Josh’s wife was out of town at a food science competition for the weekend and I guess most of this week. That meant that Josh had a burning desire to get out kayaking. So we did.
Saturday Josh, Doug and I headed down to East Race for some man made whitewater goodness. We didn’t get that early of a start, and thus got there around 2:30. Put it at the top, stopped right after the release gate and frittered about a bit getting comfortable in the water then headed down. We pulled off to the side just before the first big feature (V-wave I think). Doug and I were kind of giving Josh the rundown on what to expect since he had never been there before. Doug nominated me to lead, and I didn’t feel like arguing, so I did. Hit the wave, punched through, flipped, rolled and the goodness continued. The downfall of East Race is the lack of good eddies to stop in, so I stopped about half way down the run just before the rodeo wave. Doug came in after me — apparently his run through V-wave went pretty much exactly like mine — hit, punch, flip, roll. We waited around for Josh wondering what he had gotten caught up in. Come to find out, he got dumped leaving the eddy and swam through V-wave and the rest of the way down to us. On the downside, he gouged his foot when he was pulled out. On the up side, the girl who pulled him out was hot. But alas, he’s married, so that was largely irrelevant.
Josh got back in his boat with a new appreciation of why you have to wear booties and we continued down. No further incidents.
We ran the lower portion a second time and I scurried back up for a third. To be honest, East Race is still a little big and featureful for my preferences. It’s fun and good practice, but I’m not able to take advantage of most of the prime play spots. Next time we go, I’m thinking it would be wise to show up an hour before opening (12:00) and do our practice then, prior to the big stuff. The park closes at 5:00, but we stayed around at the end for a good while after that practicing in the small stuff that was still flowing.
Sunday we again packed up and went the other direction, leaving around 1:30 for Mount Pleasant to see how the Chippewa was doing. As it turns out, it was doing quite well, running at 298cfs according to American Whitewater. A little higher flow would have been nice, but it was very surfable at 298. I suspect the last time I was there it was running between 450 and 500. That was my first whitewater run and I got destroyed. This time, the destruction was on back order. Most of the day we stayed on the second wave, stopping there for at least an hour before even going to explore the remaining three. As it turns out, the second was the best and we walked back up to stop there again. So, all told, we ran the whitewater stretch of the river 1.4 times in about four hours. That means we stayed on the second wave for at least three hours. It wasn’t too big, but it was certainly fun. We got to show off for lots of people either coming to the beach or floating through on tubes.
Toward the end of the day we did take some pictures, so some of those may make an appearance sometime soon if I remember.
It should be noted: I drive a beat up old Jeep as anyone who knows me is aware, recently the roof rack busted and the replacement hasn’t yet arrived. Doug drives a like new 2000 Jeep, but apparently isn’t bothering to keep it insured right now. Josh drives a ’04 Civic. Three people, two Jeeps and we take the Civic with three kayaks on top. We were pushing the weight limit of that car and certainly giving the 1.7 liter engine a run for its money. I was thinking about getting something along the lines of a Subaru when the Jeep kicks it, but this made me wonder if I would be better of with a plain car. The down side being that I really would prefer to have all wheel or four wheel drive for Up Northin’.
I found out today that Megan’s group won their competition, so it was worth missing a few days of paddling. I’m thinking she should buy a new paddle with the prize money — she might think otherwise.
Also, I have a whole slew of backdated post to publish. Yeah, you’re not going to give a damn.
