I have been quite busy the past few months with work, paddling, family functions, organizing and hosting the Hometown Throwdown events. I realized earlier last week that I have not posted any Trip Reports in a while… I have been paddling a lot this summer and spring. Probably more than I ever had in the past and I am loving every minute of it! I reached a huge paddling goal of mine back in the last weekend of June (6-28-08); which was my personal first descent of The Green River Narrows (AKA – The GNAR). There is no one word that I can think of to describe how I felt after the day ended in success…
I set the goal of running the GNAR for myself back in Nov of 2006 after watching my first GNAR Race live! There is something about the Narrows that makes you aspire to progress your skill level the first time you set foot upon the pristine gorge. Chris Galloway beautifully describes this same emotion I felt in his ‘The Green Race Movie’, which was another source that energized me to keep striving toward my goal. When I bought this movie, I also purchased the really nice Poster of the Green River Narrows that Effort produced to go along with the film. I have had this poster hanging above my monitor @ work since October of 2007. I would find myself looking up at it daily, dreaming about the day that I would finally get to fire it up! Now I can look up at the poster with a whole new respect.
Steve Moore (one of my fellow TVF Sexy Kayaking Beasts Team Paddlers and good paddling buddies from the APE’s) joined me for his PFD of the GNAR also on this awesome Saturday. Steve and I were very fortunate to have three great trip leaders for the day to show us the lines and describe the many hazards: Scott Sidener (SKB Team Paddler), Matt Dalton (SKB Team Paddler) & Julius Stuart (JD). A big thanks Goes out to each of these fine gents for taking the time to lead us down!
Steve beat me to publishing our GNAR PFD Trip Report and he did a very nice write up of our day’s adventure. I have duplicated his TR into this post with my additional comments in italics below to give you a two sided view of the accounts of our epic PFD… Enjoy:
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.” - “Henry V,” W. Shakespeare
After months of planning, talking, schedule conflicts, and letdowns by Duke, the pieces finally fell into place for Wes and I to join the “Band of brothers,” the relatively small group of boaters who are at the level to consider such a run. To do battle against the world-renowned Green River Narrows.
I was a bit anxious all week at work, but found myself to be collected and focused this morning (Me too!). I was even able to sleep reasonably well, knowing what I’d be doing in a few hours (Me too…). I was up early and was driving through the cool morning air before I knew it, heading to meet the rest of the crew for a pre-trip breakfast at the Upward Road Cracker Barrel. We met up with our guides for the day: Scott, Julius, and Matt. The last time Wes and I were here, we were sitting in front of the fire getting ready to hike into the Green Race back in November (2007). Breakfast was immediately followed by everyone visiting the restroom to participate in another pre-trip activity – the Class V dump (This was very entertaining to say the least with all 5 of us in the Men’s restroom at one time… whew!).
Liz joined us for a warm-up down the Upper Green and was a very gracious shuttle bunny. Of course, she got in some road biking while we were on the water. I hadn’t been on that run in a LONG time (This Upper Green run was a PFD for me. Nice warm up for our GNAR run.), and it was good to get a feel of the Rocker I’d be paddling today. The water had a murkiness to it, which had us hoping that the level was a bit higher than a low Summer 100%. We were wrong, and the brown water did a nice job hiding all the FU rocks that we were trying to avoid. That warm up didn’t last too long and was over in just over an hour.(Good lines were had by all on the Upper section. Putting in on the Upper Green was quite magical for me on this day, because it was the first time that I had ever touched the water of the Green River in a boat.)
And there we were… sitting at what had always been the end of the day for us, but knowing that today was different. There would be no hiking up the hill today… As our boats slipped back into the river, we turned a page in the story that has been written since we began kayaking. A new chapter has now begun (Game on!).
Big Hungry went past way too fast and we were soon sitting behind the RR rock looking at the stick gage. It was about 7” today, on the low end of good. The muddy water really wasn’t adding anything to the flow. First up was Bride. Basically start on RL and thread your boat between two closely spaced rocks, then a wave train in the outflow. We spent a lot of time at Frankenstein to scout and watch people run it. Scott decided to instill confidence in us by swimming it. He was in the Green Boat and that thing is seriously long, so it was a handicap today. With that in my head, I got back in my boat, and with the line burned in my mind, peeled out. This rapid is more of a finesse drop. You can’t go blowing into the last move, or you’ll mess up the boof. I ran this one really well (I came into the boof a little hot and took to much rock on the shoulder boof. The rock turned me back to the right and I boofed toward the lobster trap. I flipped up against the vertical wall or the undercut rock below the drop. I pushed off the rock and rolled up in the right eddy beside the drop, which was in front of the lobster trap… I quickly ferried in front of the undercut rock to make sure Steve did not boof on top of me! This was my worse line of the day.). Pincushion was also uneventful – nothing too challenging here (Fun Rapid though!). We boogied down to Whale Tail, where I got a nice 2’ boof before heading over to RR to get out to scout Boof.
Boof or Consequences has changed recently so we were going to run the right line (Better known as the Class V Boof Sneak). Scott almost had Wes and I talked into running it, but Wes chose to scout it (I’m glad I did too…), and I followed. I’m glad we did because I now have that picture in my head. It also let me see the brand new Green Boat stuffed underwater into a pin rock. We’d find out later that a group ahead of us pulled that little move. The paddler was OK and the boat removed later. We walked the Boof Sneak, but I think that’s on the list to run on my second descent (Me too). You’re either going to nail the line and not touch a rock, or become a human piñata on your way through.
At Go Left, we ran the sneak, called the Squeeze, and eddied out below to set up safety and video Matt’s descent. He greased the left line, making it look easy. Go Left is as big and bad as I had pictured it, but pictures don’t do justice on how steep the drop into the slots is. (You really don’t get the full picture of Go Left, until you are at water level looking back up at it from the eddy on the right. Huge!)
I wanted to run Reverse Seven, but when I realized that was the first part of Zwick’s, I declined, eddying out above both to scout on the right. I really hadn’t planned to run Zwicks, and probably won’t for quite a while, as I hear of that rapid munching more than it’s share of people. We watched someone in an OC-1 run Reverse Seven, only to flip on the way to Zwicks. He stood up in the middle of the river, while we quickly got him and his boat to shore (Good team rescue effort!). His friends weren’t too supportive, laughing from below and egging him on to swim it. I opted to run a shallow flume down to the bottom, where I ferried back over to the RL to get out again and walk Chief and the Gorilla rapids. Chief is imposing to look at, but I think I’ll fire that up next time. It’s about this time I’m starting to realize that running the $^&* is hard work! I also now understand how people can run it without drytops – you get hot quickly with all that walking (I think the portaging is half of the adventure of running the GNAR for the first time. You have to be able to hit certain eddies or you have no choice but to run the next rapid…).
We set our boats down below Gorilla and took a break to eat and discuss the next several slides and the options on running each. The most fun of the whole river is flying off the seal launch, hitting the water, and then getting some clean lines through the slides below (The seal launch below Gorilla is awesome!). It starts with some nice airtime at Scream Machine if you can find the sweet “Skip line” through. A slanted rock slows you down enough to choose which line you want to run at Nies’ Pieces. I thought the race line looked like a lot of fun, went left of the rock, and got sling-shot down the rest of the drop to the pool above Powerslide (Race line through these two slides is better than Oceana!).
I really don’t remember anything about Powerslide (Steep, fast, & stay right! Good lines for all of us in this rapid.), but I’ll never forget Rapid Transit. I got cheated out of this one due to a colossal screw up that I blame entirely on myself. The result was carnage worthy of LVM’s “You Gonna Eat That?” RT ate…my…lunch… About the only thing I can say positive about it was that I rolled up at the bottom. The expressions on my friends’ faces told the story. I will NOT make that mistake again. (I was in the eddy above Rapid Transit when Steve had his big screw up, so I did not witness the carnage. Reports from the guys below said he got too far left and fell off into the chasm on the left side of the rapid. He flipped and rode the rest of the rapid upside down, but rolled up at the bottom unharmed – shaken not stirred. The problem is with Rapid Transit is there is no real easy way to scout it. So you have to depend on your leaders’ line description on how to run it. I was fortunate to have a perfect line down this rapid. I thought it was one of the best rapids in the GNAR!)
We portaged Nutcracker and got out to look at Groove Tube. There are two lines here, and I was thinking of the middle one, but after the aforementioned incident at RT, I was thinking of walking it. As Scott was talking about what not to do and how lots of boaters get tripped up and almost swim Sunshine, Julius about demonstrates it for us. Some wild windmilling paddle strokes and bracing he made it to the eddy – whew! That was all I needed to see to shoulder my boat this time (Steve and I just looked at each other and said I’ll walk it, if you will…). Next time, I’m running this one (Me too! But no regrets walking it for my PFD). I made it down to the first eddy on RR and made darn sure to catch it, knowing that I did NOT want to be running Sunshine today – or maybe ever. (The current from Groove Tube down to Sunshine is moving a lot faster than it looks from the bank. You are at the first Eddy above Sunshine before you know it! It is really the biggest ‘must make move’ of the day, if you don’t want to run Sunshine. The portage around Sunshine is epic… good times, good times!)
Once everyone was below, Matt scouted and then ran the right line. That didn’t work so well, as he went really deep (He missed his boof stroke) and his skirt imploded. We recovered him and his gear at the scene. We had to do some tricky work to get a throwbag unjammed from under the Sunshine rock (We had to set up a double Z-Drag to free the bag from up stream side). Those of us not participating in that event checked out the cave eddy (Cool place to hang out!).
With Sunshine behind us, I knew that while the river was by no means over. We had just completed the hardest part of the run today. Uh, I also noticed quite a bit of water on the rocks. Crap! The water’s dropping out on us! So we had to really pour on the steam to get through the lower section before we ended up doing the butt scootin’ boogie the rest of the way to Fishtop.
The lower section went by really fast, with lots of quality boofs, punctuated by some bigger stuff, like Toilet Bowl and Hammer Factor (I love these two rapids!). We stopped to scout Colonel Dick’s, with Scott pointing out the crux move. We all nailed it! Before the end, we got our Green baptism under the cave waterfall, followed by a short hike out to the Fishtop parking lot.
I think the good lines averaged out with the more interesting ones – no one ran everything cleanly. I want to thank Scott for coordinating the trip, and Matt and Julius for joining Wes and I for the adventure. I know I have a lot of improvement, but my runs will get better on each successive trip (That’s what I am hoping for too!).
What a rush! This could be more addictive than a drug habit. I pray I never get so jaded that I stop feeling the sense of accomplishment that the Green provides, to always realize the privilege it is to be able to challenge its rapids, and to respect the people who are good enough to do so (Ditto!).
Liz assumed shuttle bunny duties and ran Wes and I back to our cars. There were storms building, and despite the fact that we hauled ass back to Fishtop, we still didn’t make it in time. We sat in our cars and waited for the deluge to pass before loading up and going our separate ways.
With my GRAR PFD now behind me all I can think about is getting back out there to run more of the rapids and work on cleaning up and memorizing the lines. I came away from the run more mentally exhausted than physically tired. There is a lot of thinking that goes on while running the GNAR! I also have a whole new respect for people who race this run in November… That is a lot of hard rapids to link up in a short period of time. I’m not sure if I will ever be up for that challenge.
Until next time pray for rain and I hope to see you on the river!
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