Hell Week, or How I Learned to be a Raft Guide

Days on Water: 6

River Miles Covered: 372

On Sunday afternoon I headed south out of Moscow towards my summer home and internship in Riggins Idaho. Riggins, a town with a bustling population of 419 residents, a town that I've eaten in, stopped at the gas station in, and recreated out of for over 15 years of my life, is actually robust with a rich cultural history of White settlement, Native Americans, and Chinese immigration, all with the common theme of making something for themselves out of the resources available in this crevice of Idaho. I too have been seeking to make something for myself here this summer, for many of  the original settlers it was cattle, lumber, or gold. I turned my ventures toward a different resource, the Salmon River. I had high hopes for my internship, and when I learned that I would be Raft Guiding for a huge part of it I was absolutely ecstatic that I would be interning for my dream job, or so I thought.

The Bunk House and Boat Storage, IE My Digs for the summer

I arrived Sunday night and we had a brief introduction to everybody and my boss went over the plan for the week. Six days in a row, 62 miles of river each day. We get food and lodging for the week, one of the three guides gets dropped at the end of the week (Thank god I'm an intern and don't have to worry about that). Oh, and we have to be up and ready to go at  five am Monday morning. An extremely short time later all of the bunk house alarms began ringing at the o'dark thirty hour of  four am. We groggily complained and donned our wetsuits and splash gear before heading up to the main house to cook breakfast. After a light pancake and egg breakfast washed down with coffee we headed back down to the boat house and geared up the boats, loaded them on the trailers and set off for the Vinegar Creek put in. We launched around nine am. We watched the guide instructors row through class one and two whitewater with ease while we rowed. We were instructed to pay attention to the moves they were making and the way the water flowed - essentially White Water Reading 101. We continued downstream past the put in at spring bar into our second major rapid of the day, Ruby. At this point I was stilled excited for the job, even though I was a little worn out. We powered down through Ruby and had a crazy time riding the wave train in there. Next came Lake Creek with similar results as Ruby. The rest of the section to Epley's was relatively calm with a few rapids here and there and went by quickly. We lunched - cold cuts and white bread. Then were back on the river for the afternoon leg which took us all the way down to our take out at Hammer Creek. We loaded all of our gear back into the van and returned back to cook dinner and prep the boats a bit for the next day. We had a wrap up meeting to go over the day and we were informed to be ready to go by 6:15am, oh the sweet relief of an extra hour to sleep. Tired, a little sun burnt, and mentally taxed, I went to bed. Day one was over. 

Tuesday ran the same without any major events and we all had a bit more time on the sticks (that's just river jargon for oars). Somehow I felt unhappy and called my dad, we talked for a while and I seriously doubted that what I had thought was my dream job was what I actually wanted to do. I wasn't happy and I felt extremely overwhelmed. The work wasn't overly difficult, but something was amiss and I couldn't peg what it was. My dad convinced me to try and see it through. Wednesday morning came in a very tired unhappy manner, especially having to don a cold and wet wetsuit at  six am. We ended up dump trucking (losing everyone in the boat) in House Rock that morning so I went for a nice cold swim in 50 degree water. Do I still really want to be a raft guide? Yeah, no, yeah I can do this. We made it to lunch a little after it started to sprinkle on us. After lunch we headed down river. My sunglasses broke, damn. It began to rain, and in classic late spring weather in Idaho, it rained big heavy cold wet droplets that came down near horizontally from the massive wind gusts that we had going. All I could think of was how miserable it was, well that and that scene from Forest Gump when he talks about all the kinds of rain, specifically rain that even comes straight up. I finished out that day miserably cold and wet but somehow I had laughed at it all afternoon. I was halfway through what I had christened as 'Hell Week' and felt that I might be able to get through it to the end. We had covered 186 miles of river in three days.While the other trainees complained of being sore and tired, I was just exhausted, both mentally and physically and questioned if I had been rowing enough, or if I had just been eating right to stave off the muscle fatigue.

The view from the lawn between the Bunk House and Main House

Thursday went by with a lot more rowing for each individual, the trainers began critiquing us less and allowing us more freedom. Friday was much of the same with even more freedom and less critiques.The only addition we had was the fourteen foot boat was brought out with us and one sixteener. We alternated two people in the fourteener and everyone else in the sixteener, we practiced picking lines, reading water, and oar skills. We did our self rescue and flip training, both of which I was successful with, and had really wished I had gotten a photo of my rescue flip as I was doing it - everyone said it looked good. I still questioned if this is what I wanted to do - only 85 more days I thought. Saturday came around, the same 6am wake up, the same cold and damp wetsuit, the same pancake and egg breakfast, the same car ride and the same river float. I had a smile on my face, somewhat forced, somewhat genuine. I was a mixed bag of emotion and feelings. We put in and rowed the stretch almost exclusively ourselves, our trainer didn't touch the oars in either boat until just before our takeout that afternoon, and it was due to a combination of boredom and wanting to show us a near oar stroke. We took out of the river, came home to cook dinner and got stuck into a meeting about the fate of the guides. Our boss sat both of the interns down (myself and another) along with the three guides in training and asked them if they had given any thought to his offer from that morning (there are only two open guide positions, someone has to be cut - unless they all agree to take cut wages and less trips so they can equal the budget out for three guides). All the guides chose the first option, they only want two, more money for them, more trips. In my opinion, a fair call, especially when summer jobs don't tend to make great money anyway. Our boss said he would let them know sometime the next night. He also ran us through our orientation meeting, don't do this, don't do that, do all this this way, etc. The same old basic job intro rules to keep employees in line. We got dinner in our bellies and headed south to the lodge to meet up with the three lodge interns there to enjoy a fire and some cold ones. We had a good time, swapped some stories, had Sarah spin fire and snagged a video of Cam doing it as well (Cam I found out is actually one of my fraternity brothers from North Carolina - small world).

This morning we all tried to sleep in, which I felt like I had accomplished and guessed that it was around 11:30 when I got up. Nope. It was just before nine am. What has getting up at five or six everyday done to me!? All of the male guides and myself bummed around the bunk house for an hour or two then decided to go get breakfast at Summerville's. As I pulled up I got a phone call from dad and he gave me the usual 'what are you doing' 'what are you up to' questions in the weird way that let me know he was trying to plan something or was up to something. Sure enough as I go to back out of the parking lot my dad comes up the to the truck, we exchange a few quick words and head down to breakfast at Cattleman's down the street. We make some conversation and my dad buys all of us breakfast. We head back to the bunkhouse and my dad follows. We hangout for a bit and I show him some video footage of the runs I made throughout the week. He seems happy with me and what I'm doing, I'm  happy he made the trip up to surprise me. We talked for a bit about life and how everything is going and our plans for the summer to discover a time we can meet up again. He takes me out to his truck to say goodbye, and gives me a new Mountainsmith backpack and a cool polarized pair of SunCloud sunglasses. Score. The new backpack means goodbye to my lucky pack, which I've had for over a decade and is held together by dirt, mud, age, and countless zip ties, carabiners, and knots. Such is the way though, maybe this new one can become my lucky pack and I wont break these sunglasses.

As my Sunday comes to an end I still have to go to another orientation meeting for the interns down at the lodge and get some dinner. I feel a lot better about my choice to be here and don't seem to have anymore second thoughts. I like the people I work with and believe that come the end of summer I'll look back on it with fond memories of laughter, joy, excitement, dedication, adventure, and humility. I look forward to whats coming and hope that this internship turns into what I really want it to be.