Friday:
I met up with the Keener group on friday morning and told them I would be meeting them later on to take pictures of their weekly competition. The weather was very grey and humid which would make the photo job really hard.
I had a bit of running around to before putting finally putting on the river at 10:30. I booted it down to the gauge and it was +10. I stopped to check out Little Trickle and decided there was enough flow and ran it clean. I made it to the top wave at Upper No Name is just under an hour from the top which is a record for me.
I tried to drop in on the wave for a side surf but was windowshaded pretty quickly due to too much upstream lean.
The Keeners were doing some practice rides and getting ready for the competition. It took a while to getting the shutter speed, etc right as it was getting darker with the impending storm. I managed to get quite a few great shots of the kids paddling throughout the day.
After lunch and the final runoff we headed down river. I had a swim in Vampire when I was making my run. Little Dane Jackson was bopping around on the second wave and I ended up having to go right into Vampire to avoid running him over.
Other than the couple of swims it was a great day on the river. By the end of the day the level was down to 8.25.
Saturday:
Pat and I put on the river around 08:30 and headed of to Little Trickle. The was even less water at around 9.25 on the gauge. I ran it first clean and then Pat did it.
After that we spent at least an hour by ourselve at Angels Kiss before the first raft showed up. I managed to get some epic side surfs on Angels Kiss.
We ran into Jim and the Esprit gang and headed over to Butterfly. I managed a really good side and back surf at Center Butterfly and a bit of surfing on Leftside Butterfly. After that we headed down river and had lunch with Esprit at their spot on Lower No Name (thanks Jim).
Pat and I were off the river by 1pm. We managed to get more surfing in by paddling early than what would have taken the whole weekend with other paddlers there.
After that I spent some time visiting friends and actually ended up showing one of them how to install a new toilet step-by-step.
After that it was an evening of socializing with other friends at WT.
Sunday:
Met up with some of the CDB crew for another run down the middle. The level was 8.5. I was still able to run Little Trickle clean. I managed to get some side surfing in on Angels Kiss plus a few out of boat experiences.
After that it was back surfing up a storm at the top river left hole of Leftside Butterfly. I had a couple of swims but did not care as the surfing was epic until my last ride. That is when my foam saddle ripped out of my boat.
I am now thinking OH crap I still have Upper / Lower No Name to run old school. I deflated my front airbag and shove the saddle under it re-inflating the bag to hold it in. I headed down river with Eric and he helped me carry my boat around Garvins.
Upper no Name was an easy run. I took the left catch eddy, reun the ledge catch eddy, move right and run the rest of the center line after passing the line accross from Vampire.
It was a farely dry run and I didn't swim so i was happy with that.
