California

During this trip home I went to Santa Cruz and surfed, went to Quincy and kayaked, and then went to Tahoe to do some skiing. All this in under a week. Drink it up people, California is one of the most spectacular places to be on the planet, especially in March when everything is good.

Jared Licht takes a second before furthering the path into Sugarbowl sidecountry

We make a few turns and find our way to a unique feature of "The Lake Run". One must pass through the old train tunnel to finish the line. It is pure ice in there, and falling holding skis and poles is either really funny or really painful. Plus, as you can tell in the photo, it soon turns pitch black. Ice skating in ski boots while blind never appealed to me, but it turns out to add quite a twist to a short adventure. 

We slip out through a small opening in the side of the tunnel and the boys scope the final pitch.

We can see Jared's house and he leads the way down the heavy but buttery snow. 

March: The surf is pounding, the snow is deep, and the rivers are raging. 

Today's Advice: If you can't get time off from your job, consider quitting. 

Coming Home

I am not going to lie. I thought I would come home and whoop the whitewater of California. It had it's vengeance on my misplaced confidence. It gave me a spanking. I got more beat downs, flipped more, and portaged more this trip down the MF feather than any trip except my first. Goes to show the cyclical nature of confidence in kayaking, in life in general I suppose. It will always tell you where you are at, whether you are ready to hear it or not. Sometimes it lifts you up when you are unsure, and other times it smacks you down when you think you can beat it.

This trip revealed a few other things besides my over confidence: Friends make a trip, and so does gear.

With a dismal forecast of 48 and rainy, no one in the group was doing more then scrunching up their faces at the mention of an overnight kayaking trip. We slept on it, and the dull sky we woke to in the morning was enough for irrational optimism to trump logical skepticism. We were off to the put-in to test our gear and friendship in less than optimal conditions. 

Morgan Koontz making moves in the Heart of Franklin. Here she boofs to fight off hypothermia. 

We made it to camp without a single drop pouring down. We read a buddhist text over dinner, played liars dice, and slept inside tents and under tarps and the rain began pelting the fabric above our heads. 

I don't know if the sensation that I am cheating nature will ever leave me when I stay dry through a rainstorm. When we woke, the sound of raindrops peppered the ground. We got a little wet, but the insides of our drysuits were still dry despite the rain. Cody clayton made a fire while I attempted to stay in bed as long as possible. Cody smiles as he and Eddy undoubtedly question our decision to camp in the rain.

The skepticism wear off as we reach the crux of the run, in both beauty and difficulty. 

My first trip down a friend of mine said "This place never gets ugly". There are many things that lose their beauty over time: music, art, people, each may only serve to satisfy our asthetic needs for a short period of time, but the beauty of nature is forever, especially this place. 

We made it through the remaining rapids.

You only need two things to make any trip worth doing: Good friends and good gear.