Saturday 24 September 2011

Summer updates

... and just like that, the warm weather vanished.

The trees are turning here in BC, normally they'd be a lovely yellow against the blue sky but the blue has been in short supply this year. The ridiculous amount of rain has been great for paddling however. In August, rather than waiting for the UnLikely paddling festival that kinda wraps up the paddling season, my friends and I headed down to Likely in middle-of-nowheresville BC. The river levels were still fairly high so we were hoping for some full-on fun runs, and we weren't disappointed.
Likely is great because it is very close to two excellent river runs, with more a short trip away. It is also well known for having a first-rate playwave right in town. As a beginner I'd only ever run the Lower Caribou, which is a nice big class II-III trip and a real step up from anything local. This time I'd be running the harder Upper Quesnel, which is class III-IV. For both Matt (Bowron Lake trip Matt) and I we'd be going about halfway, to a take out called the Bullion Pit. The river to that point is graded III+, big water, by far the biggest thing either of us had run.

Saturday morning - just about - we made a late start on the Lower Caribou for the beginners in the group. During the course of the year I'd been getting my friend Jess out paddling on and off and her kayaking skills had really developed from just rolling in the pool, she'd been paddling more and more technical stuff locally and the Lower Caribou was a big leap up for her. There are a couple of big rapids and the main (class III) rapid still gives me a wake-up call when I see it. Despite the big water and wave trains she made it through the entire run without even flipping over. After a ride back into town and something to eat, the more experienced paddlers headed off down the Upper Quesnel.

The great thing about the Upper Q is that it starts in Likely - literally you put your kayak on the lake outside the pub and float down through the playwave into the river. The rapids then start small, splashy class II stuff, and build up gradually. The first class III rapid sets the pace and then you are into the White Kilometer, which is big wave trains and chaos for a whole Km. I'd never seen anything like it, and it took me a little while to realise I was enjoying myself :) Some of the waves were huge.

My friend Matt (we'll call him Tall Matt) was leading the trip and had told both Matt (Bowron Matt) and me to follow him as he picked a good line through the waves and rapids. About a third of the way through the White Kilometer I realised my eyes were totally glued to Tall Matt's back. I started trying to look around more, saw a mammoth hole about the size of a bus to my right and I was just thinking "stuff getting into that" when one of the really experienced guys backed into it and started playing. Hmm.

As the waves got more chaotic I glanced over at Bowron Matt and noticed he looked pretty white. I hoped I didn't look like that. We'd been told that the White Kilometer ended at Best Drop, and then we'd be in the Bullion Pit. Tall Matt is normally pretty good at calling out the lines but when we hit Best Drop he realised he hadn't said anything. He tried to shout back to start middle and break hard right, and then was gone in the tumult. Fortunately I was still following more or less paddle stroke for paddle stroke, and I saw he'd attempted to go on a narrow line between two huge holes. The next few seconds seemed to slow right down, even though I was working hard, but even with my short playboat I was able to break right fast enough to avoid a complete thrashing. I didn't quite avoid the right hand hole, the edge caught me and flipped me but I rolled up and was past the drop. Whew. Matt made it through too and as we pulled into an eddy above the Bullion Pit there was an awful lot of whooping and shouting. Ah, adrenaline.

We took out at the Bullion Pit and as I watched my friend Rebecca paddle away I wished I was going too. Next time. Saturday night involved sitting around a camp fire and getting slowly drunk.

Sunday dawned even better than the day before, glorious hot sun and clear blue skies. We did another Upper Quesnel run, played a bit on the put-in wave, and again I took out at the Bullion Pit. My occasional arm pain was in full swing so after that I opted to shuttle my friends on one more run, and eat ice cream.

As we drove home most of us agreed the weekend was the best of the year.

A few weeks later and we were back in Likely for UnLikely Fest 2011. Having made the four hour drive down on Friday evening, it was dark when we arrived and we all decided to pitch our tents at my friend's parents' place, about 3km out of Likely, further down the lake. I thought we were being anti-social since all the festival goers were in town, but actually it was genius since it was quiet and we could get some sleep. We got a fire going and had a few beers, but it was colder than August and most people drifted off to bed in short order.

Saturday again started with a Lower Caribou run, this time two people I'd been taking out on 'beginner nights' during the summer were paddling and I was fairly nervous... akin to taking your kids to school for the first time I suppose :) Both of them had been doing well and were confident, although Danielle had just recently lost her rolling ability. Despite that things went well down to the start of the bigger stuff, when Dani caught an edge and went over. I was close enough to rescue her with the bow of my kayak, and she flipped back up ok.

The first big drop, class II+, was where Dani took her first swim. She caught a big wave and flipped, and I didn't get there fast enough. Despite having never swum before she did a great job, and started kicking powerfully when I was towing her, which saved me paddling super-hard and was much appreciated. I must be getting old.

Matt was leading and warned everyone that there would likely be no rescues in the class III rapid. It was a narrow canyon with a huge wave, I told Dani to follow Alene through and as we entered the canyon she got offline a little. Alene stayed left and had a good line, Dani went too far right and plowed straight into the meat of it. I followed, paddling up the face of the wave, and saw her flip at the peak. I was almost there when she bailed out, and again I had to tow her into an eddy behind the rapid. Despite the two swims she was in high spirits which was great to see. Curtis, the other newer paddler, managed to roll up after flipping and avoid swimming. He was pumped and spent the entire afternoon smiling to himself.

After the obligatory group picture at the take out, it was back to Likely and then the main event, my first full run down the Upper Quesnel. The paddle down to the Bullion Pit was familiar, although the water level was slightly lower the White Kilometer was very entertaining. Approaching Best Drop we saw Danielle and Curtis on river right with a camera, and pretty much everyone except Matt went through upside down.

They watched us head down and suddenly I was in new territory, again following Matt closely and listening to his advice about the rapids. We headed into a swirly, boily pool called 'Darkside' which looked like nothing, but as I crossed it my stern got sucked under, the boat stood on it's tail and suddenly I was upside down without realising what happened. The rapids below that got progressively harder, essentially we were dropping from pool to pool. I'd heard the names dozens of times and now I was getting to experience them first hand. 'Pearly Gates' had been built up and I went through without even realising it was a big rapid. 'Deepthroat' was a river-wide big hole, following Matt we broke hard right and sailed around it nicely with not even a flip. I could see how you wouldn't want to run into the hole though!

We looked upstream and saw someone in the water, as he didn't have a boat we figured it was a big swim. It turned out to be my friend and hardcore creek boater Ian riverboarding. The nutbar had a pair of fins and a small foam board, and was floating the rapids! Below Deepthroat was the biggest feature of all, the last part of the Devil's Eyebrow rapids. Up to that point there was a line for everything, but the 'Notch' was basically a 20 foot wide constriction in the river and the way to run it was to cross your fingers and trust to luck.

I'd been so pumped by the run down to that point I'd got chatting to other guys and lost Matt, so I attempted to find my own way through the Notch. All I really remember about it was a massive volume of water pumping through the constriction, I tried to punch it but got thrown
around like a toy and flipped. I rolled up, back over, up again and over the offside, before finally rolling up and staying up. It was unbelievably boily. I'd been close to running out of breath and swimming, and as I paddled away whooping I saw my friend Duncan - also his first run - blow three rolls before finally surfacing. We eddied out downstream and after a lot of high fiving and some pictures we finished up at Quesnel Forks. The only time I can remember feeling that elated before was finishing the London Triathlon in front of thousands of roaring spectators.

I'm pretty sure I didn't shut up all afternoon, but later that night there was a great reggae band in the pub and I got so rip-roaringly drunk that I was actually dancing. In traditional wild-west frontier town style some lady was playing the spoons along with the band.

On Sunday morning it was difficult to motivate myself to do ANYTHING, let alone paddle, but after some pancakes in town and a coffee I felt like paddling was something I could consider again one day. Duncan roared off with some guys to paddle the Upper Cariboo, and left the rest of us wondering at his enthusiasm. Deanna, Curtis and I headed down to the playwave in town and spent a couple of hours surfing and generally trying to throw down. I finally managed to do some backsurfing and a few spins on the wave, which made my weekend. Dani had managed to get herself on a commercial raft trip down through the big Upper Quesnel rapids and so we were all grinning like idiots by the time we left for home.

UnLikely Fest normally marks the winding down of the season and the weather has certainly turned cold since then. The shorter days, grey skies and biting wind all speak of snow to come, and soon. The wet summer, however, has meant that autumn rain has brought the local playwaves back in during the last week. The season is not done yet :)

I'll be back in the UK for a while at the end of October. Not sure what I am doing over the winter or how that will affect the blog but I will try to post updates if anything interesting occurs!

Frase.