Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day weekend was a blast. I went up Friday night (my wife was exhausted, but wanted to come up the following night). I ended up hitting the sack early, due to exhaustion from a long week. I was able to sleep even with a whole campsite of screaming boy scouts.

So, I’ve mentioned that I bring the rain. People used to laugh, but they aren’t laughing anymore. They realize that it is not a joke, and that I do in fact bring the rain every time I come up. Friday night I made a grievous mistake. I was setting up the Taj Mahal, my 2 bedroom tent with a living room and a screened in front porch. I usually bring my little dome tent that I’ve had since I was 8 or so, but my wife was planning on coming up the following night so I was setting up the big tent so that she can sleep in some comfort. Anyways, since I was setting this tent up alone in the dark, I decided not to put the rain fly on. After all, I looked up and could see every star in all their blazing glory, winking back at me through a cloudless sky. Putting on the rain fly is a two man job. The tent is so tall you have to get one person on each side to walk it over the top.

So, the next morning, I was woken up at 7 AM by screaming boy scouts. Ugh. I thought to myself, “I’m never going to be able to sleep through this” right before I went back to sleep. I believe that my body is all about proving my mind wrong…

So I wake up again with the sound of rain, and the feeling of rain pattering against my face. The rooms on this tent have roofs that are all mesh, so with no rain fly, it is like sleeping under a net. So I wake up all groggy, and attempt to put my rain fly on myself. Luckily, one of the Boy Scout leaders (being a good Boy Scout leader) offered to help. I guess that this was my punishment for being so arrogant in believing I could get away with not putting on my rain fly.

So, that day I got to R2 the Upper Ocoee. For those of you not familiar with river lingo, R2 means Raft 2, which means you just get 2 people in a raft built to hold 6 + 1 guide. I love R2. It is a blast, since the boat can maneuver a lot faster, and doesn’t take anywhere near as much work to turn. I have only been down the Upper twice, and now I was guiding it. I rocked all the rapids before the Olympic section (Mikey’s and Screaming Left Turn). Now, before we got to the Olympic section, the other trainee in the raft with me looked at me and said, “I don’t want to do Humungous, let’s just go around the left of Indecision rock”. Now, I don’t mind hitting the big stuff, but this guy was really afraid of Humungous. The problem is, Humungous his a huge hole that likes to pull rafts back into it if you don’t paddle through it hard enough. If it sucks you back into it, it will turn the raft sideways and put it up on its end, dumping everyone out. It is really hard to get the raft out. You pretty much have to turn the raft so that you put the front end into the hole so that it sucks in the front, and then spits it back out straight up into the air. At that point you might be able to level the boat out.

So, I hit Smiley’s and Calahan’s with no problem. I come across Oceana (a name made up by Bryan Burch, because the rapid is like being in the ocean). No problems. So we come up on Humungous. Blake (the other trainee) is paddling his ass off trying to get left of Indecision rock. It is named that because if you suffer a moment of indecision, you are done. The rock likes to pull you right into it, which will definitely throw someone out of the raft. So I thought I had a good line, but then the current quickens, and pushes the raft sideways into Indecision. I manage to get us far enough forward to just catch the last fourth of our raft, which slung the front around and smacked us into the side of the rock.


Kissing Indecision rock

Making it through

We made it through ok, but I thought Blake was a goner for a second there.

The next day I was able to get my wife in on a ride. This time it was the Lower Ocoee, which I just got checked out on. I didn’t have a raft of my own, so I rode along with another guide, who let me guide most of the trip while he just explained the lines he liked to take through certain rapids. It is always nice to get a new outlook on how to run a rapid. We made it down with no major problems, and I didn’t fall out of the raft once for a change. We got a good surf going on Double Suck too. It took me a minute or two to figure out how to get from the eddy out to the hydraulic, but I was able to nail it. My wife understands now why I am so exhausted when I come home from working on the river. She was wiped out from one trip. I usually pull 5 or 6 in the two days a week I am up there, not to mention loading and unloading rafts, cleaning and putting gear away, taking out garbage, cleaning bathrooms, etc…

What a great weekend. So now I’m checked out, so I can take customers. I can’t wait to go back. I really needed this weekend to work out some of the stress from my day job.

Pin Run Rock

Yes Ted… I’m still in training.

So, I went to try to wrap up my training this past weekend. I was able to get in two checkout trips, and did fairly good on both of them. They were not without their problems however.

Saturday, we were going to do just one lower trip. For those who are not familiar with the Ocoee, there are roughly two parts, the upper and lower. The upper contains the Olympic section, which is man made class 4 rapids for about ½ a mile. Below that, there is a dam, and then the lower Ocoee. I believe it is about 5 miles of river from put in to take out. Our outpost likes to do something they call “Double Trouble”, which is where a group of customers can do both sections in a row for a discounted price. Anyways, I was able to do my checkout run with our river manager on Saturday for the lower. I screwed up the very first rapid, but luckily recovered in the prescribed way to recover, so no big deal. Afterwards, I stuck the raft on a few rocks, but not a big deal. It is just embarrassing, and a pain for the customers since it slows down the trip. Anyways, I came up on Table Saw and Diamond Splitter. I have run this set of rapids more than any other set of rapids on the river, so I know the line. Did that keep me from messing it up? Hell no. I didn’t hold my angle through Table Saw and got thrown right into a big nasty rock called Prudential. That thing will bring a boat to a dead stop in a heartbeat. So we bounced off of Prudential hard, and got spun around, making it impossible to hit the gate rocks and go to the right around Diamond Splitter. I look up and see Jay (my trainer) pointing his thumb down, meaning that I should probably tell everyone to hit the deck. We came down the left side of Diamond Splitter, which isn’t a huge problem, except for the big stop rock at the bottom. They affectionately call it the Death Slide. We made it out unscathed and with everyone in the boat. Luckily, when we hit Prudential, Jay saw the girl next to him about to leave the boat, and grabbed her life jacket (and a bit of her pony tail) and pulled her back in. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful.

After that, Bryan Burch wants us to do some practice. By practice, he means that he wants us to all swim rapids, do throw rope practice, and pin a rock. After a few unsuccessful attempts to pin other rocks by another guide, Joe, Bryan took over again for a particularly nasty pin rock named Run Rock. It is named that because the crazier guides will jump out of the boat as it passes the rock, run across it, and then jump back in the boat. The rock is shaped like a wedge, and is undercut, meaning water flows under it and has cut out under the rock, making a hole under the rock. Anyways, I’ll have to give it to Bryan Burch. That guy is the master at pinning a raft against a rock when he wants to. We hit that rock sideways. This makes the raft go vertical on one side, and wrap around the rock like a taco. Well, we all know to get to the high side of the raft, only when I stepped on the side of the raft to stand on it, it wrapped under the rock, pinning my legs under the raft, between the side and the bottom of the raft. Bryan grabbed my vest and started pulling, but it was bending my knees a way they were not ever meant to bend. It is one of the few times I’ve been genuinely scared for my life on that river. I twisted to the side, and with Bryan pulling I was able to pop my feet free. I popped up past the rock and was able to swim to the shore. After I walked back up the shore about 100 yards, I had to jump in the rapid and swim back to the raft. Looking at the raft, I realized we wrapped the front of that rock like a condom. The current was trying to roll the raft down the tip of this rock. We tried everything to get that raft off of that rock. We used all of the throw ropes and guide belts (basically a piece of webbing, a piece of rope, and two carabineers that fits around your waist) trying to get it off. We had to cut one of the throw ropes (they are about $60 a piece). So, we finally figured it out. Joe and Bryan got between the raft and the rock on the longer side where they could stand and the current isn’t as strong. They both pushed the raft as hard as they could while me and another trainee sat on the rock and pushed with our feet. After working it for about 4 or 5 minutes, it finally went over just enough for Joe to jump on top of the bottom of the raft and use his weight to push it down. At this point we were trying to push the raft upside down and spin it out from under the front of Run Rock. The thing finally slid out, upside down, with Bryan and Joe on top of it. I threw two paddles to them so that they could paddle the thing upside down to the shore. We finally all ended up at the raft, and did some damage assessment. We ruined one throw rope and lost two guide belts. The raft was also sitting real low in the water. I don’t know if we lost a lot of air, or took on water. I looked at my watch, it was 6:30. We pinned the rock at 4:30, which means we spent 2 full hours trying to get that damn raft off of that rock. It also means that they had shut off the river 30 minutes ago. By the time we got to the take out, the river was running decidedly slower. If we had taken another 30 minutes to get the raft unpinned, we would have had an easy time getting it unstuck, but would have had to walk the raft up the steep bank of the river.

So, I’m still doing it. They haven’t scared me off yet. I do have to say, every time I think I’ve seen some of the worst things that can happen I experience something worse. It is all worth it. I spent every minute unpinning that raft, laughing. You have to take these things with a sense of humor and enjoy the lesson you’ve been taught by the experience.