Rafting and Kayaking the American River

Last Friday morning I crawled out of bed half an hour early and ransacked my apartment; throwing my sleeping bag and pad, helmet and wetsuit, clothing, food, water, and snacks into a big pile in the center of my living room. It took a couple trips to get everything and my kayak carried down to my truck.

After work I drove straight out - heading up highway 1 and over to 5, arriving in Sacramento and Bojana's house at around 8pm. She was working in the yard when I drove up and we chatted about her new wood floor until Ricky got back from his trip to the store.

Later that evening Jenny and Jeremy arrived with a marinated steak and we put together a quick dinner with mushrooms, asparagus, salad, bread and cheese.

I spent the night in their cluttered guest bedroom on a futon surrounded by the furniture and debris relocated from the front room and I woke early to sort through my jumbled gear and clothing - deciding what would be necessary for rafting, clubbing, and camping out at the cabin in Auburn.

Jenny arrived in the morning with a carrot cake and potato salad for a potluck we planned on attending that evening. She had stayed up till two in the morning preparing food and spent some time stretching her sore back on the concrete sidewalk next to the car. Chris and Lisa arrived soon after along with Victor, Andrew, and Vong - who drove up on his motorcycle from San Fransisco.

The plan was for Brian and Hope to meet us in the morning and help haul gear and people but they called shortly after nine apologetic they had forgotten their promise and were already on the highway. Ricky and I strapped my kayak to the rack on the roof of his car and we loaded his oversized 266 gallon ice chest into the back. The rest of the clothing, food, and gear was distributed between the two vehicles and crammed into every remaining crook and cranny. We drove the heavily loaded cars up the freeway to Auburn to meet the rest of the group in the safeway parking lot.

Jennifer and Shanon and David and Belinda where waiting when we arrived and we spent some time redistributing equipment and organizing the put-in and take-out vehicles. Shanon's truck was large enough to haul the rafts and was elected as the take-out vehicle.

On the drive up to the put-in area of the North Fork of the American river, I spotted a velociraptor in the heavy undergrowth lining the steep road down to the river. No-one else in the car saw it and we didn't see any more on the way down the road.

There was much worrying and discussion of river flow rates prior to getting on the river. The flows in the middle and south forks of the river are controlled by water released from a dam upstream and are mostly guaranteed as long as you're rafting within a certain timeframe. The water in the north fork is controlled by snow melt from the day before and the flow is largely determined by how warm it was the previous day. The day before had been pretty warm and as we were preparing to get on the river,the rate of flow was climbing vertically.

We've had difficulty organizing large groups in the past. It's a lot of work sorting through pfds, helmets, wetsuits, clothing, applying sunscreen, and filling the rafts. But this time we were pretty much on time - a first for these types of trips. After the safety talk (mainly for Jennifer who hadn't rafted before) we pushed out onto the water. The north fork of the American river is narrow and technical with runs requiring fine control to avoid getting stuck on rocks. Ricky was the captain of our boat and David of the other.

Rafting is in general, a pretty forgiving sport. I did stomp down the high side of raft at one point but I suspect we would have peeled off even without my incredibly heroic, self-sacrificing, handsome, and not to mention lightning-quick reflexes.

In an narrow chute we lost coordination when Ricky changed his mind a couple times, shouting out for the raft to pivot left then right, then left again. It was with flailing paddles and some chaos we squeezed through the gap sideways, bending the raft in half. Jenny screamed out, "I don't want to be the meat in this taco!"

The rest of the river run went smoothly until we reached the largest (class 4+) rapids we would navigate that day, a series of rapids called 'the staircase'. There were several professionally run rafts on the river with us and they all pulled their boats into the eddies along the edge of the river above first drop and scrambled up the bank to scout out the situation. We watched a few rafts start down the rapids and then paddled out into the flow with an audience of rafters wearing lifevests watching from rocks along the edge of the rushing water.

We handled the first drop fine but the second, larger drop squeezed the river into a narrow channel between two large rocks. Partially blocking the flow of water through this chute was a submerged boulder which split the water into two with a thin sheet running over the surface.

We botched the approach and got caught on this rock while water poured over the boat. The raft was caught suspended on it's side vertically. From my perch straddling the high side I looked down and watched Vong fall in - in slow motion as these things normally go - swallowed by the whitewater and swept downstream. Jennifer was in front of me in the raft and I caught her by the shoulder of her lifevest when she started to fall in herself. The raft eventually slid off the rock and we pulled over to pick up Vong.

We waited to watch David's raft attempt the same rapid but they handled it without a problem. I felt a little sorry for them, rating is fun when things go wrong.

As we floated away we could see the professional rafting companies pulling out ropes - getting setup to portage the rapid.

The river take-out was up a steep hill and across an old steel suspension bridge. While we packed up our equipment the other raft was slow to make it into an eddy and suffered an amusing tragedy when several people jumped out to try to hold the boat against the flow and were swept downstream. We hauled the boat up the steep slope on our shoulders and heads while it dripped cold water down our backs.

At Shanon's truck, we opened the beers and deflated the rafts in the back. Backing the giant truck out of the tight parking space required a 10 point turn.

The take out is at the bottom of a 4 mile rough dirt road and we were unwilling to hike up the hill on foot and the drivers didn't want to have to drive back down so we decided to all ride up together.

Somehow we managed to cram 16 people, two 8 man rafts and all our gear; paddles, wetsuits, life vests and helmets and two ice chests into a single truck and creep up the dirt road. Along the way Victor managed to open some of the warm and shaken beers by pressing the caps against the inside edge of the truck bed only to have the bottle explode in a shower of foam in his hands, soaking himself and everyone nearby. Ricky asked for a beer and was handed a frothy wet bottle with about an inch of liquid at the bottom.

At the end of the dirt road the non-drivers were dropped off and we spent 40 minutes sunbathing in someone's gravel driveway.

The cars returned after 40min shuttle from the put in point and we drove back to the cabin to change and clean up before heading out to the potluck. The potluck was held at a local rafting store and was to celebrate their 25th year in business. They advertised an open barbque and invited people to bring side dishes. When we arrived with our 266 gallon icechest of beers and Jenny's potato salad we nearly doubled the number of people already in attendance. The owner came out later and in a nice way asked the group, "who are you?".

After the surprisingly excellent dinner, we all crowded into the store and sat on the rough carpet floor in a cleared space in front of a projector screen. The projector sat on a short table connected to a dvd player and we watched a pre-screening version of a new kayak video brought in by one of the stars of the movie.

The movie was interesting. Kayaking as it exists now, is a relatively new 'sport' and I get the sense these guys don't really know how far they can push their luck.

Though there were videos of kayakers going through the largest rapids I've ever seen - towering rivers of foam 10-20 feet high, and shots of people surfing huge waves formed by water falling into large holes in the river, the majority of the movie was spent showing kayakers going over waterfalls. We watched the record height drop - a 107 foot fall into a foam and mist obscured surface. The drops were very impressive but near the end I began to think if you stuck anyone in a boat and pushed them off one of these waterfalls they would fare as well as the professionals. In most cases the boat and the water seemed to work together to cushion the fall and push you out of the wash at the bottom. The movie did show one kayaker who was pulled back under and behind the waterfall. He was held under for half a minute until his equipment pulled him to the surface.

After the movie we mingled a bit and fell into conversation with a very hyper girl from Reno. She enthusiastically described her reaction to the 4.0 earthquake that struck her area at 1am that morning - demonstrating how she ran over to brace herself in a doorway. She excitedly claimed she 'only pooped her pants a little.' and when this got a reaction spent the next 10 minutes expanding on the subject. "How many of you haven't pooped a peanut in times of stress?" she asked. I was impressed with her ability to stay on the subject so long but we eventually excused ourselves - mentioning we were heading to the coloma club.

The coloma club is a washed out wooden building fronting the main road standing alone in a rough gravel parking lot. It caters to a weird mixture of bleached and stoned river rats, creaking leather and tarnished chrome studded bikers, and cowboys in tight jeans and ridiculous hats. We spent a few minutes in the parking lot eating the carrot cake Jenny had prepared for Bojana's birthday/marriage. The decorative candles dripped all over the frosting before we could get them all lit.

Saturday at the coloma club is karaoke night. The music was spun by a greasy overweight dj with a large grey tape deck and a box of tapes he would occasionally paw through before selecting one and feeding it into the machine. He spent an unusual amount of time hogging the karaoke machine - singing unimpressive renditions of ancient rock hits. On a short bar nearby were two laminated notebooks with several hundred songs organized by name. Most of the selection was uninteresting - consisting primarily of hits from the sixties and seventies.

An amorphous giggling mass of asian girls were first to approach the mic and perform a barely audible rendition of that song from Mulon Rouge. I think they purposely turn down the gain on the mics to help protect the singers from embarrassing themselves. Soon there was a continuous stream of singers approaching the dj with new requests. We got to hear 'rock lobster' performed twice.

At one point an overweight woman with a gravitas that belied her girth approached the mic and sang a passable rendition of some song I didn't recognize. I was struck by her seriousness - karaoke is normally enjoyed by giggling friends - she appeared to have no friends and she wasn't singing for someone in the crowd, she stood massive and motionless as she sang.

Jenny was excited about karaoke but slow in deciding what she wanted to perform. Eventually she went up with Belinda and they performed an incredibly enthusiastic rendition of joplins 'take another little piece of my heart'.

The peanut pooping girl arrived shortly after we did and immediately took over the dance floor. Her frenetic energy and enthusiasm for everything made me wonder if this was what it's like to be on meth. Apart from bouncing and grinding against any man, woman, or piece of furniture near the dance floor she did high leg stretches and some sort of dance move which consisted of bending over and grabbing her ankles in a short skirt. Later in the evening I heard she injured her wrist when she decided to 'stage dive' from the four inch high raised platform containing all the audio equipment and the audience failed to catch her. I missed this particular lapse in judgement because Jenny decided at that moment to raise the bar set by our hyper peanut pooper and tear her skirt completely off in the process of striking a disco pose. She had her swimsuit on underneath but the display was surprising and hilarious and I laughed myself hoarse.

Brian also seemed to be having a good time. He was enthusiastic about drinking heavily on such a truly momentous occasion as someone else's birthday. He explained this to Bojana, "It's your birthday, you're expected to puke".

That evening after driving back to the cabin he rolled over in the back of his SUV where he was sleeping and emptied his stomach on grass outside.

The next morning we spent some time packing our sleeping gear and getting the kayaks and raft ready for the river. A few people were hung over from the nights festivities and my voice was dry from what I suspect was laughter at Jenny's travolta pose.

Most of party left in the morning after breakfast and only six remained to run the south fork of river. David and Belinda manned the oar frame, Ricky and I were in our kayaks, and Bojana and Jenny brought out inflatable kayaks - long skinny and unsinkable craft designed to be sat on top of with your legs stretched out flat.

I was mildly nervous about kayaking. It was my second time on the river and I am still very much a novice. A white water kayak is a hard plastic boat that would sink if it filled with water. The kayaker wears a rubber 'skirt' that fits snugly around his waist and stretches out to fit into a lip that runs around the edge of the opening where he sits. The skirt fits very tightly and I needed some help getting it stretched around the edge. At the front of the skirt is a handle that can be used to peel it off the boat. Without this handle the entire thing would be a death trap - it would be very difficult if not impossible to get out of the kayak if the handle wasn't there and you were stuck upside down. You sit in the kayak with your legs slightly bent and your thighs locked under molded plastic supports.

White water kayaks are designed to be unstable. The most stable position for a kayak with a person sitting in it is upside down. It's for this reason helmets are a necessity - slamming your head into rocks is very common for kayakers and every experienced rafter knows many people who would be dead but for this safety gear. Ricky suffered a bad concussion last season while kayaking and says he's not sure he's fully recovered.

There is a special twisting motion you can do to roll a kayak upright when you're flipped over. It takes practice and unlike riding a bike it seems to work for me only 80% of the time. Every time I roll over I'm not completely sure I'll be able to return upright. To escape from a rolled kayak you have to pull the handle on your skirt and pull out before you run out of air. Then you get to drag your extremely heavy water filled kayak to the rocky and inaccessible shore holding your paddle in the other hand.

The first time I ran the river I swam every rapid along the way. About 2/3 of the way through I was so exhausted from dragging my kayak to shore, dumping it's accumulated water, and restretching the insanely tight skirt around the edge I wanted to quit and I would have hiked out if I had the choice. I wasn't looking forward to repeat this experience.

Fortunately, the water was running low and either experienced by last years torture, inspired by the video we watched the night before, or because I was thinking about the advice I was given by a kindly stranger at the club to lean forward, I did much better. Leaning forward is an unnatural position when sitting in the kayak and it makes everything more unstable but I think it also keeps the back from getting caught in currents. Another thing I picked up was a technique of frantically windmilling my arms, slapping the water repeatedly while going through the largest rapids. I'm sure a camera mounted at the front of my kayak would show my grimace of fear and hysteric arm motions but Ricky and Jenny said I looked like I was handling things smoothly.

About halfway through the river we pulled over just past a particularly large standing wave in the rapids and took out a playboat. A playboat is a short kayak designed especially for maneuverability and surfing large standing waves. David spent some time playing in the water and I, smug in my experience of one combat roll seriously considered checking it out for myself. I tried to cram my legs into the boat but it was a bit too small. We had to bend the plastic thigh supports so I could sit down but the edge still dug into my thighs. I was a little concerned - if it took several people to get me into the boat, how difficult will it be to escape when I find myself floating downstream upside down?

The second big rapid after the class 3 'meatgrinder' is another class 3 at a bend in a river where the water tends to push boats up against the rocks along the side. I managed, somehow, to frantically slap my way upright through this and stopped afterwards to watch Bojana and Jenny's progress. Though I didn't see it at first, Ricky started yelling at David that we had a swimmer in the water. Bojana cruised through the rapid smoothly - completely unaware that behind her Jenny had fallen out at the beginning and had to swim the whole thing. It was frustrating to know I was too unskilled to help. Jenny was ok, though she was a little freaked out by the swim.

The last rapid of the southfork is known as the troublemaker. It is class 3/4 rapid depending on the flow and is notorious for knocking kayaks down. The last time I ran through it in a kayak I flipped immediately and spent what felt like several minutes hugging my knees while the water foamed and boiled in my ears. We weren't sure what it would be like with the water this low.

There is an eddy at the top of the rapid that can be used to stop and line up your boat before heading down the rest of the rapid. To get to this sanctuary you need to punch through one wave and dodge another larger lateral one. I was knocked sideways by the first and pushed over by the second. Underwater, I hugged my knees for as long as I could hold my breath while I listened to the bubbles in my ears. My plan, crafted without much forethought, was to wait upside down until the kayak was washed out of the worst portions of the rapid and then in the calmer waters I would attempt my 80% successful roll. After waiting for a bit I started to run out of air and the roar in my ears hadn't changed so I decided to pull out. This was, it turns out, a bad idea.

Apparently the sound of water in my ears hadn't changed because I was stuck upside down in a backwash, trapped at the top of the rapids. When I surfaced after pulling out, I found myself swimming through the middle of the rapid in low water. The current dragged me over several falls bruising my thighs, knees and ankles on the shallow rocks.

After swimming to shore below we waited for Bojana and Jenny to follow. Jenny also got caught sideways in the backwash and decided to jump ship. This was probably not the best idea and she also swam the falls though I suspect she did a little better than I did because she wasn't trying to hold onto a heavy kayak.

Bojana was last and we waited several minutes for her to appear. Just as I was beginning to get concerned she was trapped under a rock higher up she cruised down the rapid effortlessly and completely oblivious to the drama Jenny and I had just gone through.

We took the boats out at a park surrounded by playing children and dogs swimming and fetching sticks. A russian family crammed around a picnic table talked loudly to one another and stared at us as we dragged the boats up the shore and onto the grass next to the parking lot. While trying to lift one of the inflatable kayaks by the seat straps, the buckle came undone and the nylon strap crushed my pinky. That evening my finger swelled up and turned a dark shade of pink and purple.

Though I had put on sun screen earlier, it had washed off in the water and the backs of my hands were burned. I had been wearing a full piece wetsuit and wasn't burned past the wrists - it looked like I was wearing gloves.

After getting off the river we drove into Auburn and had pizza and a second cake for Bojana's birthday. We didn't get back to Sacramento until 9:30 that evening and I didn't get back to Monterey until 1am on Monday. Though near the end of the drive I was beginning to get sleepy the main fatigue I felt was physical. Coming home after an eventful weekend with a crushed finger, sunburned hands, muscle aches, and bruised shins is a wonderful feeling and something I don't get enough of these days.

Though I don't have any pictures on the river from this particular trip (I'm thinking of investing in a waterproof camera to fix this for the future) I did pick up the pictures taken during the tuolumne river trip. My first thought was stick these at the bottom of this text but after going through them I realized they tell a story of their own. I have borrowed a few of these pictures to illustrate the text above and you can check out the full set of pictures from this trip here