Three more trips down the Wenatchee!

Since the water level on the Wenatchee River began to drop pretty fast the rafts are becoming less challenging (and to me less exciting). The good news is the water level is great for those that want to learn to kayak and I had 5 people this weekend that were up to the challenge.
Saturday started out expensive right off the bat. I was getting ready for the river and as I was putting on my dry pants the ankle gasket blew out – this was surprising since I had bought them last month during my trip to Idaho. And for those of you who have experience with this you know that dry gear with no gaskets really doesn’t stay that dry. Luckily the weather was nice so Mike offered me his dry suit since he was going to be in an oar boat – though his wife Kim advised he may want to wear it since she was going to be the one oaring the boat for the first time.
Once we got on the river we got Allie comfortable in the kayak which didn’t take too long since she’s been rafting for several years. I think she was a bit surprised at how much work it can take to flip an IK back over and pull yourself out of the water – it’s not as easy as we make it look – but after a couple tries she was getting the hang of it. By the end of our 17 mile run she had pretty much perfected the “flip the boat then claw your way back in before the next set of rapids” motions. Allie is now a finely tuned kayak re-entering machine!
Once we got off the river some of the other guides wanted to take a shot at the IK’s. So myself and 3 others arranged a shuttle and set out to run the lower 10 miles again - the more exciting stretch. All was well with this plan until we reached our put-in and realized someone forgot a PFD (and no it wasn’t me!). So we decided to run our shuttle anyway and see if I could round one up. When I got to the take out I tracked down a guide I knew with one of the local outfitters, who was just wrapping up for the day, and talked him into loaning us his PFD for her to use. Once I got back to the put-in we set off about 5:30. It’s a good thing they were already used to the water because they only had 20-30 yards on the river before they hit the first Class III wave set. This was a nice encore to my first run that morning but after 27 miles of assisting others through their first time "learning curves" I was ready to call it a day.

Sunday morning the sun was up before I was and Nate and I again started off the day with a short run to Starbucks (see a pattern here?). The bad news was I was still pretty beat from the assisting swimmers the day before - paddling upstream to catch people and gear and flip their boats over and over again wears you down pretty fast. The good news is this was the first time in a while I would get to run my own lines without worrying about who would or wouldn’t make it through behind me – I was only really responsible for the safety of myself and the folks in the paddle rafts this time. This meant I was able to practice my surfing, spinning, wave jumping and of course flipping. Thanks again for the dry suit Mike – maybe next time I’ll remember to close the stupid crotch zipper all the way while I’m surfing - ooh that water is cold!

Stats:
Wenatchee River - Class III - Das River Haus to Cashmere (x2), Peshastin Weir - Cashmere
Miles Logged: 44 (17, 10, & 17)
Flow Data: 4240cfs & 4230cfs