having a conversation with my Uncle Doug.

I skied the first few runs of the day, only to discover I longed to snowboard. Plus, if we were both snowboarding, it would be more fun. Around lunch time, I rented a snowboard from Rusty and we were on our way. We spent some time on Cupp Run, but there were hoards of injuries. Every time we went down there was more blood on the slopes. We found out later that evening, two people actually lost their ability to walk, paralyzed from the waist down. They ultimately closed that side of the mountain due to unsafe slope conditions because of high traffic. It was open on Sunday again and the conditions were much better. Many people on the slopes comport themselves with a reckless abandon that proves dangerous to other riders. Skiing or riding down the mountain at mach speed, failing to make single turn, does not make you a good rider, and it incessantly annoying to folks who are trying to simply enjoy themselves.

In any case, by three o'clock we were beat, so we made our way down the mountain to our bed and breakfast. It was perfect, a wrap around front porch, fireplace, and hot tub in the room. I was already looking forward to the breakfast in the morning. I decided the bed was quite positively the best bed I ever slept in, most likely due to my exaggerated tiredness. We took a quick nap and made our way back to the top of the mountain to have dinner. We were greeted with a colorful display of fireworks. We sipped a few beers, Shanon had a burger, and I had trout, while we made a new friend with our waiter Cesar. He and his girlfriend were from Brazil on vacation from school. We liked him so much, we invited them both to stay with us if they wanted to visit the nation's capital.

We crashed hard. Shannon woke up first and quickly dragged me out of bed. Breakfast was stuffed french toast, strawberries and pecans, sausage, coffee and orange juice, and our new favorite Victorian cream with fruit. We grinned through breakfast as the snow fell beyond the warmth of the picture window.

Sunday was perfect ski weather. It snowed nearly the entire day, with pockets of blue skies here and there. The slopes were covered with a few inches of fresh powder making it easy to carve turns. We spend a lot of time in the Western Territory on some good long runs. We found another favorite area called the Northern Tract that had some nice long cruisers with a few banked turns.

Alas, the day had to come to an end. We faced a long drive home, so we got off the slopes at three thirty. After a bite to eat we were on the road again. It was slow going for the first two hours. The temperature hovered around twenty and the roads were covered in snow.

We decided it's hard to find a better time than 4848'...

A Stormy Night

Occurred January 21rst, 2007

I slid into my kayak with a cold discomfort. The plastic felt stiff and reluctant to welcome me. The snow drifted through the craggy cliffs sticking like whitewash to fencepost. It was getting dark. There was nothing of particular difficulty I was about to attempt, at least from a technical stand point. The nature of the Potomac River changes dramatically with a tenth of a difference on the gauge. There is always an element of suprise.

I paddled past the ancient indian petroglyph that sat beneath the fish ladder. A heron drifted through the snow like a great blue orb looking for shelter. The air was silent. The kind of blissful silence, oh so welcome, in the early moments of a snowstorm when the flakes just begin to cover familiar ground, transforming it into an irradiant white. There is a solemness in those moments that seems to call all things to rest.

The mighty Po tumbled through the Mather Gorge creating a maelstrom of whitewater as it crashed through S-turn rapid. I could barely see in front of me, the flakes continually clung to my retina. Capability is sometimes not the question to ask. Besides, it was not what this adventure was about. This adventure was about silence. I turned around and drifted through a back gorge, only the sound of my paddle dipping into the icy black cauldron below.

I was amazed by the force of the eddy line as I entered the main waters of the gorge. It was difficult paddling and I was fighting darkness. The soft glow of lights from Madeira School sat quietly in the distance, the only signal of a human world. It is a wonderful experience, an adventure in and of itself, to create a world of escape, a mere fourteen miles from the nation's capital.

I drifted down center chute and around the bend. I was almost to Angler's Inn. I paddled swiftly with determination. The air felt soft, despite the biting cold, almost surreal as I drifted along in my beloved world of silence. I declared myself a pirate of dark waters as I rounded the final bend and paddled for shore.

I hit the snowy beach, in the welcome company of friends. They spoke. My silence was gone.

Winter Bliss...

Occurred January 20th, 2007

Daugherty Creek was certainly an epic weekend. We were blessed with unseasonably warm winter temperatures, which made the adventure easily endured. One week later, and the spooky warm weather that cast its spell over much of the eastern seaboard, suddenly vanished. Temperatures dropped dramatically, providing the first snow of the season, and a gentle reminder that the earth still remains a swiftly tilting planet, whirling through a vacuum of darkness, whose temperatures may be influenced by our feable attempts to cling to existence, but ultimately still succumbs to the mighty irradiance of the sun and its own tilted personality.
One of my closest friends decided to come for a visit on Saturday. We spoke of kayaking in western lands, however ultimately decided the lion's cold breath was too much a risk. We opted to stay near home, and perhaps enjoy an afternoon romp on the Dickerson whitewater course, formerly the main training grounds for the United States olympic paddling team. The process of gaining access to Dickerson without a blue card seemed possible, I was aware of a hidden back entrance through wooded trail, but ultimately unworth the trouble. We decided to go have just a look instead and postpone the boating suare to another date.

I visited Dickerson once before while hiking nearby Sugarloaf Mountain. Its difficulty varies with flow, and adjusts with the power demands of nearby cities and suburbia. The coal fired power plant uses the dammed water from the Potomac as a coolant, discharging the water in the whitewater course an improved warmer version, much to the chagrin of wintertime paddlers.
Mark was impressed with the course and excited about the possibilities of paddling there in the future. We intend on obtaining blue cards and we were lucky enough to watch paddling friends, Maggie Snowell and Scott Anderson, have a run through the course test, catching eddies and performing the necessary role maneuvers. It is a pleasant addition to the new myriad of paddling opportunities I am quickly discovering in the greater Washington region.
Following our stint at the whitewater course, we traveled to the local climbing gym to have a go. It was great to hang out with an old friend. Mark and I were consistent paddling buddies for an entire year and as a result formed a wonderful friendship. We continue to paddle together, time and weather permitting, as often as possible. As a duo, we are safety concious, but also ambitious in our paddling goals. His conversation and company is hard to rival. We enjoyed ourselves at the climbing gym and I was pleased to finally notice an appreciable improvement in my climbing and bouldering skill. I finally have a bit of finger strenghth and my ability to read the climb and movement is better.

The true highlight of our day actually took place in the morning. Mark arrived around eight and I proceeded to show him my recently acquired volume of paddling films. Shannon had yet to venture out on the ropes course and zip line in our backyard and Mark was intrigued by the idea. We geared up and wandered out back for a few hours worth of entertainment, dangling by a few ropes suspended fifty feet in the air. The air was cold and the sky was deep blue. My fingers lost their agility quickly as I fumbled to secure carabiners and ensure that Mark was locked safely to the main line. In order to get to the main tower, you must traverse fifty feet of suspened wire, connected by your carabiner, shuffling your feet one after another, while the wire dips lazily and shakes in violent winds. We followed one another across, slowly, but surely making our way to the wooden platform shifting around like a buoy lost at sea. Once atop the safety of the tower, I proceeded to attach the pulley system to the central steel line that traveled two hundred meters into the distance, through a valley of trees, all the while making a mockery of gravity.

The scariest part of the whole operation is actually attaching the pulley system to the cold steel wire. The platform is barely wide enough for two people to stand. Mark was safely clipped to the same wire that supported him through his first traverse, while I reclipped myself to a steel loop firmly embedded in the sinewy tissue of tree. There exists a bolt two feet away from the wooden platform, quietly seated within the string of the main line. In order to attach the pulley, one must trust in the rope that connects them to the traee, lean over the edge of the wooden platform, and place the pulley system over the steel cable beyond the pesky bolt. Once the pulley is over the steel wire, one must hold the pulley in their left hand while clipping a carabiner through the hoop of the pulley, ultimately connecting to their climbing harness, all the while dangling fifty feet above very hard frozen ground, while the tree shakes violently.

I was able to attach the carabiner without any problems. Shorty thereafter, Mark was on his way, sliding through the valley of trees below. We each took several turns, and collectively came up with a good system for transporting for unhooking each other and transporting the pulley back to the platform.

It was a great day, and the weekend was not quite over... a storm lurked on the horizon.

Oh Be Joyful

Occurred June, 2006

Well, I suppose I cannot wait for this weekend to pass before I pen another tale, so I begin to dig through the annals of my brain and into the file labeled Oh Be Joyful Creek. This summer I spent nearly a month touring Colorado and bits of Utah. It was truly epic. Crested Butte, Steam Boat, Copper, Vail, Durango, Moab, it was a pleasurful pilgramage to the holiest churches of outdoor adventure. There are many tales to be told, but I begin my Colorado dialogue with a little gem near the town of Crested Butte.
Oh Be Joyful Creek drops around five hundred feet per mile. It is fed by snow melt draining the steep mountains surrounding the town of Crested Butte. My soon to be bride, Shannon, was gracious enough to travel around the vistas of Colorado with me while my eyeballs were perma-popped out of my skull, and my jaw continually drug alonside the highway as we drove by the most serious whitewater I had seen yet. We slept in the back of the sea foam green Expedition in the town of Salida while attending Fibark, pounding a few blue moons, and watching some of the best playboaters around throw serious air in the town play hole. Salida is a sweet town, it has an authentic artistic tone, with an air that it exists on the edge of greatness. I look forward to future trips to Fibark, but this time, the only thing I had on my mind the entire time we were in Salida was the monster slides that were waiting three hours away.
The journey from Salida to Crested Butte wound over Monarch Pass. The region is remote, austere, and absolute bliss. The sunlight lilted among the aspen trees as their leaves danced with the wind. Aspen trees quickly became my favorite type of tree. The way they move in unison creates an ephemeral atmosphere with a signature of grace. At one point we stopped the truck on the side of the road. I stepped out of the car and stood in silence in a warm valley dabbled with grass and draped with puffy white clouds, just to breath in the purity of silence. In a world of constant calamity, it is not often one can stand in the shadow of silence and breathe a breath of stillness.

Past Gunnison and straight into Crested Butte, my heart developed a condition of pleasantry as I stared at the incredible spires of rock rising about the horizon of town. The road to Oh Be Joyful was just outside of town, but it was getting dark and we needed sleep. We decided to rest our bones in an old inn, reminiscent of an old alpine tavern and the feel of a campfire toasted with warm marshmallows.
In the morning we opened our eyes to sunshine and crisp mountain air. I wandered outside in the chill of the morning and grabbed my toothbrush out of my pack. I noticed the orange glow of the sun, hidden behind a still snowpacked peak, about to show its face and grin at the sight of the world below. Shannon was excited about the prospect of a mountain bike ride in the hills.
We threw our stuff back into the Expedition and wandered off down the road to Oh Be Joyful. A trail of dust leapt in great travails behind our truck, the aspens shook, and we stared to our left, down a steep slope, into an alpine wetland sprinkled with big beaver dams that appeared like rustic cabins. It was original.
We pulled into Oh Be Joyful campground and parked beside the frigid Slate river. I got out of the truck and stared at the translucent black. I felt like I was finally home. There is a philosphical notion of home that transends human rationality on a metaphysical level. It is difficult to describe, and for all of us the notion of what home is appears different, but when we feel it, we just know. We know in a way that gives goosebumps and touches the depths of our soul. It is something that seems to reach out and touch the notion of our very existence, and if not just for a moment, make sense of the ever plaguing existential questions of humanity.

Just then, as if out of thin air, I looked up and saw Phil Porter. I met Phil a few days earlier on the upper reaches of the Eagle River. Phil was a soulful man, you could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. He had an alluring passion for the wildnerness and the rivers that breathed life into the landscape. His smile was contagious and he made his way toward me once he spotted me. Before we spoke, we already knew that we were partners in an epic endeavor, our journey down a mountainside, screaming along in frothy white foam, skipping over metamorphic rock and into the oblivion of concious thought. The conversation ensued, but when it comes down to it, in life, words are mostly unimportant. It is movement and action that defines us. We grabbed our boats, attached ropes to our grabloops and proceeded to tow our boats up the steep two miles of trailhead to the put in. Stephanie, Phil's girlfriend, and Shannon followed along in cheeful delight. I sometimes wonder about the female perspective of men in boats, especially those that do not participate in river running. When fully suited kayakers are reminscent of knights in armor, modern warriors off to battle the elements and follow a quest in their search for unrequited love. It is a romantic world, painted with paddles as swords, boats as horses, elbow pads as metal, and the riverbed the ever present element of suprise always ready to reveal the true nature of courage in the depths of a man.
We wobbled past an unbelievable steepness, a kind I never before laid eyes upon. The sweat dripped off our brows and we unintentionally kicked up clouds of brown dirt as the neoprene from our booties seemed to melt into our flesh. When at last we reached the put-in, I was shocked to find that our run would begin backwards, facing upstream, a mere ten feet above a twenty foot shear waterfall.
Phil slid into his boat, an intense look seared on his face. He knew the full extent of his actions. To paddle a river of this nature, you must believe you are a dragon rider. He took a wide right stroke peeled out into the main current and with a flash disappeared over the horizon line, off the face of the earth and into the abyss. It was time to face the beast.
My hands shook and my lips quivered. I searched for reasons, but I only came up with questions. The only answer... paddle like mad. I took a wide right stroke, the current grabbed my loins, squeezed my balls until they were the size of grapenuts. On line, I took a big boof stroke off the lip. There were no thoughts, only transcedental notions of God. I landed with a smack. The spray cleared and I saw Phil, a smile stretched from ear to ear. We pushed on. It felt as if the bottom of the world dropped out. The next big slide: high speeds, chewed plastic, gritted teeth, efervescent laughter, big bumps, grinding paddle blades, all in an instant. A large eddy at the bottom and we halted to a stop. The creek continued on like this for what seemed like hours, days, months, years, or perhaps something else entirely. The next big rapid, the second one of the big three that clearly stand out in mental imagery was just around the bend.

The approach was complicated. A thirty foot high angled slide with a right angle, a hard left turn between two rocks that resembled angel wings, a hard right through a bit of a boulder field, straight ahead, and just before taking the plunge, a wide right stroke turning your craft ninety degrees before falling thirty feet into a cauldron of bubbly nirvana.
The girls waited in view high on the cliffside, a surreal scene, smiling and waving, existing on an entirely different universal brane, exceedingly more complicated than the rivery world where I stood still, listnening to my heart thump inside the cavity of ribs, knowing full well that any quiver of hesitation, anything less than total concentration, would result in a broken ankles, a broken back, or worse a cracked skull and an untimely watery grave. I thought... be the dragon.
I moved out of the warm womb of my eddy and committed. Once you commit there is no going back. It is a beautiful thing really, unlike all other decisions one is faced with in life, completely uneffected by the pathetic indecisions of concious thoughts. You cannot go back, you cannot stop the desire of the river to press ever onward, motivated by gravity, with an unstoppable desire to reach the calm of the sea. Down the slide, bear left, through the angel wings, a hard right, straight ahead, and the crux of the move. I dipped my blade stared over the edge and pulled right. My boat twisted, my muscles twitched, my breath stopped, and for a moment I was able to warp the fabric of space. The nose of my boat pierced the surface of water and plunged deep. I was completely submerged, but hit the line perfectly. I turned around and stared at the falls behind me. The river growled and I screamed in delight. I had tossled its mane, but we were not yet finished.
Again, we pressed on into the unknown. The next series of drops: a twist, a right stroke into a steep face off an eight foot falls turning right while in mid-air, a boulder garden, a few more slides and into an eddy above a great precipice. Avalanche.

It is difficult to describe the enormity of Avalanche. When you begin the drop, you cannot see the bottom. Not only is it long, but it is steep, not quite vertical, but not far from it. The river is shallow and the rocks are sharp. The idea of losing control and flipping upside down was not fathomable. It would result in spilled blood. The stakes were high, but we were almost home. Avalanche empties into a large pool above a thirty foot before. There is a hole at the bottom and all of the outflow presses against a pile of logs that could build a home. It was time. Phil did not deliberate. He slid off into the distance, guns blaring, flags flying. It was impossible to see the outcome from my vantage point. I followed soon after, knowing that any notions of control were a mere illusion. I held my paddle ready to battle the rock beneath the watery veil. I skipped along at speeds that brought tears to my eyes. My paddle was reduced to half its size as I smashed into the first hole in the middle of the slide. I twisted sideways and the nerves felt like ice on my spine. I slammed my paddle against the rock to my left and straightened out. I began to fall down the final stretch when a tiny rock decided to once again reorient my boat. I crashed into the hold sideways and was immediately turned upside down. In a flash I was right side up and almost by intution reached for the eddy where Phil waited.
The smiles stretched wide across the skies and we slid through the treachery of sticks into river feed below and made our way to the far bank where we carried up a slippery slope and back to the safety of the girls.

That night there was talk of greatness and the unknown. There were visions of what lie ahead in the coming days on the creeks in the area. Oh Be Joyful creek is a bastion of sanity in a wild world. It is most notable how the world has changed since the days when the west was first settled. People lived to survive. They worried about food, water, shelter, the basic questions of survival. In those days, the world was wild in a way that pitted the survival of man against the elements. Today, the world is wild in an entirely new and different way. Our manipulation of the natural world, the taming of the great wild, has led to a society constantly connected with each other, but disconnected from the world around. Our worries about basic necessities are few and far between, just what we always wanted, but for some reason there is something missing. There is an internal desire in the human psyche that seeks to push itself, because in those instances of despair, it is then that we know life fully and completely. Only then can we fully appreciate the miracle of what we are.
As I lay in my sleeping bag that evening, safely curled next to Shannon, I painted pictures on the inside of my skull of what was waiting in the darkness, a rapid ready to demonize and mutilate us upon the eve of the morrow. Rip Your Head Off.

Daugherty Creek

The trip to Daugherty was all about the unknowns. It was raining hard in West Virginia and I was determined to get a good run in on something new. Originally, I intended to go for the entire three day weekend, however plans changed quickly as river levels rose. Scott Anderson a.ka. 'Great Tree Warrior', was off boating the James at high water on Saturday. I elected to wait for him to get back so we could head out to West Virginia together early Sunday morning.


We left around seven in the morning. It was rainy when we left and the weather forecast was looking solid... rain throughout the entire day and into the evening. On the road and riddled with anticipation, we sorted through the various options of where to go. There was discussion of runs on the North Fork of the Blackwater, Bull Run, Pringle, Red Creek... everything was running, so we really needed to decide on a drainage, the Blackwater or the Cheat. Twenty minutes into our trip we approached a car with a few boats on top. As we pulled up alongside of their truck, we rolled down our windows and shouted questions back and forth. They weren't sure where they were going either. They wrote their number down on three pieces of paper, plastered it to their window and gave us the signal to give them a call. We gave them a ring in hopes we could all come to an agreement about what to run... that way we would be able to set a shuttle.


Ten minutes later and we were on our own again. They elected to run the Upper Yough at high water. We were still determined to run something new. We decided to head to the Cheat drainage. Red Creek, our other most popular option in the Blackwater drainage, is only accessible by a fire road that is closed in the winter, so we figured we had more options near the Cheat and the Sandy. Scott was really fired up about Daugherty Creek, a six mile long micro-creek in a deep gorge that empties into the Cheat near the Albright power station. I was hoping to run the waterfall at Pringle, but it is a short run, so we decided to head to Daugherty. As we headed up the road, past a structure that was part mobile home, part barn, part shanty town, surrounded by a deforested muddy hill side, with chickens, bunny rabbits, cats, dogs, horses, and donkeys lumbering around, I was unconvinced we made a good decision. There was a wide variety of trash in the road and a large sign that announced the area was going to be cleaned up by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, obviously not yet. The dogs were chained inside these strange wire mesh cages and howled as we drove by. The horses had sad looks on their faces, like their favorite Saturday morning cartoon was just taken off the air. My mind began to wonder what anomaly of a human might be living in the lurks of the shadowy basement in such a structure. In reality it is a scene all to common in the many poverty ridden pockets of West Virginia where people are often placed at odds with their surroundings, impoverished and holding on to existence on desecrated land.


We pressed on, winding up the mountian side, past a field full of angus beef, and the strange scene of a burned tree, standing alone in the middle of farmer's field. We crested the hill, following the directions and bearing right at each junction. Finally, we made it to the put-in. We hiked down to the creek to have a look. It was tiny, flowed through a tunnel of rhodedendron, and there was plenty of wood. I was thinking we might go somwhere else, but Scott was still fired up and seemed intent. We scouted a bit and I changed my mind. It was six miles long, but the rapids looked fun and did not evoke visions of terror. Since there was only two of us, safety was a concern, so we decided it was our best bet. Once the final decision was made, I was quickly excited and ready to go boating.


There was portage early on. A large beech tree blocked the entire creek. We were not entirely sure of the nature of the creek at first, so we spent some time out of our boats scouting drops that seemed blind. We became more brazen as we pushed on, a bit to our detriment. The first few slides were fast and furious, but serviceable eddies were often in plain sight and stopped you on a dime as you dipped your blade.

The creek is continuous and the action constant. Somewhere toward the end of the first hour I recall one drop that had a large undercut wall on river right. We got out to scout, but it was nothing of consequence, a fun drop with an auto launch lip toward the bottom.


The creek pressed on and I started to relax, enjoying the bounty of slides and drops. The gorge was beautiful, a magical forest of rhodendron cast in an other worldy mist of rain. There was an unexpected eight foot waterfall, but the hole at the bottom proved gentle.


We rounded a corner and an extremely tiny creek flowed in from river left. There was drop in front of us with a log jutting out from river right. We were mostly boat scouting at this point. Scott decided to push on. As I waited in the eddy I was staring at the small creek flowing in and wondering if I could slide down the last drop. I looked back two seconds later to watch Scott emerge from underneath the surface, hand roll up, chase his paddle down and grab it. I realized the seemingly innocuous log must be forked.


Luckily, Scott was alright. The log hit him in the chest. He bear hugged the tree and swung himself underneath and pushed off the bottom. He declared he would no longer be running any drops blind in fear of more potentially deadly wood. I agreed that was probably a good idea.


After Scott's incident with tree wrestling, we drifted further on and into what I recall as being some of the more exciting parts of the run. There were a few slides that were a few hundred feet long, the river was shallow, but few sections where our boats scraped bottom. There were reactionary waves coming at you from many directions that made things interesting. None were super steep, mostly low angled slides, but you picked up speed with ease.


The spooky shelter near the confluence of the Cheat suddenly emerged in sight. We were near the end our Daugherty expedition, but as the river gods would have it, there was a price to pay for our finish.


The last main drop on Daugherty was an exciting eight foot boof onto a flat rock shelf. The drop was riddled with a near river wide strainer, but seemed straight forward enough, down a small chute, catch an eddy on river right, ferry back across, boof the lip with a little leftie and off you go. I headed out to run it first. I had a lapse in judgment on my entry into the first little chute, got blown too far right, decided I was not going to be able to make the eddy, and needed to try and get back left. It was too late, I was exactly where I did not want to be. I headed left, but all the current was driving straight into the tree. I saw it coming and right before impact I curled my body, tossed my paddle and wrapped my arms around this behemoth of a log. I was impressed and alarmed by the force of the water. Immediately, I popped my skirt kicked my boat down and tried to pull myself out of the water, but my vest was snagged on a branch. Worry began to seep through my veins. I reached for my knife to cut out, while I worked the snage with my left hand. I was free, but now dangling over the river on the log, my paddle long gone, and my boat terribly pinned. A simple drop gone horribly wrong with one missed stroke. You cannot complain though, that is the game you choose to play. I shook the tree, the boat moved a bit. I shook for a while, and tried to push, but could not get a good footing. Finally, the stern popped up enough for me to get both feet on it and push. I shook the tree and pushed at the same time and the current sucked it free.


I ran after the boat and quickly coralled it to shore. Scott tried to catch my paddle, but to no avail. It is likely still circulating beneath the low head dam at the power station.


We tried to catch a ride back to the Jeep by flashing dollar bills on the side of the road, but for some odd reason there were no takers. Apparently wet, smelly kayakers acting as if they were seated in a high dollar strip club are not seen as a chance to make new friends. It was cold and rainy, so we began our seven mile march uphill, past the spooky kooky house, the sad horses, and the German Shepard trained to a tree, that if let loose, would have surely loved to get a good much out of my buttocks.


It was an exciting day, one that will surely be remembered for shenanigans and oddities, but mostly a little creek nick named 'the Dog' that got a little piece of each of us.