Now I know I have mentioned this a number of times before, but this was one of the best weekends I have ever had paddling.  I’m sure I keep saying this due to a number of factors which always result in great times but the song remains the same(reference anybody?).  I’m sure you’re asking yourself, what made this weekend more special then any of the previous “amazing” weekends?  Well the answer of course is quality whitewater. 

Our weekend started off with myself geting out of work an hour early, only to be stuck in traffic for another hour, on top of afterwork rushhour in Chicago.  Picking up Powder and Scare Crow on the way and driving through the night, we arrived at camp around 5:30am, only to be woken up by The Orange Crush at 7.  Little did he know, the water gets to Sang Run later then it used to so we woke up for nothing.  The Upper Yough was running around 2 1/4 on the paddlers gauge so it’s the among the lowest I have ran it (this is my 4th) but knew it would still be a great time.  Big Drop, Bill, and Kyle joined Powder, Scare Crow and I and we couldn’t have had a better crew.  Although a few of us are still on the novice side of things, nobody had any troubles and only a few heads got wet.  We made it though cleanly and had an awesome time.

Late that night, we camped out in some pretty heavy rains.  I must admit, it was tough to sleep, my mind was racing with thoughts of new run(s) the next day.  After a quick breakfast the next morning, we were on our way to Meadow Run.  This tight little run starts off on the Cascades, a waterfall that doesn’t look like it belongs with the rest of the run.  This slide, although intimidating, was a fun, easy, scary ride…definitely an interesting “get up and go” early morning thing.  The rest of the run was back to narrow winding through the mountains.  All too early, we arrived at the natural waterslide.  I didn’t run this extremely tight slide but there was only one thought running through my mind when a few buddies ran it…BADASS.

After an amazing morning run, The Top Yough was calling our names.  Few of us had ran this stretch of the Yough before and I had only seen a couple drops on it that were quite impressive.  The rest of the river was quite different then the first two drops, another cascading slide and a pretty straight forward 5 foot ledge.  Continuing after that was 2 miles of whitewater.  Unfortunately for our buddy Brett who dislocated his shoulder and Mike who was kind enough to drive him to the hospital, they didn’t get to experience the rest of the river at a relatively high flow to what our guide had seen prior.  Dave was kind enough to take the rest of us down these mostly read and run boulder gardens, with the exception of Suck Hole.  We all had great runs down this beautiful river and were more then happy to relax for the rest of the night.  Most of us had 2 personal first descents in one day, a first time for most of us.

Sunday, our plans were set well in advance to run the Savage River.  Although we may have been able to get on another river at natural flow, we took the damn release due to its hype and our curiosity, as well as its difficulty.  This was an awesome run similar to some of the stuff I had paddled in Mexico.  It was an extremely continuous low volume river with not much of a drop to it.  Everything aside from the damn was read on the run and I was happy to lead the way for most of the time.  Most people were pretty tired at the end but had I not had to travel 13 hours, I would have taken another run.

As mentioned before, this was one of the best weekends I’ve had and I’m sure it has something to do with quality whitewater, good friends, fun times, and of course, the fact that I LOVE PADDLING

RED DOG (mandated by The Orange Crush)