Every adventurer I have heard tell stories has at least one experience of being in over their head. Whether this was from being surrounded by more skilled athletes, a lack of the correct gear, having an off day, or simply signing up for something outside their skill level, if you go out enough you will find one. All outdoors people that have baby-sat others in serious and potentially dangerous situations know its not enjoyable. I have been on both sides of the spectrum. I have baby-sat at times and have had others where I was glad to have highly skilled athletes looking over my shoulder and rightfully questioning my next move.
This trip was one of latter.
Aaron Mulky, Forrest McCarthy, Tom Sunderland, Nathan Danforth and myself started from the Big Sandy trailhead and headed to a 18 mile section river in the East Fork drainage 12 of which had never been run before. The walk in proved easy with an 8 lb Alpacka Raft and camping gear feeling light as I watched the kayakers switch their 60-70lb kayaks from shoulder to shoulder. When we did make it to the put in spirits were high, bug bites were plentiful, and everyone was excited to get in their boats.
My troubles started a 100 yds into the trip as took a swim and lost my paddle, confidence, and gained a few questions about the miles to come.
Aaron Mulkey carefully and efficiently lead us down the first 8 mile stretch of river. There were some great drops and the feeling of being where very few people may ever go was omnipresent. After portaging a couple hundred yards of an unrunable gorge that ended in a 30+ ft waterfall we called it a day and made camp.
The next day proved to be more of the same… great boating. The kayakers looked after us on the big drops as the packrafters pushed their limits looking for and occasionally finding success. Had I drank all the booties I deserved I very well could have blacked-out. My boating was never pretty, but I learned more from this boating excursion than I have from any other. We found our way down the remaining several hundred vertical feet the river would drop that day and safely made it back to the car we had left two days before. We celebrated with a beer and the magical feeling of knowing we had done something and been somewhere no one else had; a feeling the group I was with seems to look for more often then not.
For the other side of the story check out Aarron’s write up: http://aaronmulkey.blogspot.com/2011/08/looking-for-edge.html
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