SeshTember

Finally finished the SeshTember edit... Only took 3 months.

While Adrian was in town we were able to hit up the North Fork Payette river in Idaho for the long three day weekend, then some weekday boating on Tumwater Canyon outside of Leavenworth Washington. The week ended with a day in the Chelan Gorge.


While I was back East for the summer, taking my licks on the Green, Adrian and I began formulating an epic road trip idea for the Fall. I had made an off hand comment about renting an RV and making the annual pilgrimage out to the North Fork Payette in ID. The long Labor Day weekend is one of the few times that the Seattle Crew rallys out as a group to another state for boating. We have year round flows in WA so you usually do not have to go far to get wet. But August and September can be a bit dry if you're looking for a bit more than class III. So, as long as I've been back into boating, the Seattle crew has picked up and headed out to Idaho for the 3 day weekend in early September. I missed the trip in 2009, due to work, but Adrian had made it (I was able to get out there the weekend before, another epic journey entirely). Adrian was getting back into boating as well, after a long sabbatical.For Adrian, the trip resulted in a broken paddle, bootie beers filled at the tap in a bar as well as a bruised ego. He wanted a rematch. I was able to make it out last year, 2010, and had a blast. Adrian was not able to join on account of work. So this was the make it or break it year. With Adrian in San Diego now and me on the East Coast, I thought our chances of a boating reunion were pretty slim. So, I was very surprised when he called and said that he had bought tickets to Boise and would be renting a car to come out and join us.

I was Stoked!

Then trouble started. I started posting on ProfessorPaddle, trying to gauge interest in the trip for the 2011 season. There was absolutely none. It could have been part of the down economy or the fact that BC was still going off. Either way, it became apparent pretty quickly that I was going to be driving out to Idaho solo.

I called Adrian and told him that I was getting a bit of a bad feeling about it and that maybe we should cancel the trip. Adrian, forever the optimist, did opt to change his flight. So he flew to Seattle to drive out with me.

We decided that we would pack up and leave Friday afternoon and try to make it all the way to Banks in one shot. I had only been able to do it once in the past. When 4pm rolled around and we were still loading the truck, my hopes where dwindling. We would be joined on this journey by my awesome girlfriend, Sara, and the worst dog in the world: Stokes.

The four of us piled into my 99' Toyota Tacoma with enough supplies for 4 days, two creek boats and enough beer to drown a competent kayaker.

Disaster struck around midnight when I miss judged our fuel level and we were on fumes in the middle of Eastern Oregon with no gas stations open. We camped there and filled up in the morning. Breakfast was provided by the Hungry Redneck cafe. Seriously.

We rolled into Banks pretty early and were stoked to meet up with Jason Stingl and Chris Menges. Chris was unhappy with his demo boat and decided to head back into Boise for another. Jason had just come off a warm up lap on the lower five so we decided in the interest of time to just head up to the upper putin and sort it all out. Jason had never run the upper or middle five, neither had Adrian. I was now the trip leader, not a good position for me as time would soon tell.

We started routing down and had no problems. We were having a blast and getting in the groove. Neither Adrian or I had been boating much in the past month or so and were a bit rusty. We opted to walk Jacob's ladder. The rest of the day was going great until we had an issue at Jaws 1. Jaws 1 is a sequence of two ledge holes. One comes about 3/4 of the way across the river starting on river left and working right. The second ledge is river wide and horrible. There is a sneak line on river right that I didn't know about. I had never scouted the rapid and I remembered the line so I shouted beta to Adrian and Jason and told Jason to just follow me. The line I knew was a little boof through the top hole and then an immediate hard ferry towards river left and boofing the second ledge just a little left of river center. I made the move and looked back upstream to watch Jason's line, just in time to see him go over the ledge sideways. The video will show the rest, but I have to say, you're never in as good a shape as you think you are...


After this little "experience", we were done for the day. We met Chris at the takeout above Houndstooth and decided to head to camp and start drinking. The next two days were a blur of beer, white water and awesomeness. We got multiple laps on the full 15 and Adrian styled his lines at Jake's.

Sunday afternoon we got off the river after a full lap and it was time to head back to WA. I had to be at work in less than 18 hours with a 13 hour drive ahead of us.

Adrian boated Tumwater all week and was able to meet up with some old friends.



Next on the list for the trip was the second to last flow study in the Chelan Gorge. All the scheduled releases for 2011 up to this point had been canceled due to a lack of participation. We were very worried that we would not have the requisite 6 boaters signed up in time. I called in sick on Friday and we headed up to Tumwater Canyon on the Wenatchee river to get some warm up laps under our belt before heading into the Chelan Gorge. Friday we still had high hopes that Saturdays release was on but we got the call from Fish that it was a no go. But, Sunday was still on. So at least we had that. We camped at the not-so-secret camp on Icicle creek and got up early to get some more Tummy laps in. After our first lap we were joined by the Seattle Crew: Fish, Totten, Brett and Alex.

Good times were had and now we had an hour road trip up to Chelan ahead of us. Chelan holds a special place in my heart. The Gorge is beautiful beyond description. Photos do not do it justice. And the nightlife... My god the nightlife in Chelan is amazing. I don't know if its the warm weather right before winter or something in the water, but these people know how to throw down. A night spent in Chelan is a night well spent.

The Chelan Gorge handed out the goods in spades. I had my first swims of the year. Adrian fared a little bit better. But we both ran everything and I was OK with my lines. Except meat locker. I had an interesting underwater experience there, pasted up against an undercut rock, but that's just how it goes I guess.

With Chelan in the bag, it was time to get Adrian back to Seattle and on an airplane. We made it back and got him into a hotel right next to the Seatac airport. Said our goodbyes and took our leave.

All in all we put around 1800 miles on my truck over 8 days, paddled around 60 miles of quality class 5 and drank enough beer to make the Brit's proud. This was one of the best weeks in my life.
I think this will become a yearly tradition.