Hot Damn!  These past two weekends have been absolutely amazing.  Last weekend, saturated grounds, snow melt, and rains provided epic playboating conditions on my favorite local spot.  The Root River was raging at 2,500 CFS when I pulled up friday morning.  With levels this good, I was astonished to only see Adrian, Jon, and I to be the only ones out there early on but I wasn’t about to complain about having a private river. 

Jon headed straight down to All Evil while Adrian and I carried up to an amazing Upper Pipeline.  As we got down to All Evil, I noticed a humbled Jon sitting on the banks gripping his throw bag tightly.  His only words where “wow.”  Without a hesitation, I rode the curler out to the massive standing wave on surfers right and quickly (without my consent) spun left and was engulfed by the white wall of water named All Evil.  Without much warm up and not having been in a feature this big since the mid summer floods, I quickly wanted out!  With a wall of water to my right and a potential “working” to my left…I figured the only way out would be to windowshade or ender…I chose the later and Backstabbed out.  Rolling up with dinner plates for eyes…I could only mutter “wow.”  Informing Adrian that the longer he waited and looked at this feature, the less chance he would attempt to conquer it.  Needless to say, a 5 minute staring contest resulted in All Evil telling him to stay in the eddy. 

Levels on Saturday and Sunday offered much more fun with a max reading of 2,800 CFS and 2,100-2,300 CFS respectively.  With 3 solid days on amazing levels, I could feel my level of playboating advancing.  I established myself in the features, learned them and where I was in them, and felt like I could attempt other moves then spins.

This past weekend provided an entirely different experience then the high water levels on my favorite playspot.  MPG, Justice Jake, and Jeff headed up to the Upper Peninsula, Michigan.  Arriving in L’Anse around 5:30 am, we places our bags on a comfy concrete slab at the takeout of the Falls River and fell fast asleep.  Alon and Steve where nice enough to take us UP Newbies down the Falls.  Jeff quickly realized he was in the wrong boat and halfway through and after spending most of the time upside down, he hiked out as we continued down.  We took two runs down the Falls that day and had a blast running ledges and slides.  It was quite the rush.  We even got to rename a drop.  The broken out damn (last drop of the Falls) is now aptly named Money Shot due to MPG(now aka Hand Job) breaking his paddle and requiring a pricey hospital visit.

Tommy decided joined up with us later that night and Saturday we decided to head to the Rock River.  This seldom run stretch started and ended with more flatwater and marshes then we preferred provided Jeff with a run appropriate for his boat and gave Tommy a warm up in his rarely used creeker.  We had a great time running the continuous whitewater section and everyone enjoyed dodging the rediculous amount of timber in the river.  It was a beautiful remote run but provided little challenge.

Sunday we woke early for a quick run on the Falls and to give Tommy the creeking he had been looking for.  We had a quick, clean run and hit the road for the Peshtigo which was raging at 30 inches (previously only hit at Summer flows and around 12 inches).  This was an awesome run with big water, high volume drops, and above all else, warm weather.

As you may be able to tell…my weekends keep getting better and better and no two weekend is the same.

Red Baron

River Junky