The weekend of June 10th and 11th, Jeff, Oren and I loaded into Oren’s Range Rover and headed down to Slippery Rock PA for some white water action. We were joined there by Todd, Linda, Kathleen and Denis.
The weather upon arrival was a heavy rain, which was a joy to set up tents in. It also meant that most of my travel clothes was damp. Jeff borrowed a tent from Doug, which developed something of a standing puddle. I did get some rain in my tent, but not enough to get me wet. It did however make me appreciate a fast pitching tent and a sleeping pad, which kept me out of the little bit of water that did enter.
On Saturday, the rain had cleared and the weather was quite nice. We put in at about 11 and ran the full length of Slippery Rock Creek. Slippery Rock has three general sections, the upper which is a stretch of fairly active class 2 whitewater; the mad mile — which is a mile long section of pretty much straight class 3; and the lower, which is a less active stretch of class 2.
The upper and lower were of course all fine and good. The middle as usual for me ended up a little dicey. I don’t know the names of all the rapids, but I know we made it through runway and airport just fine. I got tangled up in triple-drop (similar to last year), and ended up swimming briefly. Oren and Todd helped unpin then rescue my boat and I got back on the water. I probably shouldn’t have… I was still far too tense for the swim to handle much and as a result, swam again almost immediately. At that point, I called it good and hiked the little remaining distance to the end of that section.
Oren did loan me his camera and I got to take some nice pictures of the rest of the group. I should also mention that Kathleen had a very nice — although unintentional — stunt at airport. It’s basically a big wave in the middle of the river, and when she went to punch through, didn’t have enough speed and got sucked back in. Her stern got pulled under, pu
That night was nicer — no rain. We went into Slippery Rock for some food and beers. Jeff elaborated a bit to me on the joys of flirting, a concept which is completely lost on me.
Sunday, we split into two groups. The guys did the upper and mile again and Kathleen and Linda did the lower. It complexified shuttling a bit, but otherwise was a solid plan.
Again, the upper was fine, but I got flipped at triple-drop. This time, I have a better recollection of what led up to the events. I started far too low exiting an eddy and thus was not set up for catching the next one in sequence. I hit the very bottom of the eddy and got flipped. Rolled, stayed up, but was getting driven into a mid-river rock. When I hit that, I got dumped again, but I was pretty much bailing before getting all the way over. With my position and the rock, an attempt at a roll would have simply left my boat pinned with me upside down underneath. As it happened, the boat and I were momentarily pinned, but I was able to shove of and swim downstream. Afterward Todd confirmed that my intuition was right and that would have been a very bad place to attempt rolling.
Todd encouraged me to get back in at that point, but given the events of the previous day and my knowing that I would take at least half an hour to unwind and be relaxed enough to paddle again, I opted to walk out the rest of the rapids. The taking half an hour to get relaxed enough to paddle again concerns me some because it really has the potential to cause problems in a non-walkable situation and also in sea kayaking. Of course, half an hour is only an estimate on my part.
