Cambridge, ID - raft trip writeup
Man, it's really hot out.
That was in Cambridge, before dropping into Hells Canyon, wanna guess what the temps did then? Yup.
And, I'm way behind on this blog thing. Most of this was written up 8/11:
The raft trip was a lot of fun, and a lot of work - very glad that we managed to work it all out! Got to spend a zero day in McCall getting errands taken care of and getting my stuff ready to go on the river trip - think that was Friday.
Saturday was spent getting the gear and boats all ready to go over at the HCR (Hells Canyon Rafting - Clair's raft company) place, then getting that all out to the water. I helped out a bit with the packing to the extent I could without knowing where everything was stored in the shop. Ended up just doing a lot of heavy lifting once the boxes, coolers, and boats were ready to load into the boat. Kurt (HCR owner, guide, and cool dude) asked me what I was doing next summer - to us transient types that's a job offer! Still planning on doing summer school next summer in order to graduate sooner, but it's a damn tempting backup plan!
We packed an amazing amount of gear into the back of Kurt's truck and headed out for the put-in. Inflated the boats and got them in the water, then Kurt and Meg (the other guide for the trip) left to take care of other stuff. Clair and I camped out there for the night after getting the gear all set to go the following morning.
Somewhat surprisingly, the beach stayed pretty quiet all night - apparently it's a common place for local kids to go party, and given that it was a Saturday night, we anticipated there being a lot of noise. Also got to see some amazing stars with the clear air and low light pollution! Suppose that there had been plenty nice nights leading up to that, but with the high daytime temperatures, I had been going to bed early in order to start riding in the cool morning air and get to the day's destination before it got super hot.
Sunday morning, we did some more gear shuffling after breakfast (Poptarts!!) Meg, the other guide for the trip, showed up and got her boat setup the way she likes it (every guide has their own packing style and preferences on how to inflate the boats) The guests arrived by shuttle van and got a briefing from Meg on some basic rafting stuff in the parking lot. I stood back and listened to the talk, then we all got our lifejackets on, hopped in the boats, and were off! Two of the guests took the duckies (inflatable kayaks,) two hopped in Meg's boat, and Clair and I took the other boat.
For the first day, the river was relatively flat, with a couple little rapids, but as I recall the biggest was a class 2 (more on rapid classification here). We stopped after an hour or so and setup a "water bar" for lunch.
A water bar, in this sense, is just a folding table setup right on the shore, with the legs pushed down into the sand, so that you can keep your feet in the water while serving up food. These guided trips are very nicely catered; lunch had plenty of vegetables, multiple types of bread, meat, and cheese to make sandwiches, plenty of beverage options, and a choice of desserts! Apparently, some guests refer to these trips as "roughing it," but the food we had on the trip was, on average, better than what I tend to eat at home during the school year.
After a few more hours of rafting, including breaks to swim and cool off, we made it to our campsite for the night. Meg, Clair, and I quickly had tents going up, a kitchen being assembled, a toilet tent getting setup, and a table and chairs to eat at. Roughing it.... Fortunately, this group of guests turned out to be really cool and helped us with setting things up a little bit. As the trip progressed, they got more and more involved with the setup and breakdown of the camps and lunch breaks.
We took a nice break to go swimming, mess around with the duckies, and walk around. Dinner started with an appetizer of fried *** cheese and crackers, then the main course was salmon (gardenburgers for the vegetarians,) veggies, and chocolate cake (with confetti!) for dessert. After cleaning up, the guests had a game called "catchphrase" that they invited us to play. One of those annoying little electronic gizmos, but it turned out to be entertaining despite the annoying noises it was making. Not a big fan of electronics in the outdoors. Visited for a while, then the guests went off to their tents and the guides and I cowboy camped a little way down the beach. Another day of beautiful weather outside!
The other three days of the trip were more or less the same theme, but with different scenery. It was interesting watching (and I suppose being a part of) the guides and the guests get to know each other better and have more in-depth conversations on things. One interesting angle on this trip was that Meg is going down to work in McMurdo, Antarctica next October - the same place I spent the austral summer '05-06 (blog.) While Meg was picking my brain on Antarctic stuff, Clair was talking with one of the guests about doing recovery work in New Orleans (two of the guests coordinate reconstruction efforts over there,) I was talking with the guides about their jobs, and the three of us were talking retirement plans with one of the other guests, who is a financial planner. A floating career fair!
For most of the trip, I was just a passenger, but did row one of the boats for a few little sections. It's tough work, but I'm sure part of what makes it seem hard is not having good technique down. Got to take a spin in one of the duckies through a few rapids on the second to last day when there was too much headwind for the guests (who, to their credit, had kept the duckies occupied for the entire time up to that point. I was pretty amazed that they stuck with it that long given their desk-job type careers. And, they were damn good paddlers for their first trip!) Paddling through the confluence of the Snake and Salmon rivers was a lot of fun - reminded me of sea kayaking on a rougher day with the standing waves and wind combined with some weird (for a river) currents right around the confluence area. Hadn't tried a ducky before this trip, think I'm more of a hardshell guy, but they're fun fun!
She flipped half a second after that shot, but hung onto the boat and the paddle - bravo!
Once we were on the Snake River (after the confluence of Snake and Salmon, the Snake continues on,) things got a little different. Snake is a dam regulated river, so the level fluctuates by quite a few feet. Rather than just casually tying the boats to a rock or whatever, I had to make a pretty substantial deadman anchor to tie off to. Another reason for the big anchor is that jet boats (damn them) like to bring big boatloads of tourists up the river at considerable speed (and noise,) kicking up wakes that can make life interesting. Also, we started seeing more development along the river on the Washington side. There had been wildfires too (cross reference, although different section of the same river,) and when you get wildfires around development, you either get burned out homes or examples of wildfire fighting techniques. That's something else I want to do... Anyways, it was neat to see where they had dropped some retardant ("drop the retard!") to save a few houses from the fire - it's the red stuff:
We eventually got to the pull-out, where we were met by Kurt and his truck. The guests took another shuttle out, then we got to lugging everything out of the boats and into the truck, breaking down and deflating the boats, and getting everything strapped down for the ~4 hour drive home. Unpacking, cleaning, and putting away everything went fairly quickly with something like 6 of us working on it, then we went home. Clair and I got cleaned up and went to town for dinner (one of the best pizzas ever!) then by the time dinner was over, it was bedtime.
The next morning, I got my bike stuff packed up, and Clair gave me a ride back to the route. On the road again!
Fun sidetrip!
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