116-Rafting The Blackfoot, Day 1

In which Boy Scout Troop 116 takes a float down Montana's Blackfoot River and the boys learn river rescue techniques

Friday, July 28, 2006

The great thing about having former members of 116 scattered to the four winds is that the troop retains the right to call them back into service at any moment. Agnew and Dave Henderson were tapped to purchase the new van we had waiting when the troop arrived in Colorado. I came along to held lead (i.e.: drive) for the second half of the trip (and Agnew for a week of it). And, when we hit Missoula, Montana late one night, we crashed at Dan Berger's place.

Since graduating from the troop just a few years behind the likes of Agnew and I, Dan has become not only a journalist but also a professional river guide on the side. This meant that, rather than shell out $250 per person per day for a multi-day rafting trip with some outfitter, we were going to get three days on a pair of Montana rivers for free. All it cost the troop budget was the food, the beer, and the cost of renting a couple of duckies—an inflatable type of kayak—to supplement Dan's raft.

We set off bright and late from Dan's the next morning to claim a campsite right by the water's edge at the midpoint of our two-day rafting route along the Blackfoot River—having worked out a needlessly complicated way of ferrying people, boats, and the two cars between the put-in ten miles upriver, the camp, and the take-out another ten miles downriver--so we could just call this home base.

Day-O!

The boys loaded into the raft to learn the finer points of river running from Dan while the other three adults each took a duckie to circle the raft lazily like flies, sometimes paddling the river ahead and scope out routes and sometimes following behind to help haul the raft off unforeseen rocks.The boys quickly dubbed my yellow duckie The Banana Boat (inspiring me to belt out the Harry Belafonte tune, poorly but with vigor). John Agnew's red craft became The Chili Pepper, and Stew Lee's purplish two-seater the Stewberry.

For midsummer, there were an awful lot of young animal family units populating the river. Cattle and calves loafed by the side of the river, the bull striding before them to stare down we intruders. A doe lead her speckled fawn along the bank and watched us suspiciously. A family of ducks left Vs in the water as they fled the odd craft splashing towards them.

When the raft followed the deeper water around the right of one little island and we three duckies took the more challenging left fork, a falcon, feathers of copper and gold, swooped from the fir trees and came this close to snatching Stew's hat off his head.

The bird followed the Stewberry for a while down the river, stalking its prey. When we stopped for lunch on a bit of beach clearly owned by the chichi Paws Up dude ranch (fancy picnic tables and two bar tables set with decorative hammered tin panels), the falcon settled onto a low branch above a cliff clustered with mud swallow nests and fluffed its giant wings, eyeing Stew's hat hungrily.

The river was running pretty low and the rapids sluggish, so Dan took the opportunity to teach the boys the esoterica of paddling, describe river rescue techniques, and dumped them overboard after a quick lessons on how to swim the rapids. Not longer after, while the four adults were manning the raft so the boys could try the duckies, Dan "decided" to provide a practical demonstration in how to swim some churning Class II+ whitewater.

When we hit these, the only significant rapids of the day, our guide suddenly pitched backwards, gracelessly and in comical slow motion, off his steering perch at the rear of the boat, arms and legs flailing in the air like a turtle. Once we determined any injuries were limited to his pride, Agnew jumped into the captain's seat and steered us through the whitewater, Dan bobbing along merrily a few yards behind us.

Near the end of the day, a bald eagle kept pace with us for a while, then wheeled off above the towering trees overhead.

Right before we hit our campsite, Dan found a small standing wave near a convenient eddy for staging an attempt at surfing the wave, so we all took turns in the duckies, Dan giving instruction to the boys as how to maneuver into it then spin upstream to paddle furiously and achieve perfect, motionless equilibrium with the river.

The boys had grand plans for a nighttime swim, game of ultimate Frisbee, and stone-skipping contest after dinner, but the river had worn everyone out and most drifted off the bed just as soon as the dishes were done.