Flipping for Certification

Thursday morning, June 26th. Riggins Idaho. 63* Raining.

I woke up Thursday morning in an anticipation similar to that of Christmas morning, The 4th of July, or Halloween. You know, that 'I can't sleep because I'm too excited' kind of feeling, a sort of electricity in the air and a tingle on my neck. It was the day of my certification run down the Salmon River. I had already gone through training, logged all the required training trips and miles, and it came down to this run for my boss to sign me off and submit my info to the Idaho Outfitters and Guide Licensing Board, the governing body for guides of almost all sports in Idaho.

The morning prep went by pretty normally, gear up the boat, check my frame, oar towers, oar length, check to make sure I have everything, check again. Looks good. I waited around for the boss and he showed up around ten and the rest of my coworkers and I got the boat down to the water. After a shaky safety speech due to lack of practice we loaded up and got out onto the water. The first five minutes went by as usual.

Enter Timezone Rapid. Flow is at 22,400.

My planned setup for timezone went like this, enter right, ride down the wave train, skirt to the left in front of the huge hole in the middle of the river, ride out the left side wave train, skirt the eddy line, continue downriver. Pretty simple as long as you keep your wits, stick to your plan, and set up properly with enough lead in.

What happened went very much differently. I navigated to the right side wave train as expected, located the hole in the river I wanted to avoid and began my ferry move to cross upstream of the hole to drop down the left side wave train. Underestimation of current and lack of strong forward row stroke resulted in my hammering at an 11 o'clock angle straight into the hole, a 2-3 foot drop of water flow into a 4-6 foot tall wall of back cycling whitewater froth where a boat with no paddle crew has no business being. First hit rotated the boat to an 8 o'clock angle and the lifted the right side of the boat near vertical. I lost the both Erik and Dylan out of the front of the boat, and when I looked down to assess my oar placement and couldn't see the floor of my boat, or for that matter anything below mid chest. I was standing in pure whitewater froth. Second hit into the wall of water threw me and the rear of the boat into the water and flipped the boat on top of us. When I made my first attempt to surface I was blocked, couldn't reach air. Second attempt I surfaced inside of the capsized raft, took a good breath and pushed myself out from underneath the thwart to the downstream side of the boat. When I came back up to the surface I was downstream, in the left side wave train, Dylan and Erik had both already made it onto the bottom of the boat, Erik pulled me on top and Dylan and I used his flip line to right the boat. When I came back up to the surface I was still on the downstream side of the boat and just out of arms reach of the raft. After one wave I was about 5 feet away. Another two waves and I was about 50 feet away. Swept far downstream of the boat while the rest of my crew, which included my boss was getting back into the boat. Not a glorious moment for me, especially because we were all supposed to be treating this like a customer trip. Uh oh. Just after timezone bridge there are a few very strong eddies, the kind that pull you underwater, even when you have a life jacket on, and pop you back up 100 feet downstream. Not the kind of situation I wanted to be in. Luckily after a good minute or two the boat finally reached me and I was able to get back behind the oars, a little rattled but still feeling good about it.

The rest of the day went pretty normal for the runs remaining. I did have my confidence rattled a bit and any ego I may have built up during training was gone. Back in the office, my boss, who I had just vaulted into the river by flipping my boat wanted to talk to me. Oh Boy, all I could think was how I'm not going to be certified after that little stunt. We chatted for a bit and he asked what I felt I had done wrong to put me into flipping. I explained what I thought I had done wrong and why, he concurred with me and then told me that he was going to certify me because as he said "I know you weren't going big for ego, you were going big because you made a mistake and you had to, otherwise your boating is great." Music to my ears, I was thrilled. Not only did I flip the boss into the river, but he was still going to certify me. Not a bad day at all. Looking forward to when I can get out onto the water again.