2011 Roundup

2011 turned out to be the second most prolific boating year yet. I got in a total of 86 boating days, of which 63 were IK runs. I boated in 4 states (WA, OR, ID, and MT) and one other country (Costa Rica). I got in 12 personal first descents, but only flipped 8 times.

As the year ends, I have a total of 827 river days since 1989, with an average of 37 days per year. My 5 year average is 79 days per year. To make 1000 days by June 2014, I need to average 72 days per year for the next 17 months.

My goals for 2011 are:

• Boat at least 75 days.
• Learn to reflip my cataraft.
• Run Boulder Drop at least 5 times.
• Run Fall in the Wall on the SF Snoqualmie

86 - 12/31/2011 - Middle Middle

Some friends and I had spent the week at the beach in Oregon, and when we returned there was plenty of water in the river. For my birthday, we decided to do a quick run on the Middle Middle. The run itself was the usual fun, with pretty nice weather. We were surprised to see that the tree that had fallen just after Thanksgiving was still there.

85 - 12/18/2011 - Lower Skagit

With no rain, it was looking like their might not be any boating in December. A friend decided to do an "eagle float" on the Lower Skagit. This section of river only has a few rapids, all class I or I+, but in the winter it has a lot of eagles. The only other time I ran this section was back in August 2000, and there aren't many birds out in August.

We had a group of 4 boats: a raft, a cataraft (mine), an inflatable kayak, and a hardshell kayak. I finally mounted my GoPro helmet camera and took it. I got almost the entire trip on video (all but the last 5 minutes).

84 - 11/27/2011 - Middle Middle

The flow in the Middle Fork Snoqualmie came down to a good level, so a few of us decided to do a quick run on the Middle Middle to end a nice Thanksgiving vacation. It was a cool, windy day, and we had a great time. Near the end of the trip, I told one of my fellow boaters that I hoped that the wind didn't knock over any trees near in the last section. There were no trees on the river, but when I began to walk up the trail to the takeout, the trail disappeared. A vine-covered tree had fallen over and covered the trail. I shoved my boat over the mess, climbed over, and nearly fell flat on my face. I pulled out my knife and began cutting the vines out of the way. It took 5 of us (including a couple of other people who showed up after us) cutting and ripping vines to clear the way.

83 - 11/25/2011 - Green River Gorge

At Thanksgiving the night before, several of us decided to run the Green the following day. I took my little cataraft. We had a good medium flow. Everything was great, though I had an "interesting" run at Pipeline. Normally, I try to run the rapid on the left, but my tennis elbow was giving me trouble. I found myself sideways above the main drop, unable to get left and unable to turn the boat to hit the drop squarely. I went over the drop sideways, and braced for a flip... that never came. I went down smoothly and had no trouble at all.

Sadly, this would be my only Green run in the second half of 2011. I usually get in a lot more runs in the winter, but the lack of rain prevented that.

82 - 11/24/2011 - SF Snoqualmie

We had lots of rain the week of Thanksgiving, which made the Middle Middle a bit too high, so a couple of friends and I decided to do a quick SF Snoqualmie trip before Thanksgiving dinner. We did the short run down to my house rather than an extended run. I flipped while surfing near the end, but was able to get back into my boat quickly.

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.