Our teacher

I often wondered why it is that you can teach yourself to kayak, or ski, and why you need a teacher to learn things in school. We certainly need to be exposed to the information, but why can't we just see the information and then start navigating it. Many people are taught to roll and then are taken out a few times kayaking, then start on their own. People can also just put on some skis and have a few words thrown their way and head down the mountain.

Months and months go by without instruction, sometime years, and we progress.

We get better and better and better.

The river teaches us, mountains teach us. It does what any good teacher does: gives us challenging problems, gives us immediate feedback, and makes it fun.  We sit in class day after day, and I try to take the lessons that the river teaches, and use that as a model for teaching.

Sometimes the river is quiet, subtle, slow; sometimes it is fast and powerful, loud and overwhelming. It can be playful, sunny and light, dancing and easy. The snow can be light and freeing, hard and fast, or windy and harsh.

These are the lessons that the river has, that the mountains have. You must have variety, you must always have your students adapting to something new.

A river or a mountain can be anything, and is everything, it gives life and takes it away, it is an ever shifting entity but the lessons are always rich and worth learning, even if they are tough. It has all of life wrapped up in it, and that is what we need from a true teacher. We need every lesson life has to offer, every part of life expressed by our teacher, and the rivers and the mountains have it, that is why they are the greatest teachers.

We can spend a lifetime in the mountains, running up them, biking through them, kayaking down their crevasses, swimming though their pores, and yet we learn each time.

Lessons from 10 years in the mountains(That I learn every year... over and over and over):

A light jacket is always a good idea
If you think it isn't enough water, it isn't enough water.
plan better than you did
you can push through hunger, but you really should have just brought a snack
Injuries are preventable and it is all about the choices you make
Injuries are healable, but only if you move them to heal
Sweat is good
Have a repair kit
Ballistic stretching is best, and should be done every time you move intensely
You don't want to do a recovery workout, but you should
Intensity interval training makes you faster
If you want to go faster, drink caffeine
Weight train and you will be more confident
It is always better with friends
It isn't one bad choice that gets you in trouble, it is a series of bad choices
Sleep like it is part of your training
Life is short, honor those who are gone, and do what they loved to do
Keep playing or you get old


Cheers to the mountains and rivers.
Keep on learning.

 kokatat
 DripDrop

Release

Commit

Fly

Slide

Splash

ummmm...

Fordyce.

Kokatat

Desperation

The water is low and the drive down the canyon is long and slow, winding through bands of rock, red and grey. The river fluctuates in flow as concrete barriers squeeze through turbines to generate precise amounts of power. Minimum flows allow for life to scrape by in the riparian environment.

 Humans have their hands in everything, fastidious in their attempt for control. Not us, we  don't have delusions that the river is ours, that we can tell it what to do. We merely work with it to move downstream, always asking it's permission for passage.

Here our boats displace water and hold our bodies above the fluid. The rocks lay sprinkled in the river by a hand much bigger than ours. As you pass through the boulders and fall into the water it is better to keep your hands at your sides, just as you were taught as a kid. The boulders have a tendency to punish those who get too frisky. They frown upon improper behavior. Tuck in your skirt, keep those legs covered, and always look downstream. 

 It's a maze of beige with the winner coming out unscathed. These rocks know things. They sit and watch as small, frenetic beings splash around them. They wonder, "Who are these creatures of such curiosity playing in my waters?". But they let us pass, even though sometimes you just tuck up real tight and think happy thoughts.

Sometimes we dance with the rocks and sometimes we are wallflowers. Either way the river teaches and we learn. 

Post on Fire

The air is quiet.

The flow of water and the crackle of sparks break the emptiness. The river glows red from embers and the forest has changed overnight. The hillside weakens while the large trees expand their chests to breathe in the new air. 

The river flows on.

Searing the hillside, the black char gives new beginnings to what lay below. Tall trees stand unfazed by the shallow depth of it's terror. They have seen it before and been there long enough to shrug at such novelty. The flames week attempt at domination. Though some have lived too long and wait for their chance to fall. Chunks of bark explode as sparks leap off of the shoulders of taken trees.

The smoke rides the breath of the land. The hands of the fire grasp a tree and a plume of smoke is pushed up. It is frustrating. You can't get away. Your skull tightens and your lungs burn deep and weak. It is just enough to be aware of as the substance wears at your insides. It stops us. We yield to it's magic, it's mystical nature and incorrigible shrewdness. The fire continues, pushing us back.

The story

Photo by Daniel Brasuell

This is Cherry Bomb. It is the reason you hike into Upper Cherry.

First Time

This time I decided to shoulder it in. The 9 mile hike into the put-in of upper cherry is daunting, but I knew people have shouldered their boats in so I wanted to know what it was like. As we were packing Ben Coleman drove up on a little motor bike "You guys better get in there or it will be too low, run it out tomorrow". We nodded our head in respect to the advice from a man you typically hear stories about. "Ben Coleman was just in here at Richter high flows". Legend. We continued to pack with a little bit more anxiety about getting to the top. We arrived at the put in 10 hours later to what we thought looked like a medium-high flow(550 on inflow to hetch hetchy), which was surprising considering we were just told that it was going to be too low to run. We spent the night out on the cool granite, somehow avoiding mosquitoes that seem as though they have been genetically modified to reproduce at absurd rates.

We put our water gauges out, and the next morning it had risen a few inches(600 at hetch hetchy). We made our through the class IV gorge and as we came out it seemed as though the creek was really filling out. Things that I remembered being shallow now were fluffy and pushy. We decided to portage Cherry Bomb. As we rolled into what would be the entrance slide to Cherry Bomb we found two people waiting. A Kiwi, Gordy, and a Tennesseen, Curt. They said they were going and that it was a medium level. Medium? Okay. We run the entrance gorge, which was really good, and get to the lip of cherry bomb. Problem. None of the water lands in a pool. It smashes into the wall on the other side of the gorge, make a spray that hit about 40 feet above the falls. Richter high(650). We back off and start the portage out of Serenity pool, choosing a crack to ledge combo with a boat haul about of about 80 feet. We spend the night at the bottom of Cherry Bomb, hoping the water levels back off.

Shit. The water level rises(700). There are seven of us now, and later we hear that there was someone trying to catch us solo, who ended up hiking out. We decide to leave our stuff and begin the hike out of the canyon to the ridge and back to the cars. We vow to return.

Second Attempt

We arrive a few days later, but apparently a day early. We predict that the water will drop precipitously each day so we need to be near to seize our opportunity. Brian and I decide to go in a day earlier than the rest because he has work. The others also believe it will be too high, but Brian and I catch it as it begins to fall and paddle out on a nice flow(600-550). The high side of good for most stuff. We hike in and paddle out, portaging what we believe to be too risky with just two people. Success.

Third Attempt

I get to the takeout, go down to Groveland for the night. The next day I repack my stuff and begin the hike all over again. We make it to Flintstone and the water level is a nice medium flow. We hike up to the top of Cherry Bomb and begin our way down. We make it to the lip. Nervous. The flow looks good. I decide to take the line that I had the last time that I ran it, not spending too much time thinking about it. I look at the features and go back to my boat. Curt and Chris are up top taking photos and Gordy and I are in our boats. There are two channels you can take at the entrance. I take the left one, but as I go down my nose is deflected to the right, either by the confluence of water or a little pothole downstream of the entrance. Look at the photo. I land absolutely sideways in that pothole.

As I have watched more video and looked at more photos, I realize now that I probably was very close to having a good line. If it were a little lower I could have ferried out, if it were a little higher I would not have hit the pothole. But I ended up in the pothole. It is just big enough to give you hope. You can roll sometimes, you can almost ferry out. Almost. I am upright. I am upside down. I bracing and flipping and missing rolls and flipping and spinning. I am trying to ferry. I almost make it but fall back in. I am upside down. My head is hitting rocks. My boat is smashing against the walls. My left roll works. Then it doesn't. Then my right roll works. Then it doesn't. It has been a minute. Everyone is watching me and my green helmet bob up and down, in and out.

Soon I breath in some water and thats when I decide it is time to give up on the in boat portion of this event. Until then I had decided I would use all my energy in my boat and not save any energy for the swim. Sometimes it works...

I am underneath the boat. Grasping. I grab something. The paddle. That doesn't float me. I keep trying for the boat. Soon I am swirled into the back right corner of the pothole. Look at the photo, see the corner of the pothole that is hidden? That is where I am. I feel a boulder under my feet. I can stand! I can breath!

No one can see me now. All they see is my boat upside down floating downstream and nothing else. They all think that I am dead, or at least unconscious in the pothole. But I am standing there. I had just caught my breath when I started thinking about Dave. Dave swam here a few days before me. He got stuck in the hole right below the falls. We was in there for three minutes. He stopped breathing. He was revived and flown out in a helicopter. I don't have $15,000 for a helicopter. I can't get out of the pothole. There is no way. All the walls are undercut and polished granite and the waterfall just slams into it. I just sit there, wondering, up to my chest in bubbling, swirling force, plastering me against the wall of the pothole.

A throwbag plops right in front of me. What the? Holy shit. I am going to get out of here. I can't hold onto this thing. Do I have a Carabiner? No. Damn it. I try to tie it onto the lapelle of my PFD, the Ronin Pro. I hope this thing is strong enough. But they pull it away. They can't see me. They think I am unconscious. They think it is getting caught on rocks. I start looking for a way to signal them. I blow my whistle. Nothing. I look at the corner of the pothole. I stick my hand out there, sun hits it. Sploosh! Another throwbag. They must have seen it. I tie onto my lifejacket. Curt and Chris, on a small ledge, drag me, a 200 pound man, up and over a pothole, through the bottom of the falls, and up a polished granite slab. Damn.

I am a little nauseas and tired, but otherwise unharmed. Understandably, no one else wants to run the drop, so we begin the hike out for a second time in a week. As we hike out, I glance at my boat, it is sitting there in the weir hole, surfing happily by itself. It stays there for an entire day. We get back to camp and decide that I will paddle Clancy's boat out and he will hike out. I portage every class V drop on the remainder of the run, happy to be alive.

Fourth attempt
The kayaking community comes through; my boat, camera, throwbag, and breakdown paddle have all been recovered. So I hike back in, see the level is very low(360) and begin the hike out. 2 hours in, 7 hours out and my fourth hike in lead to about 40 miles of hiking and 15 miles of kayaking. Good Riddance.

2013
Hiked in May 25, diurnal between 600 and 700 each day. Everything up to cherry bomb was awesome. Swimming hole in the rapid before the crux of the class IV gorge. Crux goes great, run it.  Hiked cherry all the way to dead bear. Double pothole probably runnable but consequence is likely death, so hiked it. Great rapids all the way down the red gorge, portaged regular portage as well as the swirly hole down there, stayed low. Finish of the red gorge is AWESOME. Portaged the nozzle gorge. Probably not worth it, but it is if you are already in there.

Thanks to Kokatat for gear that kept me safe and New River Academy for employing me. 

MF Feather

This trip was for Rivers For Change: 12 Rivers project. Rivers for change is a non-profit organization that is raising awareness of our watersheds through community events and running 12 rivers source to sea with coverage by Canoe and Kayak. 

The Story:

"I am out of shape and all I have is a t-shirt" the shuttle driver says. Eric loads back in the car to take our mortified shuttle driver back out of the canyon. It is hailing and the road into the Middle Feather is steep and treacherous(if you want to put in at the PCT). The shuttle driver started showing signs of weak nerves as trees brushed the side of the truck. "Are those going to knock the paddles off?" he wondered aloud as he checked his phone for the fourth time. As the road gets steeper and steeper it becomes increasingly clear that our shuttle driver is scared. We step out of the car at the bottom of a challenging section and Eric announces that he will be returning to the take out with the driver. "My friend, my responsibility" he says,  so we were down to three... Apparently being overweight and wearing a t-shirt makes you a bad candidate for driving MF shuttles, so beware of that. 

I follow the boys down the steep hike to the water. 

We make it part way, but still 1 mile away. Which way is the Trail?

The rare overhead shot

Rivers for change is trying to protect little guys like this. 

It never gets ugly.

This time down Galen and I ran a rapid I have been dreaming about for years: The Portage.

Down through bald rock

No one hates clean thirty footers

Potomac

As your boat slides into the Potomac, the mirror reflection waves up and reverberates all the way across the 600 foot wide pool. The moist, warm air settles on your skin and the water drips off of your hands as you paddle. The perfect reflection ends in a long flat horizon line, where it looks like the end of the world, like looking out to sea. But it reflects the sky perfectly. You cannot tell what is below until you fall over the horizon. As you look up the six foot tall dam runs across the entire river, giving it a manicured feeling of false perfection. 
Past the dam, the river runs through a field of boulders until the falls. It splits and braids into dozens of channels, where hundreds of feet before it was a slow moving reflecting pond. Soon you are above the middle channel.

The rock is abrupt and ungainly. The water thrashes against it to make its descent down to the next pool, and no concessions are made in its path. There is no easy way down. The landscape is baked. The few plants that live on these islands of rock have been thrown there from floods, or exist in the marginal space between regular flow and flood level.  Grace under Pressure.

Craig Kleckner

Galen Volckhausen

Craig Kleckner

Soon the river runs into itself and slows down. The walls of rock lift up around the riverbed and create a corridor for the tranquil Potomac to slowly move toward the sea. The float out settles the river back to the reflecting pond it was when it began, and your mind can return to contemplating what happens in congress only a few miles away...

Chasing Shadows

A Jackson Rock Star shines blue steel

Who cares about success? Trying to fit yourself into the box of success is an exhausting venture. We spend our lives trying to copy other people, studying what works and emulating it as best we can. But we can’t. We are our own people and we play by our own rules. Jobs try to fit us into categories but none of us are perfect. I try to teach math, but I am no math teacher, I try to coach kayaking, but I am no kayaking coach, I play dad, psychologist, counselor, philosopher, disciplinarian, adult, cook, nurse. I am none of these things. I have been trained to do these things but I am only me. I double dip, I forget to clean my dishes, I get frustrated and tired, I am not worthy of these tasks, I am not perfect.

A moment of perfection

What are we even trying to live up to anymore? I am not Evan Garcia, I am not Richard Montgomery, I am not Rick Stock. We are on our own journey, have our own strengths. We can only be who we are, fight to be better, and learn from our experiences. It will never be perfect. It will always be a mess. It always seemed so clean when I thought about life. I will just teach math, or I will just be a raft guide, or I will be a researcher. But you are not as savvy, as smart, as responsible, as you think you need to be to get it done. We can never live up to the expectations we build up for ourselves if we live in the shadow of our heroes.

Thoughtless flight 

Move on. Joan Didion wrote “innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself” and eventually ends with “to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect”. Ultimately we cannot hold ourselves to the standard that we assume we need, or that others want us to have. We can move on in earnest, each journey is unique and what we can do is keep our heart and mind tuned into compassion, learning, and what we love.  Ultimately what others think can give us some guidance, but should be considered a small piece of the information we use to understand ourselves and chisel out our self- identity. We must live for ourselves.

Changing Perspectives

Paddling with New River Academy has completely redefined how I think about river running. My worries are no longer my own, photos are a last thought, and rapids are no longer a way to express my skill but a way to demonstrate a technique or a venue for students to express their skill. I come last now. I am always sweeping, with the pin kit, first aid kit, and break down paddle neatly tucked away in my stern. It is a rare day that I get to pop out and take some photos. This is how I imagine it is to have kids. It is no longer for you, it is for them, what they want, but you are there to help guide them for what you believe to be what is best for them. You fight with them, you love them, you lose your logic, you lose your temper, you learn from them. I wish I could understand them. It is an endless cycle of mistakes and recoveries, learning what a teenager thinks is "fair", which apparently is different for each of them, but we have to figure out what rules apply to everyone. 

Head Coach Craig Kleckner showing a different line down the Watauga. 

Hunt "styling stouts with authority".

The biggest lesson this year? Don't take things so seriously. Nobody is dead or pregnant, and the sun is going to rise in the east and settle in the west, and we are going kayaking.

Talullah Gorge, Georgia

The hike into Tallulah gave me extra time to think on this particularly warm day in April. Here is a shot of the Put-in for the Tallulah, which is earned after 540 steps down a well maintained staircase. 

This great run only has water 8 days a year, a huge staircase and only room for two people to put on at a time. It makes for a long wait. The 90 minutes it took to get down to the water was more than enough time to get to pondering. On this particular day I was thinking about the past, as we are always wont to do. What choices have I made?  What could be different? We have a tendency to have some remorse about past decision sometimes, we repeat decisions in our head and try to play out the alternative scenarios. 

This kind of thinking is dangerous, it gnaws at us and pulls us away from our current situation. It has been shown that people who tend to ruminate are more likely to suffer from depression. We can't spend a lot of time questioning our decisions of the past if we want to be happy now. 

We need distractions from these thoughts, to break the cycle.

Oceana provides this kind of break.

We have to reconcile with the moment, and not the what ifs. It is not that we need to forget these decisions, in fact we must remember them and learn from them. But we must move past it, incorporate it into our self and move on.

This is what the Tallulah brought me back to. Oceana cleared the slate on the past and let me flow through to now. We have made the decisions we have and all we can do is learn from them and push forward to make the best decisions we can for the future. What we have is right now, what we have is effort in this present moment, to make the best of what is around, which is beautiful. 

The questions we ask

There is a moment, at the end, where we evaluate what we accomplished. It could be our dying breath, it could be when our name is called on graduation, but there are definitive moments in our life where we can’t help but think back and wonder: Did I do the best I could?

We can struggle with many things in this life: drugs, money, family, community, art, spirituality, mind, media. Do we choose correctly? When we lie on our death bed, will we think and wish “I should have watched Cinderella one more time” or “if I had only smoked weed one more time I would be happy” or maybe “I should have taken that job as a corporate exec to I could own a second house right now”. 

No. We will not think of those things. I heard a professor at UC Berkeley discuss this topic once, there have been studies on what people think about the days before they pass. 

The questions that they ponder are: Did I help others? Was I a productive member of my community? Did I tell the people that I cared for that I loved them.

At each end, each transition, we have thoughts like these. The above questions need answering when we end this life, but each phase has questions. I have already finished many things in my life, and with each, questions arise.

The reality is that we have to answer these quandaries of the future in the present moment. We must understand our future regrets and overcome them now, we have to fight for what we will believe was important. Push yourself, both physically and psychologically to improve. Care for others, push your boundaries, contribute to your community, meditate in the company of a kayak, paddle, and friends. Find ways to break through your barriers.

I think of the end of things often. One day I will no longer be a kayaker, one day I will no longer be a teacher, one day I will no longer be alive. I think to the moment before those things end and imagine how I will perceive the time that I am spending now. Am I doing it right?

I work at New River Academy

Rio Negro

We got stuck in the town of Hornopiren(Snow Oven) because of an issue with flat tires. But we did get to run a waterfall on the Rio Negro. There were a few more drops but  taking photos of them wasn't in the cards. I walked back up for another lap but on the way had a back spasm that lasted six hours. I was on the verge of puking, passing out, pissing myself, and defecating for the worst six hours of my life.

 The picturesque campground:

A short hike led to this:

Casey tango and I ran laps on the drop

Since it was easy to hike, and a hard lip to do well, we did a few extra

Then we headed home, tired from our trip to Cochamo and Hornopiren, we caught a ferry to break up the drive. 

I work at New River Academy

The result of decisions

The decision to do the Cochamo never seemed to be ours. We were going, despite mixed information provided by people within somewhat hidden agendas. We had two main sources. One that said "Stout as fuck. Siphons upon Siphons with logs mixed in" and another that said "It is so good in there, you have to go". The guidebook called it one of the best steep creeks in Chile. Curiosity overwhelmed all other motivation. How could a creek have such an impact on people? What mixture of water, rock, and apparently logs could lead people to say such things?

The trip was tinged with off beat group dynamics. We had a powerful voice in our group drop out the night before because of a nagging injury. This may seem moot but the way that people interact is highly dependent upon the people present. It worried me. The group made sense with the four of us, somehow the  ingredients matched and now there seemed to be an imbalance, too much spark. These things keep me up at night. It isn't the water, it is't the sieves or the hike, it is the people. It is something someone said, a sentence of worry or doubt that sticks in your head. Sometimes I wonder if it is our doubt that kills us, that sets us up for failure. Nick Murphy was on the trip with Allen Satcher, who passed away on Upper Cherry earlier this year. Nick said that Allen had expressed sentiments of doubt and homesickness while on the trip. These kinds of expression make me weary. They linger in my mind. We were going, so I tried not to dwell on my worries. We made our way to the Cochamo.

As we descended into the gorge, our past decisions caught up with us. We had little food and put on late, 11, ignoring advice to start early. We made our way through the first gorge, the steepest of the run. We sat down after the gorge for some food, then continued downstream.
We started a portage. We had to climb up and over some boulders,  I pushed my boat down into a a pile of rocks. The nose glanced off and was rejected back into the current, it immediately filled with water at the bottom of the drop. I walked out to it and casually started pulling it out. It came free. The current started taking it and I realized immediately that a boat full of water weighs about 700 pounds. I had to either choose to hold onto a 700 pound object floating down a river or let go. So down the boat went on its own journey as I stood on shore.

The boat turned the corner and dread set in.  "I am never going to see that boat again". As I contemplated the epic I was about to have I ran around the corner. The boat was pinned again, cockpit facing the force of the current. This time we did it right. I swam and jumped my way out the boat, we attached a pulley to the grab loop and used it as a 2 to 1 mechanical advantage to pull the boat to shore. They threw me a rope, I roped it through the pulley and threw it back to them. Then I was stuck in the middle of the river. They threw me a rope and brought me to shore through a combination of jumping and swimming, with Gordon pulling and Tango grabbing me.

I lost my throw bag in the mix. I got back to shore and was happy to have everything else. We started paddling and my boat was really heavy and I felt like I was sliding around. My confidence was gone. I started getting scared and wanted out. My boat was doing a wheelie down rapids and I felt out of control. We got to another scout and I started emptying my boat. My drybag was completely full of water, drenching my sleeping bag, pad, and down sweater. Also, my seat had been ripped from the shell, making it slide around while trying to paddle.

At this point it is a no brainer, we are getting out of here. Unfortunately Casey had already run another rapid by the time I figured out all that had happened to my boat. He was 200 yards downstream with no possibility of getting back to Gordon and I. We got ourselves out of the canyon, but Casey was walled in. Rope skills came into play again. We set up an anchor, a belay station, and Casey made himself a harness. First we roped out his boat on a 2 to 1 and then set him up on a munter hitch and got him out.

90 minutes later we were at the takeout.

Mistakes
I let go of my boat, I should have had a flip line
Not enough food, take enough food, it is a big stresser, an extra meal at least, two if you can.
I did not have my throw bag tied in because it is hard to access and we were scouting a lot, so I lost it.
I used a rafting dry bag(Bill's Bag) and I took out my center pillar to get it in there. This left my seat vulnerable to shifting and my stuff vulnerable to getting wet.
Split the group without consulting, harder to get Casey out

What we did right:
Hiked out at the right spot, right when we figured out I was screwed.
Proper training, knew how to use a 2 to 1, how to make a harness, munter hitch, make an anchor
Knew where a trail was and how to get there.

Cochamo Valley, Chile

The beauty of this country never ceases.

Typically, sitting and drinking wine near the ocean does not lend itself to a kayaking trip, but Chile is different.
The Cochamo runs through a valley guarded vigilantly by rock giants.

There is only passage from the east and west, Chile and Argentina.

Only Horses and people pass through this canyon, occasionally people with kayaks. The trail is a maze that has been dug out by thousands of horse passages. When one became too muddy, they started another one, only to dig another hole.

A night in this valley makes you realize how perfect this place is for both kayakers and climbers. Huge walls tower above.

 We made a late start into the gorge of the Cochamo.

A bunch of big boulders and paddle strokes later the "Clean section" started. Gordon Klco on the entrance.

A portage and a seal launch later. 

And it was clean.

Casey Tango on the last drop in the series.

Then we had some problems, more on that later. 

I work at New River Academy