Leading the flow

Some friends ran the Green today and they put on as the flow was being dropped from 935 to the mid 600s. This reminded me of a couple of days back in 1991 when I was running the South Fork American in California. I had a couple of friends who wanted to IK the run, but one wanted to go on Saturday and the other on Sunday. So, I was able to rent one boat for them to use. On the SF, the dam release typically started at 9AM and went for 3 hours. Each day, we got on the river just after 9 and my friends both wanted to get home fairly quickly, so we paddled to stay at the front of the release. We didn't really notice it at first, but we were paddling hard enough that we kept getting in front of the release. The first time I noticed was the first day at lunch. We had gone halfway through the gorge when we decided to stop for lunch. As we ate, the river slowly began to rise. My boat had been sitting on the beach and I noticed that it had begun to float.  After lunch, we got back on the higher flow and finished the run. The following day, I convinced my friend that hurrying wouldn't really get us to the takeout faster, so we rode the main flow the whole way. I've never been in this situation since that weekend.