Ladle

 

We had floated the Colorado River.  We had gotten married.  Then we got an invite to float the Selway.  Once again, Scott was thrilled.  The Selway was his favorite place on the planet, and he had never floated the river before.  Like the Colorado, it is ridiculously hard to secure a Selway River permit.  One of our friends got one, and we got an invite.  

The Selway River is about as opposite from the Colorado River as two rivers can be.  The Selway River is narrow, rocky, and technical.  The Colorado is massive, wide open, and has giant rapids.  The Selway Canyon is heavy forest, with cedars, pines, and hemlock.  The Grand Canyon is desert, with towering cliffs on either side of the river reaching hundreds of feet into the air.  These two trips were like Bali and Montana: polar opposites.  

The first few days of the trip were amazing.  I loved floating through the forest.  The Selway has always felt like a magical place to me, dark, secretive, quiet, and observant.  Effort and time are required to see the true beauty of the Selway, but once it opens up its secrets, the magic is revealed.

Halfway through the trip, Moose Creek joins the Selway, and doubles the river in size.  “Moose Juice,” it has been coined by boaters.  The section of river below Moose Creek is wild, with big, technical rapids that come in fast succession.  Making a mistake in any one of the rapids below Moose could be disastrous, since there is little time to recover.

The morning had come for us to run the Moose Juice.  There were a handful of rafts on the trip, along with one kayaker.  We grouped together as we passed Moose Creek, talking about whether or not to pull over and scout Ladle, a class IV+.  First we had to run Double Drop, another class IV+.  

As we rounded a corner, the lead boat hit a rock in the middle of the river above Double Drop, got momentarily pinned, and then dumped both its passengers into the river.  Scott and I were behind the now pilotless raft, and Scott immediately started chasing it as it went through Double Drop on its own.  Both swimmers swam the rapid, then got to shore on river left.  Scott safely navigated Double Drop, then rowed up against the manless raft and pushed it to shore where its captain and passenger waited.

The rest of the group were still behind us, and the current was swift.  Scott rowed hard to stay in the eddy, making sure the guys got back in their raft.  Once they were safely aboard, Scott let the current take us out into the river.  Around the corner we went, on river left, thinking we had a bit of time to prepare for Ladle.

We were wrong.

Ladle was RIGHT THERE.  The run through Ladle is on river right.  At the river level that we were running, a giant hole forms in the middle of the rapid on river left, with rocks blocking any chance of maneuvering around it.  We, unfortunately, were on river left, with no time or room to try and get over to the right.  We were heading directly into the hole.

“Hold on,” Scott said as he pushed and pushed on the oars, trying to get as much momentum as possible in hopes of flushing us through the hole.  As we dropped into the hole, Scott buried the oars in the water.  The river grabbed the oars and pushed us up, up, up the face of the wave.

We’re gonna make it, I thought.

We were just about the crest the wave and flush out of the hole.  Then we started sliding backward.  And then we turned sideways.  Stuck in a hole is bad.  Stuck sideways in a hole nearly always results in a flip.  One of the oars popped out of the oarlock as Scott lunged to the high side of the boat to keep us from flipping.  

“What do I do?” I shouted at him, the roar of the river nearly drowning my words.

“Stay where you are!” Scott yelled back, as he jumped around the boat like a panther, high-siding on whichever tube needed it.

The river surged and screamed, teasing us, pushing us up to the crest of the wave, then pulling us down into the hole.  We turned sideways, then backward, then sideways again, then forward.  My skin tingled, every nerve in my body tuned in to the movement of the boat.  I was sure I would start to feel one of the tubes lift.  I was sure we were going to flip.  I stayed in my seat and leaned this way and that, as Scott continued his panther moves around the boat.

We bounced around in that hole for what felt like minutes.  We watched as one raft, then two rafts, then three rafts, then the kayaker, all floated by on the right side of the river, helpless to do anything but watch us bounce.  The seconds dragged on, and I started to wonder if the river would ever let us go.  

It kept taunting us, pushing us up and pulling us in, over and over, turning us this way and that, and all we could do was ride it out.  

And then.  With no warning.  No fanfare.  No final soaking.  No giant wave or tube-lifting scare.  We were out.  The river let us go.  It let us go so easily that I didn’t realize we were out.  We were being bounced and thrashed and then we weren’t.

Scott immediately grabbed one of his oars that was dangling by its safety strap and started working to get it back in the oarlock.  I did the same with the oar on the other side.  We had several more rapids to run, and they were coming at us quickly.

We got the oars situated and both settled back in our seats.  Scott took a few oar strokes to get us where we needed to be, then turned and looked over his shoulder at me.

A smile covered his face, his cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were dancing.  He laughed.  “Wow.”  He said.  “That was fun!”