116-Rafting Montana, Day 3

In which Boy Scout Troop 116 tackles the big rapids of the Columbia River's Clark Fork and all the adults get spiked

Sunday, July 30, 2006

On the third day, we broke camp early for a change and drove back through Missoula (pausing to stock up on groceries and, for the adults, to call home quickly and be sure families and work were getting along OK without us) then headed west on I-90 to rip some serious rapids and get a change of scenery along the Clark Fork of the Columbia River.

Got off Rte. 90 about a half-hour west of Missoula at Cyr for the river put-in. While Stew and Dan did the truck shuffle to leave a vehicle at the take-out point, the boys readied the raft and duckies. It took them a while to finish due to the distraction of dozens of bikini clad women all around them also preparing for the river. (Plus one disturbing man: paunchy, pasty, bandy-legged, and wearing naught but a miniscule and virulently colored Speedo.)

In the ogling boys' defense, they weren't the only ones in the group to get "Itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, red polka-dot bikini" stuck in their heads for the rest of the day. (Trust me, it was red, not yellow--what little of it there was, that is.)

In Which We Ignore A Fair Warning

The rapids were larger and more serious this morning, so there was less talking and floating and more paddling against sore triceps, abs, and inner thighs (which get an unusual workout as you brace in a duckie). Stew, Agnew and I did play a bit of kayak-to-kayak football toss/keep away, but the larger rapids kept interrupting the game.

As it neared lunchtime and Agnew and I, by dint of paddling steadily while chatting, accidentally got a solid ten minutes ahead of the raft and made the tactical error of slowing down to wait right as we drew abreast of a stretch of shore that stank of rotting fish. I fervently hoped wasn't where we'd been planning to stop for lunch.

A mile or so downstream, we did break for lunch on a popular, sandy beach frequented by lots of rafting groups, a bunch of daytripping kayakers, and the locals who knew where the unmarked trailhead down to it was by the side of the back road up above. We chewed on ham, turkey, and cheese sandwiches and M&M cookies while Ari managed to get mustard all over the bottom of Stew's duckie, which doubled as our table.

A wet, very happy little black and white dog belonging to the family next to us clearly could have spent all day swimming after the tennis ball his owner kept throwing in between helping his three-year-old daughter snorkel (and snapping "Language!," at us every few minutes, offended by the troop's collective foul mouth). Buddies of Dan's kept paddling over to say hello, including a photographer and her friend in an old-school wooden canoe, and Spencer, a quiet capable dude in a short, freestyle kayak.

After lunch we played a raucous game of water football. Stew, Mike, Andy, Danny, and I creamed the other team five to one, proving that the buoyancy of water is a secret weapon for fat old men who can't move so well on dry land anymore (aided by the fact that Dan Berger cut open his toe on a submerged rock early in the game, and blamed it for his utter inability to catch the football).

Tumblereid

As we got ready to push out into the water again, Dan told we three duckies it was time to put on our helmets again. "We’ve got some pretty big ones coming up," was all he gave by way of explanation. The river narrowed through Alberton Gorge and the real whitewater began. We had a short warm-up rapid, then I realized that the highway roar I was hearing up ahead was not, in fact, a highway crossing, but the upcoming rapid for which I was very likely not at all prepared.

I paddled nervously back up toward the raft where Dan confirmed we were approaching Tumbleweed, the biggest bit of whitewater on the whole trip, a tricky section rated Class III+. "Go right, then left, then spin to follow the current around to the right, but look out for the jagged rocks at the bottom..." Dan tried instructing us as we slowly spun our duckies around the raft and the roar got closer. We nodded in agreement, but clearly looked a bit confused. "You know what? He finally said. "Just follow me." We all agreed that was a capital idea.

The entirety of the river—some 2,000 cubic feet per second—coursed through a narrow gap in the rocks above what had to be an eight-foot drop. Dan piloted the raft up onto the crest of the high lateral wave that rose like a wall at the edge of the rapid then corkscrewed down into the trough on the other side.

Choosing discretion over valor, I let Stew and Agnew tackle it first. That lateral wave grabbed Stew practically before he got into the slot, flipped him out of his duckie, and sucked him straight down into the hole of raging water below. Agnew rode the wave for a split second longer before it tossed him, too, out of his little boat like a rag doll.

I paddled grimly toward Tumbleweed, vaguely aware of Agnew's duckie floating, upside down, down the river below the rapid. Of Agnew himself, or Stew and the Stewberry, I saw no sign.

Taking advantage of the lessons learned from watching Stew and Agnew buy the farm, I adjusted my angle of attack and cruised up over the massive lateral wave without incident... only to be totally crushed by a second, even larger wave beyond it.

At least I had the presence of mind to suck down a quick gulp of breath as I was bounced violently out of the duckie and flew through the air to my right. The next 45 seconds (or, to my mind, five minutes) were a confusion of swirling water and rocks slamming into my knees, arms, and ribs as I pitched and yawed and twisted through the churning water filling the 30-foot-deep sinkhole at the base of the drop.

As my body was tossed around under the water, I realized I was still holding my paddle in a death grip. Straightening out my priorities, I let go the paddle, which immediately smacked me in the chin. I hazarded it was shooting toward the surface, and, as the tumbling had lessened, I also figured the hole must have finally spit me out. So I took my heading from the paddle and flailed in the same general direction until I found the surface. Or, rather, found my duckie.

The only problem was, I was directly beneath it.

Air rapidly running out, I was pretty sure I was going to drown if I couldn't get that damned duckie off my head, so I followed the instructions Dan had earlier given us when practicing water rescue. I put my hands over my head, and quickly pawed my way along the rubber of the boat, making sure I continued going in the same direction even when it seemed that the duckie above me kept going on forever.

(Panicky people sometimes will, after a few seconds of clawing their way along the underside of the boat, figure they went the wrong way and switch directions, which is patently stupid since you're bound to get to the end of the boat at some point and at least you know you've already made progress in the direction you picked to begin with.)

Finally, I found the duckie's edge and used it to haul my head out of the water and take a grateful, gasping breath. The current almost immediately yanked me under again, but now I had a death grip on that duckie and it was helping pull me out of the violent whitewater and into a calmer eddy off to the right side. I got my head above water long enough to see Agnew getting hauled into the raft a few dozen feet downriver.

Since my duckie was beginning to whirl out of the eddy and back into the thick of things—and I hadn't the strength left to pull it with me as I swam, I let it go bellowing "Someone grab my boat!" then turned (miraculously smacking my face into my paddle once again, which I grabbed) to swim deeper into the calm waters of the eddy toward the safety of the boulders and cliff.

Problem was, I hadn't seen Stew either bobbing in the water or being lifted into the raft...but I had glimpsed his duckie upstream, right below the churning hole at the base of Tumbleweed, slowly spinning in the rapid's first eddy.

The boat was empty.

Panicked, I flopped myself up onto the rocks, had to wait a few seconds to find the strength to stand, then started scrambling up and over the sharp rocks of the low cliff toward the upper eddy to search for him. By the time I got there, hands and feet cut and bleeding from the rocks, Spencer had appeared in his snub-nosed kayak and was holding Stew's duckie for me.

While Spencer paddled over to retrieve Agnew's paddle spinning in an eddy across the rapids, I commandeered the Stewberry and paddled, shakily but triumphantly, through the last of the rapids to the waiting raft, where I was relieved to see both Stew and Agnew—soaked but OK—and my rescued duckie bobbing alongside.

We were still catching our breaths and, at least in my case, getting our nerve back when we came into a wide, lake-like section with a tiny island—maybe 8 by 15 feet--of flat stones near the middle at one end. Dan signaled ahead to us to beach the boats on it. "Anyone know what this is called? He asked the group as the raft scraped up onto the shoal. He grinned, "Skipper's Island; I've never in my life seen more perfect skipping stones all in one spot." This went over huge with the boys, who tired out their arms trying to reach the far shore (I believe Quinn, with his 23-skip launch, barely edged out Danny for the most skips).

There was one more stretch of whitewater left, a section nicknamed Fang after the rock spire atop the cliffs to the right just before the water began churning into a boat-tossing froth. Dan offered the adults the chance to climb aboard the raft and not worry about anything beyond paddling for a while, but all three of us chose to stick to our duckies.

Paddling furiously into the center breaks of the biggest waves, I rode the rapids with an added edge-of-danger thrill, for now I understood that the river had far more control over my fate than my meager kayaking skills ever did.

Piracy and Kidnapping on the High River

For the final, long float down to the take-out, we did let the boys commandeer our kayaks and the adults flopped into the raft to paddle. After half an hour of paddling still water against the wind, we tired of the whole galley slave routine, we used the excuse—a good, semi-legitimate one—that we wanted the boys to get experience working the duckies properly (as opposed to doubling up and sitting back-to-back in the single-man kayaks as they had been doing) to shanghai a few of the boys into the raft to help paddle.

We even gave control of the boat to Danny and Andy, who proceeded to issue opposing instructions from the back of the boat while the adults simply ignored them and got on with the necessary paddling.

At some point, we traded Danny and Andy for Ezra, Quinn, and Ari and, when we reached a wide, quiet, deep spot in the river, began playing a rousing game of rodeo. Two people would get up and stand up on the inflated gunwales on either end of the raft, balancing precariously. The people left sitting in the middle would silently signal left or right, then start paddling violently to rotate the boat in the chosen direction. The first gunwale-percher to lose his balance and fall prey to radial motion lost the round (and fell in to the drink).

I was holding my own, having already beaten Agnew, when a second raft manned by a trio of couples playing their own version of rodeo spun in alongside. Their raft differed from ours in that it had a single seat for a rower set above the gunwales, and all six of them were very drunk. Also, three were female and were wearing bikinis, which may account for why I handily beat Quinn in the next round, as he was rather distracted.

Soon just about everyone was distracted when one of the men in the other boat, lying on the bottom and clearly in the full throes of high spirits, yanked down the bikini bottom of the women standing over him...while she was bent over double to try to maintain her balance. The folks in the other raft found this hilarious. The boys in our raft found this terribly intriguing.

A few minutes later, the other raft had managed to divest itself of all three women, and we—being both gentlemen and good Boy Scouts—came to their rescue. Of course, not all three could fit in the front section of the boat where Stew was hauling them up into the raft, so I reached over and helped Ezra learn a valuable lesson in gallantry by pushing him backwards off the raft and into the water so as to make more room.

The men in the other raft called over that we could keep the women in exchange for a couple of beers. Dan tossed them one underhand and it fell short, so I lobbed one overhand...and managed to bean the other raft's driver right where a man doesn't want to get hit by something as heavy and hard as a flying can of beer.

The women in our boat took advantage of this exchange to jump overboard yet again and swim back to their raft. We all agreed that they had made a poor choice, especially seeing as how their beaus were willing to part with them for so low a price (not even a full beer each).

We slid down a final, smooth stretch of rapidly moving water and the take-out came into view. I landed my banana boat duckie with a little bit of relief that, after three days, I wasn't going to have to paddle anymore, but mostly with a feeling of sorrow that I was about to get off the river and wouldn't get to paddle anymore.

Southbound Once Again

We returned to Dan's for a hearty dinner (mmm, pizza) and to take some well-earned and terribly necessary showers. Stew drove all the way to Butte, then I took over to Belgrade (just west of Billings) and turned south on Rte. 80 to Rte. 191 through Gallatin National Forest.

The twisting road along the Gallatin River was lined by seven-foot double reflector stakes and little clusters of fat white crosses every mile or two marking the places where I can only assume the Demon Trucks of Montana—tricked out with lights along every line and barrelling down the winding road at 90 mph—had claimed their victims.

In this National Forest at least, in summer (and their definition is broad: May 15 -Sept 15), you cannot camp within half a mile of the main road (Agnew's convinced the normal limit is a mere 100 feet). So we turned up Swan Creek road, drove past the official campground, and about a mile up the road, after it turned into a dirt track, at the trailhead for Tr. 186, we found the sweetest campsite of the trip so far: a flat spot amidst the pines around a fire pit a few feet from the rushing clear, cold waters of tiny Swan Creek.

Unfortunately, given 116's schedule, we could only enjoy our paradisical spot from approximately 2:20am (arrival, unpack, set up tents) to 7:40am (semi-awake, repacked, heading back down the dirt road to laugh at the folks in the official campground who paid $11 for crowded sites with no facilities beyond an outhouse).

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