Showdown!!!

Right so I have to start this post by apologising from the for the blatant lack of quality in my recent posts, especially the last post detailing the thunder booze cruise through the gorge and everyone visiting. I really didn't do the whole thing the justice it deserved. Needless to say the thunder cruise was epic even if my account of it was severely lacking. The trouble is that I was pretty worn out and tired by the whole weekend and the lead up to it so I really wasn't that inspied while writing the posts. So once again sorry to all involved and those of you who took the time to read the post. Now having said that, I've had a couple good nights rest, well as good as they get around here, and whats more I have a story that is truely worth detailing in all its glory. So sit back and relax, it might take some time to tell but it's worth it so enjoy.

So I'd been working pretty hard the last couple of days. I had a full day trip on Monday, a double slam on Tuesday and another full day on Wednesday, yesterday. To top it off they were all on oars and I wasn't doing to well with tips. I attribute that to shaving off my moustache but oh well. Yesterday went better but I had a bit of excitement in spikebuck rapid. I parked the oar boat on picnic table rock with a four load up front. This is the rock that everyone wraps boats on and has trouble with. We had to pivot the boat off by loading up the front, while highsiding. It was graceful like ballet, the nutcracker christmas special had nothing on us with moves like this. The boat got vertical on its nose catching water on the upstream tube before she spun around, still vertical on her nose. Mike in the boat behind us thought we were flipping for sure but I had the boat tamed like a purring pussy cat and she settled down nicely so I could row away like a champ. Oh yeah, it was like poetry in motion. But that is not the real story here, it's just a prelude to the main attraction. Mainly it was cool and I wanted to share it with you.

So when I got back to Echo base I jumped in a car and headed downtown to go to an internet cafe so I could write my paper for the conference that I'm going to back in California. It's due on the 30th so its getting a bit critical. I put in a good couple of hours before heading back to Echo. It turned out that the drytop I ordered had arrived and on top of that, the boys were going out on a booze cruise down the bighorn. So I jumped on the trip and took Pickett's pop to paddle and test out the new drytop. We had an oar boat, a paddle boat, the mini-me and me in the kayak. Things were going ok and everyone was having a good time having a few brews and enjoying the river. We made it through the first few rapids and I had a beer in the float between the rapids. Aaron decided he was going to try and ride the front of my kayak so we gave it a shot. We wobbled for a while but inevitably we went over. It took a while for him to get untangled from the boat before I could set up the roll. My first roll was strong but I rolled into Aaron who was right next to the boat so I didn't make it. The next attempt I rolled up into the raft. I tried a good couple more times but I was gettin gpushed under the raft so i ended up having to swim. So my expedition wasn't starting too well. It didn't really matter too much. The swim was easy, it just annoyed me that I swam. I thought I was getting quite good and swimming in flat water isn't really what I want to be doing, regardless of the fact that I was rolling up into a raft.

We carried on down the river and I had decided to not only paddle the pop to make things interesting but also take some more interesting lines in the rapids. So at spikebuck I took the left line up top and though the bottom. I caught a few rocks and some bad water and ending up upside down again. Shit. I got my roll ready and hit it. It got me all the way up but I did the full 360 barrel roll after hitting some stuff right as I got up. So upside down again, but this time I was dragging and bouncing along shore, upside down in water about a foot deep. I wasn't really in a position to roll so I figured I had to pop the deck again. When I reached for it I realised I had made it into deeper water and could probably have tried another roll, but it was too late. I already had my mind set on getting out of the boat. So there I was, swimming again. However, this time it was in a shitty shallow rapid bouncing off all kinds of rocks. What can you do? I swam the boat to shore and sat down truely pissed off with myself. I took a couple of minutes before setting off down river to catch up to everyone else hanging out at harvey's. I chilled out and had another beer, probably not helping my balance and paddling much but I figured I was in for a penny, in for a pound. Also I was curious to see how much it would really affect my paddling. So after feeling shitty for a while and being pissed off for swimming twice I got oevr it all. That was when we realised that Jaclyn had forgot to bring her keys for the shuttle car. They were at the put in with one of the other trucks. Great. Austin and her were in the mini-me so they decided to take off and just cruise the rest of the river and try and hitch hike back to the cars. So they took off and we hung out a little more.

After a bit we floated off to finish the river. It was getting quite dark by now. It was the first time I had paddled the rievr in a kayak in the dark so it was another thing that I was curious about to see how well I got on. I was a bit wobbly on all the easy flat water but I made it through the rapids just fine. It was kind of wierd. It was like I was paddling on my own even though I would wait around to make sure one of the rafts was near me as I went through the rapids, just for safety. But I pretty much knew they weren't going to do much for me if I swam or got into trouble. Not like other kayakers would do for me. I mean I knew if I got into serious trouble they would be there for me but I felt alone being the only one in a kayak. That combined with the dark made for a really surreal experience. I've paddled a river on my own only once before and I remember being quite worried about it even though it was the washburn and I was leaving one group and trying to catch up to another group. But last night was different. I guess I do know the water really well but still I was surprised at how comfortable I was with the feeling of paddling on my own. Anyway, we cruised down the river without much further drama. The only real drama had been the paddle boat, who were getting bitchy with eachother for not paddling when who ever was guiding needed it. Instead everyone was drinking beer, but they got over it.

The real excitement started when the paddling stopped. So like I said, we didn't have the keys to the shuttle car. That meant we had a lot of drunk people hanging around trying to organise everything. That's when Austin had the idea that while Jaclyn was hitch hiking to get her car we could deflate all the boats and roll them up and put them in the back of his truck. Aaron thought this was the stupidest idea ever and wasn't quiet about voicing his opinion about it. In fact he basically said that it was the stupidest idea he had ever heard and that Austin was an idiot. Okay, but he didn't stop there. He started calling him out for being a pussy, for being a bitch and that he would ass rape his sister when she came to visit. Basically saying everything he could to try and wind up Austin and he was doing a good job. There were some attempts to try and calm Aaron down but in the end no one thought either of them would actually do anything about it. So after about tem ot fifteen miuntes of abuse Austin was gettin greally wound up and ended up shoving Aaron to the ground. This didn't really do much to cool down the situation and Aaron got up and back in his face. At this point Chris came down from carrying a boat up to the road and took a different approach to everyone else who was just watching the show and got in the middle of them and tried to break it up. This ended up with Chris tackling Austin to the ground and Aaron trying to get in on top and dry hump them, or somethign like that. At this point I figured Aaron wasn't helping calm things down so I grabbed him by his life jacket and dragged him off them and threw him inthe river. This worked to cool things down for a least 30 seconds, maybe even more. I couldn't really tell, I wasn't timing the ordeal. In this time Austin went back up to the road to get away from Aaron. I thought we might have sorted things out with that. I had Aaron sitting on the boat and we almost had him chilled out. But no. As I said it lasted a good 30 seconds or more.

At this point Aaron started yelling more shit. I was keeping him down by the boats but the consensus was that it would be really cool if Aaron would kick Austins ass. I thought that this was probably not a good idea since Aaron was pretty hammered by now and would probably come off worse in any conflict but the boys said they would handle it so whatever. They went up the hill to the road and I chilled out down by the boats with a few of the guys who couldn't give a shit what happened at this point. Well things escalated a little bit and after hearing a bunch of comotion up by the road we went up to find that Austin had punched Aaron in the nose and broke it. Cale and Chris were playing doctor and were debating how to rebrake it to set it straight. So that was pretty entertaining. They actually did a really good job and his nose is pretty much straight. At this point we had some cars back with keys so Arthur, Jaclyn and myself took off to pick up the rest of the cars. In the time it took to run the shuttle Aaron decided to get Austin back and gave him a good elbow to the face and then everyone immediately tackled Austin to prevent him fighting back. So that's the scene we found when we got back after running the shuttle. Arthur took off pretty quickly with a car full of people, including Aaron. Jaclyn and Austin got into words and she took off in a big huff. Then Austin jammed out pretty quickly, I just had to make sure the mini-me was strapped down well enough along with the kayak and my gear. That left the rest of us to load Aarons van with both boats and then we took off. We packed the van full. He lives out of it so he built a bed in the back and had storage under it. Chris went under the bed, about ten people were on the bed and five more were up front riding shotgun. It was a cosy ride. I put on our summer theme song, Wagon Wheel and we had everyone singing along and for a second we could all forget the drama that had just occured and just shout out the song and enjoy the crazy ride. But that would all change once we got back to Echo base.

We pull in and start sorting out all the gear and the boats. We pretty much get everything sorted and I pull Aarons car up to its usual spot were it transforms from being a normal van during the day into high class, luxury house by night, right by the bunk house. I thought things would start to settle down. At this point I think Aaron had got what he deserved. He was winding up Austin, wouldn't let him go, got punched and broke his nose. They had straightened it out just fine and everythign was alright. They had both sucker punched each other and we were back home were, hopefully, everyone could go their separate ways and chill out or go to bed for it all to be water under the bridge in the morning but no, this is when it really got interesting. So I walk over to Aaron who is getting some medical attention from McIver on the bunk house porch. Right then Travis rolls up and says "Hey Aaron, Austins got a gun and wants to shot you. You should get out of here." Sweet, I love the good ole US of A. Everyone has guns, isn't it great. You can always be assued of your right to carry firearms for self defense. So we figure its probably a good idea to get out of sight. Right as we were walking towards the road, away from the bunk house, I see Austin down at the other end of the bunk house. A quick change of direction and we head over to the Whitewater bar next door by going the back way through the fence. The bar was closed so we didn't have to worry too much about other people. We did run into a few of the guys who kayak oevr there. We chattedd for a while and told them a bit of what was going on. Then Victor came over and everyone decided if someone with a gun was running around wanting to shoot Aaron we'd probably be best to move a bit further away. You know not near the inocent guys who were just hanging out that we chanced upon. So we moved away to the otherside of the bar and chilled out on some tables and just waited to see what happened. Victor was doing us the job of keeping us updated as to what was going on next door the whole time.

So what it turned out happened was that Austin was walking around with a gun in his belt talking about how shit was going to go down and don't get in his way or else you'll get it too. Sargent Cale USMC, trusted by everyone, friend of all and ever the peace maker, went up to him and tried to convince him to give up the gun. Austin reached for it and was about to give it over but changed his mind. Cale didn't. he went for the gun and after a bit of hand wrestling got it away from Austin. It turned out it was a pretty cheap gun with no safety and a round chambered, ready to go. Pretty lucky that it wasn't fired in the exchange. Oh and as a side note, the guns serial number came up as reported stolen in Missouri. So Austin no longer had his gun on him and someone called Andy, the big boss of Echo. He turned up and called the cops to sort things out. Before the cops show up we see Austin drive his truck away. Then two cops cars roll up. The whole time I was chilling out with Aaron next door. Eventually McIver rolls up and says the cops want to talk to Aaron so we head over next door. Andy is there with the cops and they talk to Aaron, get his statement and take a few pictures of his busted up nose. Austin is nowhere to be found. It urns out he drove off back Texas, oh yeah so I forgot to mention he was from Texas, go figure. So with almost everything sorted out for the night everyone is hanging around talking about it all. I manage to round up all my gear, which I had put in Austins truck to get back to Echo, everything including my new drytop but missing my helmet. Shit, but it does give me an excuse to get a new one which I have kinda wanted the whole summer. Anyway, everything is pretty much sorted out. It's decided that Aaron should go into town and stay in a motel, just in case Austin decided to come back. So Victor drives us into town and we get a room for the night. Bonus, I get to sleep in a bed, watch TV and have a shower and that was pretty much that.

So a pretty exciting day. Sargent Cale was the hero. He could set Aarons nose and disarm Austin, a regular Walker Texas Ranger bad ass. But it just goes to show that having guns around (which isn't allowed on Echo property in the first place) is really just a stupid idea. You get yahoo cowboys who think they need guns for self protection in case the boogy man comes to rob there trailer and all that happens is that a silly punch up turns into a full situation with guns and the police showing up. If Austin didn't have a gun there would have been a bunch of shit talking, a few punches and a bit of a scuffle and that would be that. We would all have gone to sleep after a bunch of drama and woken up this morning and it would all have been water under the bridge or at worst Aaron and Austin would just not talk to each other and avoid each other. Instead we have captain texas, the yahoo cowboy, who goes back to his trailer and pulls out a gun to try and make himself feel big and powerful trying to take the law into his own hands and what happens? He gets disarmed and loses his gun and flees back to Texas. He's lost his rafting job and is now probably wanted by the cops for a possible fellony offence of threatening to kill someone. So this gun which he intended for self protection has just backfired and put him into a potential fellony offence. I imagine this is probably the case for a lot of cases where people own guns for self protection. They get used in situations that aren't self defence just because they are available and around. This supports all my theories on why gun ownership is bad. I guess I'm not against gun ownership in theory, but in practice it just seems to escalate situations and get people into more trouble than they were in. Although I would love for people to be able to own guns responsibly I just don't know how its possible. Maybe if we just gave Texas back to Mexico a lot of these problems would be solved.

More visitors

So I took a couple of days off last week to go up to Denver with Aaron to try and get some peace and quiet to write my conference paper. I got a good chunk of it done but still have to finish it and then polish it, which will take a bit of work. Anyway, when I got back to Echo I had some friends come in to town. Ly and Jeff rolled into town late Friday night and then the Breck girls, Alissa, Kirsten and Karen showed up Saturday afternoon. I had some trips during the day but we had a booze cruise through the Gorge lined up. We got two boats plus another one from RGR and a couple of guys in a mini-me as well as a hand full of kayakers. We got a bit of a late start trying to let the weather blow through but then we decided to get going regardless of the weather because it was getting a bit late and it looked like it might hang around for a bit. We cruised up to the put in with thunder and lightning all around and jumpeed in the boats and set off. It was awesome. We had a thunder cruise. The lightning was striking the gorge rim all around us as we cruised through. The rain was pounding down and hammering everything. We eddied out above sunshine and soaked up the ambiance. It was truely epic. The thunder cruise. After a good safety break we jumped back in the boats to get through the hard rapids before taking another break at corner pocket. More extensive safety checks were made (involving plenty of beer) were carried out. By this time it was getting a bit dark so we set off to finish the cruise. We finished off and got to the take out only to have Arthur realise that he forgot his car keys so a bit of shuttle shuffling happened, with a few food stops, before we made it back up to Echo. At this point pretty much everyone was feeling pretty done for so we all turned in.

Sunday the girls had to leave but the guys were staying around for another night and another cruise. I had to work again so they chilled out all day and when I got back we started sorting out a bighorn cruise. The plan was to take a 10ft raft and surf everything we could find. We had a good run down the river and I let Ly and Jeff try and guide a little, which they actually didn't suck at. Well except for Ly who did well at guiding but managed to fall out of the boat numerous times because he ... well he just fell out. Anyway, we got down to double dip and couldn't manage to get the boat in the hole so we gave up and went down to satans suckhole to try surfing that. We got in just fine and as we paddled hard into it the nose caught and we got whipped sideways and dumptrucked. We all got thrown out. I grabbed the stern line and pulled the boat out as I was flushed and Jeff got out fine as well but Ly was recirculated a good few times which made thigns fun for him. Anyway, we got regrouped and back in the boat and finished off the run. After taking care of the raft and everything we headed to town for some fried chicken but KFC was closed so we had to settle for Safeway. Once again by this point I was pretty much done so after checking out the bar for a few minutes I crashed out. The guys left in the morning and I was bcak to work.

It was good seeing everone from Breck again, especially Alissa who it looked like was going to be too busy to make it out to visit. We also had one of the most epic trips ever with the thunder cruise, which is probably the best gorge cruise I've had all summer. We did have a few pictures so check them out.

Echo Canyon Rafting

Gorge photos

So I managed to get the photos of us paddling through the gorge at sunshine falls. Its a sequence of four photos taken at the last drop of sunshine falls. Check them out.

Echo Canyon Rafting

Mini-me rafting

So a bunch of people have been trying to get into kayaking so Aaron and I have been doing a bit of teaching and some roll sessions. But going down the bighorn section in a kayak isn't as fun as it used to be. We know the river so well and its not too difficult anymore. So we changed it up and took out the mini-me. We put in a Harvey's, did a bit of a roll session and then set off down the river in the mini-me. It's basically an 8ft raft that you R2, one person on each side. It was a blast. The first was above bootlegers just set us off into giggles and it didn't stop for the reat of the river. We surfed every feature in the river and just got thrown around. We played in double dip for a good 15-20 minutes, and the only reason we left is becuase the guys kayaking were getting bored. But we endoed the boat and flipped it a whole bunch, and giggling the whole time. After double dip we surfed satans, magic wave and everything else. The mini-me made running the bighorn fun again. Our next mission is to take it down the gorge so keep posted.

Class IV kayaking

So I got ruined by the gorge the last time I was in there and I needed to get back in there and tackle it again. So a couple of days ago me and Aaron got back in the kayaks and had another run through, but this time we were going to scout the rapids. I was feeling pretty nervous about it all. I knew I could get through everything fine, especially after scouting the rapids but its like when you're a kid and you have to fetch a ball in the neighbors yard with a dog. If you go in there the first time and the dog bites you, you're going to be a bit wary if you have to go in a second time. So there we were, getting back in the gorge. We eddied out above sunshine and scouted it. It had changed quite a bit. The water level had dropped a lot and although the features weren't as big, the line was a lot more techincal. It worried me a bit more than last time. Well no time to hang around so we got back in our boats and set off. No problems. We both hit our lines and got through just fine. The commercial photographers even took our pictures so when I get my hands on them I'll post them for you. So sunshine falls was out of the way and we moved on through grateful dead and towards sledgehammer. This was where I swam and snapped the padedle last time. Again we got out and scouted the rapid. We got a good line picked out and got back in the boats. This time things went a whole lot better. I got my line and cleaned the whole section. Scouting did help a lot, and I saw all the crap I swam through last time. We continued down like that for a while. We pretty much ran it read and run after that except for scouting the other class IV rapids, wall slammer and boat eater. But again we had no problems and ran the rest of the river well. It felt really good to have run the whole thing clean and to have scouted and checked out the major rapids. The only disapointing aspect was that the water level was about half what it had been. I would really like a chance to take it on again when the water is back up but that won't happen until next year when I probably won't be here.

We hit another class IV section today as well. A bunch of us were low down on the standby list so we decided to take the day off and head up to Buena Vista and run the numbers. Aaron and I were in kayaks and Cale, Drew, Craig and Austin took a 10 foot adrenaline raft. We drove up, set up the shuttle at the BV play park and cruised to the put in. We all got ready and set off. Aaron ran lead and was just running the river read and run style but he had kayaked it before so he did have an idea of the lines. I followed him and the raft came last. We went through numbers 1 to 4 no problem just read and run with the raft bouncing off a pile of rocks but at number 5 we decided to get out and scout it. It's got the biggest move on it with a 6 or 7 foot drop so we had a look. After scouting it we jumped back in the boats and hit it. Everyone styled it pretty well and we did just fine. we carried on with the read and run to railroad bridge were we took a little break. After that came the number 7 which is also the miracle mile, a continuous section of class 3 or 4ish river. After this point it was getting a bit nicer and easier, class 2-3 stuff and a good float down to BV. By the end of it I was pretty tired because it was a long section of river to do but it was an awesome day. That coupled with the success on the gorge earlier really boosted my confidence in a kayak.

Moon tower party

So the other night we took some trucks and four-wheeled them up behind base to the top of the ridge where they have some radio towers, the moon towers. We had a good little party up there with a few brews and checked out the sunset. Everything was going just fine until the very end. We drove back down to base but to miss driving on the main road one of the trucks decided to try and find the back way into the camp area, which does exist. The problem was that the lead truck was going pretty fast and it was night time. He ended up hitting a massive boulder with his front right tyre and bouncing the truck over the boulder and beaching it. There were three people in the cab who got bounced around pretty well but also three people riding in the bed of the truck. Two of them got lauunched out of the truck about twenty feet while the third some how managed to stay in. Fortunately, a bashed up hip for one and a possibly broken hand for the other were the only reall injuries sustained. So the rim was bent with a flat tyre and the step bar was also bent where it was resting on the boulder. We went into full recovery mode and got the rescue party out. A high-lift jack got the truck up, we switched out the tyre for the spare and managed to drive the truck off the rock. Pretty good for a bunch of people who had been partying all night. After a more detailed inspection, the truck actually survived without too much wrong. Just a new rim and control arm was all that was really needed, about $200 bucks of work. Check out the pictures and see if you think that boulder would have caused more damage.

Echo Chillin

My first visitors

So I had my first visitors from Cal come out last weekend. Jaime, Russel, Sam and James came out for a couple days over the 4th of July weekend and we hit up the river. The first night we hit the Bighorn Sheep Canyon with a little booze cruise. We put in above three rocks and went down to old parkdale, the half day run. We loaded up the boat with beer and whiskey and went for our float. After making sure they could paddle, which was pretty pathetic at first I pretty much gave them a break and deadsticked most of the river so they could concentrate on the important stuff, drinking. We had a good run down and a good few beers. Jaime had the Jim Beam kicking and I certainly indulged. We eddies out at double dip and once we set off agian I hardly remember guiding the river. We had people riding the bull and taking pictures. I think I kicked them out of the boat inthe last rapid and made them swim but I really can't remember. We managed to make it back to base in good shape and supposedly I even made it to the bar for about 5 minutes before heading to bed.

The next day I guided a morning trip before trying to hook up a gorge trip for the boys. I was having a difficult time getting a gorge guide to go. Everyone said maybe and wouldn't commit. Finaly I talked to Dolan and he hooked me up with Taylor who wasn't a gorge guide yet but is working towards it this year. So we were all set. We had a guide so got the boat loaded, ran a shuttle car into town and got on the river. We were a bit later than usual but in good time. We had some supplies again in the form of beer and whiskey once again but I was certainly going to pace myself a bit. We had an awesome trip and Taylor styled all the lines. We chilled out in corner pocket for a while before ending up the cruise. Right at the end in town I was sitting on the back of the boat with a beer, not really locked in and we hit the smallest little ripple in the river but it was enough. I had the most slow motion fall ever. I just slowly, slowly, slowly fell out of the boat, head over heels, but I saved the beer. I swam back to the boat got in and we were pretty much at the take out. A quick Wendy's stop in town and we headed back to base and had a beer in the bar before hitting the sack. The boys had to leave in the morning so that was the end of their visit and a good time was had by all. So for all of you who haven't got out here, get going. They did send me some pictures but I haven't downloaded them yet but when I do I'll post them.

Fight Night

So I haven't updated my blog for a while but I'll put up a few posts to catch up.

So July 4th was a good day. We had a company party which involved a keg and then the main event, Fight Night. This had been talked up for a long time. What happens is everyone drinks a bunch of beer and them we set up the boats in an octagon and have boxing matches. I put up a bunch of pictures so check them out. There are a bunch of better ones that other people took but I still have to get them.

After the fighting was all done the party moved to the campfire. The fire started small but it just kept getting bigger. People were throwing in everything they could find. first it was all the wood around the fire, then it was all the logs we used as benches, and then the senior guides raided the bunkhouse of all the couches, chairs and mattresses. Thats when the fire got really big. We stayed up till the early hours drinking whiskey and arguing about the rookie verses senior guide hiearchy and who should burn what. Anyway, it was all good fun but I don't think the mannagement were too happy about the size of the fire when they saw the evidence in the morning.

Echo Chillin