Life on the Mississippi

Sometime last week I met the Sartoris and Joey Heger out at the Chain of Rocks for a surf session.  I hadn't been in my boat since those few October days in West-by-God, so it was good to know the thing still floats.  The Saint Louis gage read 6.5', but I'm still mystified by what we found out there.  Blockhouse was beefy, rookies was dynamic, and Cobblestone was just beautiful.  Primo, however, was completely absent.  (I spoke with my boss and hydrology expert, Bill Eades, about it.  He noted that the water temp that day was around 4 degrees Celsius, the temperature which freshwater is most dense.  I'm still sure not whether a couple extra thousandths of a gram/mL is enough obliterate the dreams of 4 Midwestern paddlers, or not. )

Anyway, the redeeming parts of the day were all about making improbable attainments to get a second helping on features that really should have been "on the fly" only.  First one was at blockhouse.  Really nice foamy hole with green shoulders.  Good for spins and just sitting there sideways.  I washed out trying to cartwheel and was able to work my way back up through these piles of rebar and the trees that were collecting in them.   A little sketch, but not enough current to really make it dangerous.  Then ferried out, dropped in, and did it all over again! :)

Cobblestone was the best of the day.  Big and burly hole, but you could surf that over to a steep glass wave.  Surfing a fast green wave in the centrifuge is just about as good as it gets.  That thing feels like its on rails when you ask it to carve, and ball bearings when you don't.  I love it.  I hollered to Joey to join me, but he washed through.   We worked our way around the shoals and found this remarkable, 7 or 8 move attainment.  We probably started 200 yards away from our target feature - Cobblestone.  And move by move, micro eddy to micro eddy, we hauled ourselves back up so that we could drop in again.  As Joey put it, it was really cool to play such and involved game of chess like that with the river.

Both of us bailed once finally got ourselves above cobblestone.  We were shot from the effort and subconsciously I was too nervous to surf.  I dropped in, but didn't stick it.  Neither did Joey, but that didn't matter.  

ArkanFall '14

Made it down to the Upper Buffalo Wilderness of Northern Arkansas this past weekend for a taste of some fall color and all that.  We had such a great weekend!  Super relaxing by Michelle and my standards and that just felt...nice.

Hawksbill Crag, apparently, is where everyone an their dog goes this time of year.  We knew the minute we turned off on the gravel road and started seeing spotless, premium SUV's.  It was a zoo out there, but Michelle and I were set.  We shouldered our packs, wandered past the throng at the bluff, and found the most perfect campsite out of earshot and all to ourselves.  Sometimes things work that way.  

We we were a little too late to explore Dug Hollow AND catch the golden hour at Whitaker Point, so we just kicked back and relaxed by the cliff.  I found a little seep and was able to purify some water.  We scoped out all the best photography angles, sat back, and just watched the time pass.  Michelle got some lovely shots, especially after everyone had cleared out for the night.  Came back out to the point after finishing dinner and a bottle of wine.  All to ourselves, perfect quiet and calm.  Got what we'd really come for, and that wasn't a photograph.  

Woke up and decided to head over to the the Goat Trail a little ways downriver.  Dug Hollow or Boen Gulch were originally on the menu, but we needed to be back by early evening.  Setting off for the unknown really does require a cleared calendar.  Anyways, I'd been itching to see that view again, especially this time of year.

Link to the rest of the gallery here. 

The Kind of Thing That Can Only Seem Like a Good Idea at 23.

Tuesday night I had an orientation thing at the hospital that ran just about all evening.  6 to 9:30 or something.  It had snowed heavily all over the state a few days prior, and some of that snow was just beginning to melt in the watershed of my favorite river in the Saint Francis Mountains of Southern MO.  I had been expecting this, and had been watching the USGS gage regularly throughout the day to see whether the river was rising enough to go paddle.  So during a break, I call a good friend of mine with a proposition: we go kayak the first good flows of the paddling season, in the moonlight, and don't sleep a wink.  

I show up at SLU and he's got all the gear laid out in front of the Rec Centre.  He's even more stoked about the idea than I am, if that's possible.  We leave sometime a bit after 10 to start the almost 2 hour drive.  You can imagine the looks we were getting - driving down the the road with two brightly colored boats on the roof, middle of the night, middle of the week, middle of the winter, etc.  On top of that, the two of us are running on nothing but pure stoke and the thermos of coffee sitting between us.  The night was  that cold-crystal-clear and the moon blazing. Once I turned on to highway 67, I killed the lights and drove by its light alone.  

We arrived at the put in and unloaded.  It was probably about midnight now.  Our plan was to drop off everything we'd need to boat the river, drive the car to the take-out downriver, then hike back up to the boats on a wilderness trail that runs the 3 or 4 mile distance between the two.  The temperature was probably mid 30's and dropping steadily, so naturally there was some discussion and thought put into what gear to leave, what gear to hike in, etc.  That kind of strategic worrying is inevitable sometimes.

I wish I could better describe this place to you.  The geology is some of the oldest in North America; it's a deep igneous layer that only surfaces in this part of the state. As a result, there's very little soil - it's mostly granite.  The river valley is steep here, about 100-200 feet deep and is lined with shortleaf and white pines, so much so that the air is heavy with their tannins and smell.  The trail follows the river almost exclusively, but continually changes elevation above it. Tuesday night, all that rock and pine was sitting under almost a foot of snow and the moonlight was sparkling off every inch of it. The treetops and branches were iced, and they sparkled too.  There was too much ambient light for good shadows. The moon was maybe 10 or 15 degrees off vertical and lit up both sides of the valley; the river glinted below in the reflected light of both sides of the gorge, center stage.  

I've been hiking that section of trail for 3 years now and know it well enough to love it.  It sounds really corny, but everything about visiting that place is an act of love to me.  That night was no different.  We got to the boats around 2 or 2:30 and found all our paddling gear icy and stiff- clearly colder now than we thought. We thawed it, creased it, unstuck it from the boats, whatever it took to get it on.  

You've never seen whitewater quite like it looks by moonlight. It softens without as much contrast, and looks more like it does in longer exposure photography - smoothed and fluffy.  In the daylight that river would be perfectly clear, and reflect those deep blue/green colors and sharp contrasts that are so picturesque.  In the snow and moonlight though, the color palate of the whole environment changes instead to every shade of blue and violet between the luminescence of snow and the cold dark of shadows.  The distinction between steep hillsides and river vanishes; the colors of the whole microenvironment of river, gorge, and sky merge.  It's stunning, and unlike anything else. It's a cold kind of beauty that doesn't give a fuck whether you're around to see it or not.  And I like that.  

We get back down to the car, build a fire, and I brew pot of earl grey.  Thermometer reads 20 degrees even. Things freeze with alarming quickness.  It's just before dawn, but "just before dawn" seems always to come remarkably early when you've watched the colors of sky changing all night.  We hit up a diner on the way home and are the only ones in there.  I eat ridiculous amounts of hashbrowned potatoes.  The cook is making them for the morning and keeps filling my plate every time I finish.  I can't remember the last time I felt happier.

Our First Descent of Spry Canyon (Or Any Other Canyon)

It was our third day in Zion. We’d been up Angel’s landing on Sunday, top down through the narrows on Monday, and were feeling mighty touristy being driven around on those fancy busses with the all internationals. Apart from the toll on our feet after 16 river miles in sandals, we had been enjoying Zion’s splendors in relative comfort. I almost expected our first canyoneering exploit continue in the same vein. Instead, we had one of the longest, hardest, most serious days I can remember.

In the last couple of years, my girlfriend Michelle and I have gotten ourselves out on some pretty committing day/summit hikes. It’s become our thing. A 12 hour day with 20 miles by foot and/or 5,000 feet of climbing is not that unusual. Strenuous, absolutely, but approached with a certain degree of familiarity by now. Starting our hitchhike with full packs, full stomachs, and with headlamps in reserve - we felt that same familiar confidence. It was probably just before 9 am.

Like many of Zion’s technical canyons, Spry requires one to climb to the canyon’s origin before the descent. The approach takes you through the upper reaches of Pine Creek canyon, traveling easily along a wonderfully shady and sandy corridor. You don’t sense the real character of Spry until you start the slickrock ascent. We followed cairns up some 1200 vertical feet of fourth class slickrock climbing, stopping only to reference Tom Jones’ printed guide page and muster up the nerve for some particularly exposed pushes. Even by midmorning, the temperature was well on its way to the forecasted 100 degree high and Michelle and I felt like we were being cooked on the world’s biggest slickrock pizza stone. We’d spot a foot or so of shade from a clump of creosote a hundred feet away or so, make the push for it, recoup, then look for the next largest shadow casting object along the route. It was just brutal - and we withered. A one point Michelle said it most simply, “Now I think I understand why people go crazy in the desert…”

Onward. Eventually we did make it over the pass and took a few reverent moments marveling at the the orange and white peaks of the East Temple and Twin Brothers before the making the descent between them. The drop into the big slickrock bowl was ugly. No other word for it. Lots of branches, bushes, and tight downclimbing through a narrow fault in the rock. Eventually it deposited us in the wide sandy wash of the canyon floor. Direct midday sun. As we hiked on, the slickrock walls moved closer and closer in, and soon we came upon the first horizon line (R1- 165’). Not really a drop, so much as a super steep, slickrock watercourse.

I was grateful for the belay out to the the anchors. Not that it couldn’t have been downclimbed, but my nerves were going pretty hard by this point and it felt good to be on a rope. In fact, the ropework turned out to be our strongpoint in the canyon. I’d learned and practiced the techniques long before coming, so hanging there from the bolts, rigging the ‘biner-blocked rappel I felt right at home.

Other parts we weren’t nearly as prepared for. For example, I was terrible at avoiding “avoidable” swims. Starting with the first rappel, I ended up swimming with the frogs in some seriously stagnant canyon water. At the flute rappel further down-canyon, I dropped down the easy flute like a dummy, right into another neck deep pool of stale water. It’s entirely illogical, but swimming through deep black pools in the nether regions of the plateau really got my imagination going. I did not want to get off the rope. Fortunately, Michelle was able learn from my mistakes and negotiate the pools much better.

Just a few drops in, I realized that canyoneering isn’t just stamina and rope skills. The technicality, severity, and frequency of downclimbs in Spry really caught us off guard. And we struggled through them. Best case scenario, we opted for an ugly rappel to bypass. Worst case, it was steep and sustained like the exit through the boulderfield. This is where we really lost time, and what transformed the canyoneering day trip into the 13 hour “death march” it felt like by the time we reached the car.

I think it was about 6:30 by the time we hit the mouth of the canyon. The 12 or so liters of water we started out with were gone. The food was gone. And we were still way above than the car's elevation. Despite that, we’d just finished our very first canyon and felt proud and happy about it. It merited some kind of reward. We’d already polished off the extra food in the 10 essential bag and had to look pretty far down the list... to our only dry clothes - fleeces (and some gatorade powder which we went at like fun dip...) It was cooler now but still way too hot for insulation under normal circumstances. Even so, I can’t even begin to tell you how good it felt. Clean, dry, and comfortable - an earned comfort.

By the time we hit the Lambstongue rappel, I was really feeling it. I was exhausted, dehydrated, hungry, and thoroghly sunbaked.  I rigged the last rappel, but was so shaky I dropped my belay device a couple times. When I was finally rigged up, I’d done it backwards, i.e. on the low friction side of the ATC-XP. Normally no big deal, but right then I wanted all the help I could get. Michelle re-rigged me. The actual rappel was fantastic, 95’ or so and almost entirely freehanging. There were some twists in the lines and I remember deciding very simply just not to deal with them. No autoblock, no reaching around for gloves, just using the index finger of my brake hand to separate them and accepting the rope burn. It’s startling how quickly motor control and decision making abilities can deteriorate. Right then, I just wanted down and didn’t care.

We both descended safely and turned our focus to the remainder of the downclimb. I was better on the boulders than Michelle, so I’d scramble around looking for the best routes while she was downclimbing. On the more serious ones, I’d stick around lend a hand. We spent the last of daylight moving through the boulder field and into Pine Creek. We were about to break out the headlamps when we hit a flat sandy social trail, river right. We hiked to the car in near darkness, 9:45 or so. Showered by 10:45, proper parking lot dinner by 11, then one of the best night’s sleeps I can remember.

That was our introduction to technical canyoneering, and I've got say, we're hooked!
Thanks for reading,

Rory

P.S. Pine Creek the following day felt like a walk in the park.

Return To Howell Island!

It took two years, but I finally made it back to Howell Island, arguably the best surf in the STL area.  Thursday afternoon, the Missouri peaked at 21.4 and we were there to see and surf it.  It seems like almost every other water level forms a horrendous terminal hole there, but around 21.5 is the sweet spot.  Big fluffy foam piles, steep green waves, great fun.  We would drop in from the top, hit the foam, then front surf/side surf/spin until we were out of there.  Then do it again.  A great weekday evening, no doubt.  Can't hardly beat surfing kayaks after work with two of your best friends.  Thanks to Joe Sartori and Joey Heger for making it happen.  Joe Sartori's video.