It was suggested in an email that I post this tale on a new thread to remind
us of what rbp and rbpt are all about. This was originally embedded in an OT
thread. Enjoy.
>Mike McCrea" <mccrea DeleteThis @umbi.umd.edu> wrote
> "riverman" <nospam DeleteThis @sorry.com> wrote
>
>> Did I ever tell the story about running Lower Madison in an open
>> boat, without flotation, connected to the wreckage of another canoe that
>> was
>> rolling over and over, tangling the throwline and pulling my boat closer
>> and
>> closer....
>
>
> No, and after scrolling past 300+ entry rbp threads that consisted
> largely of political namecalling and nanny-nanny boo booing I'd love
> to read a new riverman tale.
>
> Let 'er rip Myron 
Well, OKAY, since you asked. Its strangely timely, as I just moments ago
recieved an email from the outfitter who I was working with (that particular
trip was about 15 years ago!) and the trip was my first trip with him.
------------------------------
It was the early days, way back when I didn't have such a bad back, slept in
my van, and ate a lot of fried fast food.
I had been poking around the Western US running rivers privately and trying
to make ends meet, and had not yet worked as a canoe guide. I had many years
experience as a rafting guide, but had gotten tired of the growing
'Disneyland' atmosphere of commercial rafting trips and was looking for
another way to keep my feet wet and make a living. So I packed up my stuff
into Otis the Van, tied my battered old Blue Hole 17A on the roof, drove out
to the Pacific NW, and spent a lot of time on Oregon and Washington rivers.
To pay for that fried fast food I was working as a day tripper for some
commercial rafting outfits, and then later in the week I would bring my
canoe up and run the same rivers with my buddies. Doing so much private
boating on technical water, I was regularly getting into fairly big rapids:
in fact, I think I have the first descent of Husum Falls (there's a funny
thread about that in the archives). But I was also doing a lot of canoe
camping, and naturally my whitewater skills were being used on these camping
trips. I had long ago learned that it was easier to pick a careful line than
it was to portage all that stuff and carry a boat around, so I got to
develop into a pretty dependable Class 3-4 open boater (or at least, as a
boater who could tapdance through a Class 3-4 rapid in loaded tripping
canoes without flotation and without saddles or thigh straps). When some
friends heard of an outfitter hiring guides for canoe camping trips on the
Rio Grande, they passed the word on to me, and I agreed to meet up with this
guy in Odessa, Texas, where he was outfitting. I was a little unsure if my
style of boating was in any way an accepted practice, or even if I would
muster up to the level that Eastern boaters maintained, but I figured I
could learn. He agreed to 'try me out' on a provisional basis on a trip he
was leading that next week.
On the very first day of the trip, we had all these novices at put in, and
we just dumped piles of gear in their boats, put lifejackets on them, put
paddles in their hands and shoved them off. They pinballed down the river
for the first 5 miles (no whitewater), gunnel-grabbing, getting hung up on
every gravel bar and crashing into the outside bank of every turn in the
river. When we made camp, I was thinking "Wow, these folks don't know
<anything>!" That evening, as we gathered around the dinner fire, the
Outfitter asked me to give the introductory safety/instruction talk. Now,
sometimes in life we find ourselves in a brand new situation, and we have to
invent the rules as we go, but not usually with so many eyes on us, so when
he asked me to do this, I was very nervous...I had never given a canoe
safety talk before! I mean, I had given rafting safety talks up the
yingyang, and I had informally taught people how to canoe before, but I had
no idea how this outfitter gave his talks or what they said or what. But I
was on the spot, so I thought "Well, what do these guys need to know? They
need to know basic stuff that will keep them from falling out of their
boats, and they need to know how to paddle their boats straight." So I
started off simple....I told them about how to load their boats so that they
float down straight and are easy to turn. I told them about how to sit in
the boat when there are rapids, and to keep their hands off the gunnels
("Imagine that the gunnels are razor blades," I told them) and to keep their
paddles in the water. I showed them the basic forward and turning strokes,
and a high brace. I told them that, on the water, we'd help them learn to
work in tandem, and later we'd teach them more advanced strokes. I mean, all
this was common sense stuff to me and I didn't want to overload them the
first night, so I gave them just enough to get them through the next day.
The outfitter nodded in agreement, added a few minor comments along the way,
and just let me talk. Later that evening, I asked if it was okay, and he
said yeah, that it was almost word-for-word exactly what he gives in his
safety talks. So I had a very strong affirmation that my instincts were
good, and that I was going to be okay with this guy. It felt very
reassuring.
As the trip progressed, it was very nice finding my niche. The cook,
Rachelle, was paddling a solo boat but was a bit nervous in her skills...she
was probably just a Class 2 boater, but a world-class cook and all around
sweetheart who had been with the company since the first day, and was very
interesting to talk to. So I found myself paddling close to her when we went
through riffles, giving her encouragement and helping her learn strokes. But
she was set in her ways, having been a class 2 paddler for about 50 years,
and just kept making her dependable way along.
Later, about midway through the 10-day trip, we came to a pair of
troublesome
rapids. First was 'Hot Springs', a short but rocky Class 3 drop that we had
to portage. The policy on the trips the outfitter guided was that the
clients got to soak in the nearby hot spring while the guides portaged the
boats and gear, but on my own later trips I would just run the client boats
through while they bathed. After that, a few miles downstream we camped on
river left just above the largest rapid on the river; Lower Madison Falls.
This was a very loud, long, rocky and tumultous Class 4-5 rapid, and
approaching it involved a long, sneaky rock garden run, through a gap
between two rocks, into an eddy just above the dropoff. Then a quick landing
and securing of the boat, unloading it, and a horriffic portage through a
boulderfield to a tiny eddy below. We were exactly midway through the trip,
so the loss of a boat or the gear made running it too risky, and Rachelle
told me that the portage was just too brutal to be any fun at all,
especially following the footsteps of the Hot Springs portage.
The next morning, we all geared up our boats and got ready to cross the
river. To reduce the risk of losing gear, food or clients, we loaded extra
gear into the guide boats to lighten the client's boats. Then we ran in a
very precise order: the outfitter went first and caught the eddy, dragged
his boat on shore, and established safety from shore with a throwline.
Then I ran next, caught a microeddy behind a rock at the head of the eddy,
far out in the river, and set up safety there with MY throwline. Then the
clients came through, one at a time, with Rachelle sending them off in order
and me pointing out the route from out in midriver where I was eddied. One
at a time, they worked their way down the rock garden, caught the eddy, and
paddled to shore. The very last boat to come down was Rachelle, with all the
kitchen gear and some extra baggage.
I saw it coming. She started out too far in the current, was too far off of
the indicator rock, and missed the gap between the rocks. In a last ditch
effort to make the eddy, she broached on a rock and I watched in horror as
her upstream gunnel sank below the waterline, the boat filled with water and
with a gut-twisting 'cruunnnchh' wrapped around the rock and Rachelle washed
out, immediately before her broken boat washed off the rock and started
heading
down towards the rapid.
I yelled "ROPE!" and tossed my throwbag at her. It landed right across her
body (she was only about 20 feet away) and I quickly clipped my end of the
rope around the thwart and started paddling for shore. As my rope got tight,
it got harder and harder to make headway, and my forward motion stopped. I
looked back and saw that the loose end of my rope had gotten tangled around
the wreckage of her boat, and we were both getting dragged back out into the
current. The outfitter, seeing my difficulty, threw HIS rope to me, and I
caught it and grabbed tied it around the thwart, too. He pulled from shore,
I paddled from my boat, and I was still getting rapidly dragged back. The
outfitter, now being dragged chest-deep into the river, yelled "CUT THE
ROPE!!", and with a glance over
at Rachelle holding on for life, I knew what I had to do. I grabbed my
knife, and cut the outfitter's rope, leaving me, Rachelle and both our boats
tied together and on our way into a Class 4-5 rapid, 100 miles from
take-out, with half the trip gear and most of the food and kitchen.
I turned my boat around, paddled out closer to her and started talking.
Partly to reassure her, mostly to reassure me. I said "OK, Rachelle, take
some deep breaths. We're going to run this rapid and you're going to have to
relax and swim it out. Your boat is a bit ahead of you and to your left, so
you should be able to stay away from it. I'll stay behind you and off to the
side. Here comes a big wave....grab a breath and lay on your back...." We
ran the first entrance wave, I rocked with it and kept dry and she popped up
on the back of the wave. "OK, how ya doin'?
"Great" she said. "So what's next?"
"Looks like a bit of a waterfall....maybe 3, 4 feet. Keep your feet up, grab
another breath, here we go...!"
It went like that the whole way through. I had to keep one eye on her, watch
the water, keep the rope between me and her boat from snagging on rocks
(mostly by just following her boat through the rapid) and just go with it.
Fortunately, I was on a good line, and she was a good swimmer, and it felt
exactly like running all those rivers in Washington and Oregon. After a few
moments we emerged out from the bottom of the rapid. I passed her the stern
line, and in the calm of the pool below the rapid I was able to get to
shore, drag my boat up, she and I hauled her boat ashore. We dropped down on
the sandbank, I grabbed a beer from the dragbag in my bow, popped it open,
and said "Well, hell, Rachelle! We just ran Lower Madison!"
Just at that moment, a sound like a bear came crashing through the brush
behind us. The outfitter came charging through the sawgrass, throwrope and
first aid kit in hand, lunged to a stop downstream from us and peered out
over the run-out. He didn't see us, so he hopped up on a rock, looking
anxiously downstream to find us. His body language was of complete
desperation. We called him, and he turned around to see me and Rachelle,
beer in hand, sitting in the warm sand, with both boats safely on shore. My
boat was
dry as a bone, hers was a wreck but not one piece of gear was lost, and no
one was hurt.
He slogged over, sat down, took a long haul off of my beer, and said: "So,
you want a job?" It was the start of a beautiful relationship.
--riverman<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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