This weekend, Ali and I went on the lovely annual Memorial Day whitewater trip that the UW Hoofers Outing Club puts on. It involves three days, three rivers, good camping, and delicious food, and it serves as many people's true introduction to whitewater boating. We loaded a ton of gear right after work on Friday and headed 4(+) hours north to a strip of property near Lakewood, WI. (The property is owned by the Hoofers, but still inside the bounds of the Nicolet National Forest.) Rain was spotty on the way up, but thankfully, we didn't have to set up camp in super-wet conditions. We got in to camp pretty close to 11pm, stayed up a bit past midnight, and woke up to a beautiful sunny and warm Saturday.
The first river we had scheduled was the Pike (over near the border of the UP). It's a fantastic learning river, with a good number of Class I ripples and maybe 3 Class II rapids within a ~6 mile stretch. We got in, and played around on some easy waves/easy current just below the put-in for quite a while. Once we headed downstream, there were a couple rocky bits and a few splashy waves, and eventually we hit an easy class II called Scrounge Canyon. The advanced boaters set safety, and we got sent through one by one. There were a few holes and several rocks, but nobody had any kind of trouble. A bit further downstream we hit the most fun/difficult rapid of the day - Horseshoe Falls. There's a turn in the river here, and a two-foot ledge that's really clean on the river right side of the horseshoe. Once more, the advanced boaters set safety below, and guided all the new boaters down the falls. A lot of folks chose to run the rapid several times, and we hung out at the side of the river an hour or so for surfing/lunch. Downstream, there was one other semi-noteworthy rapids called S-turn and our takeout. I don't remember anybody swimming on the Pike, except for a handful of the advanced people who surfed Horseshoe and missed their roll/eskimo rescue. Some of the novices had the typical running into rocks/steering issues, and with 19 people on a relatively narrow river, those issues were probably compounded. All in all, the Pike was a success, and the tacos and s'mores that evening just made the day. Just after Ali and I hit our tent for the evening, thunderstorms started rolling in. Wisconsin whitewater is suffering from our lack of snow, so it was great to get fresh water in the rivers, but every time one thunderstorm sounded like it was getting past us, a new one rolled in. Loud thunder, loud rain, and tons of lightening kept a lot of people from getting good sleep, and the only break we had in the storms was from about 4am-8am. We were supposed to be breakfasting at 8, but yet another storm pushed that back to 9 or so. Our tent held up reasonably well. Unfortunately, we hadn't bothered to guy out the back of our fly, so it touched the tent body and got the foot of Ali's sleeping bag wet. I was getting misted by some condensation that had gathered on the inside of the fly. The condensation alone probably wouldn't have been much of a problem, but the pounding rain bounced it off the fly and into the tent.
Sunday morning, we all eventually crawled out of our tents, ate, and hit the road toward the Wolf River (short section III). Wolf III is a pretty fun run, with three notable rapids over 4 miles. We put in just upstream of Boyscout Rapid (named for a boyscout camp that surrounds the 1/2 mile of boulder-strewn trouble). There might have been one or two class I rapids before the footbridge that marks the top of the rapid, but we were setting up safety eddies and waiting for raft traffic to clear pretty soon after the put-in. The top of the rapid has lots of rocks, some holes, and 1-3 drops depending on your line through the rapids. The second footbridge marks some pin rocks (which were below the water on Sunday) and it marks what I think of as the beginning of the second half of the rapid - tons of rocks, tons of ledges, and time to start reading the river 2 drops ahead of where you are. Ali and I were following one of the boaters catching a mid-rapid safety eddy, and I was instructed to lead Ali through the second half of the rapid once this guy caught his eddy. I tried to pick through and broadcast my turns early, but man those rocks sure do come quickly. I tried to bomb down the first couple of drops and stay ahead of Ali, but I started making tighter and tighter (read as: oh-no-where-did-that-rock-come-from-I-need-to-get-away-from-it-now) turns, and Ali ended up pinning broadside on a rock. She leaned downstream, managed to stay upright, and eventually managed to wiggle her way off the rock. I caught an eddy just downstream, and that (a) got me in place to perform a rescue, if needed, and (b) gave me time to figure out a line for the last bit of the rapid. Once Ali got un-stuck, we picked our way cleanly down the the "end of the rapid" safety boat. 3/4 of the remaining newbies swam at least part of Boyscout (a very rocky and painful swim). And while there was one strained shoulder, there wasn't any bad carnage. We picked up a boat and several paddles, and I got sent with two other boaters on a team downstream run to get a car so that the person with the shoulder injury could get off the river. The remaining part of the river included several splashy/rocky class I bends in the river, Hansen's (which is a really fun wave train + holes), and Gilmore's Mistake (a constriction with several chutes/holes above a rocky patch and one final hole). Gilmore's (which is named not because of a flipped boater but because of a logging scout who messed his estimate up) is right at the takeout, and though my group got there in 30min, it took the other group close to 2 hours to finish the run. Ali had a few swims while I was gone and got a few scrapes on her nose from the very tail of Boyscout. We played at Gilmore's until 6, loaded the boats, and went back to the campsite for some pasta (+salad + more s'mores + cake). Though there had been plenty of swims and plenty of rocks, I think everybody was feeling pretty good and far more comfortable on the river. (Also of note, while we were hanging out by the takeout, I tried out a modified C-to-C/Sweep hybrid and hit my roll 4/4 times - complete with no shoulder pain. Hurray for Hoofers instructors!!!)
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| Playing in First Drop |
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| Started to rain a bit |
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| Rain + Hail makes you glad that you have a helmet and PFD |
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| The Sticky Drop at Monastery Falls |
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| The remaining holes of Monastery |
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| Surfing the bottom drop at the Falls |
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| Me on Monastery |
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| Taking Shelter |
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| Inside the ruins |
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| The big slippery rock |
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| River Left at Ziemer's |
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| 3rd (and final) lead-in hole to the Ziemer's drop |
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| (Sort of) Top of Ziemer's |
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| River Right Drop at Ziemer's |
Sunday night we slept well, and Monday, we got up for a "late" breakfast at 8:30. Three members of our cohort had returned home the night before, but the remaining 16 of us packed up camp and headed south to the Red River. I've been on the Red before, but similar to the Wolf on Sunday, there was
way more water in the river than I'd seen. The commonly-run stretch is around 4 miles with two class IIs, one class III(+), and a class II+(+). When we got to the put-in, the sun was up, it was hot, and the skies were blue. Just after the first rapid (appropriately named Single Drop, complete with one rock slide into a hole and surf waves of varying difficulty below), clouds started moving in. We went downstream at a quick pace, but thunder, lightening, hail, and heavy rain caught up with us. We pulled out of the water and ate lunch in a forested area as the storm blew through. Some folks started getting chilly, but it wasn't too long before we were back on the water. Double drop was just downstream, and we went one by one through that rapid, too. More surfing ensued, and everybody not in the hole hugged the shore to avoid heading into the biggest rapid of the day, Monastery Falls. We didn't play double drop long, thanks to the weather, and we pulled our boats out of the water again to scout Monastery. The falls consists of a rocky constriction, with one quite sticky hole at the very top, 3 more holes in the same narrow chute, and a 5' ledge/slide at the bottom. The top hole was at its stickiest, and only the most advanced boaters were allowed to run the entire rapids. I had just been promoted (Hoofers has a rather stringent rating system that's based on experience/minor-hoop-jumping and determines what you are allowed to run), so I got to slide down the rocks into the chute below the big hole. Ali got to do the last drop (which feeds into a large flat pool). As the last person finished the falls, another thunderstorm hit, and we ran for the monastery that overlooks the falls. Back in the 70s, the Menominee Tribe and the State of Wisconsin had been arguing over reservation status/boundaries, and the piece of land that the monastery sits on was heavily contested. A militant subgroup of the tribe chased off the caretakers and set fire to the building, and the (beautiful) ruin has sat there since. It sounds like no one wants to claim the land and deal with the unstable structure but whoever owns the property may not want to let it go either. Anyhow, we crawled out of the deep water onto a slick rock in the pounding rain (getting us and our gear out took a heck of an effort and a ton of teamwork) and took shelter under what's left of the awning out front. Ten minutes later, the storm cleared, and we slid back down the big rock and into the water. Ziemer's Falls was the last major rapid of the day. There's an initial drop with a big eddy and some rock slabs for scouting. Then there are 2-3 more holes along a quick bend in the river that sets up for a split in the river and the major drops of the rapid. On river right, there's a chute that's full of some diagonal waves and pushy current, and on river left, there were two tongues that lead into a bottom hole (the center line is rockier than the far left). River right is always open, so I decided to try the left of left line. I got sent down pretty early so that I could set safety (aka pick up gear) at the bottom. All the other advanced folks were either in eddies part of the way down or holding rope/controlling traffic. The first beginner down was thinking too far in advance, and flipped getting out of the eddy at the top of the rapid. Something failed miserably, and she just barely got out of the rapid before the drop. After that, the other beginners were told not to run the rapid, which was a bit of a shame. Everyone else made it safely down the rapid, and I'm sure the locals who hang out on the shore and swim around in the rapid had quite the show. There was one more rapid (apparently a class I, but with the high water, the slide, hole, and strong eddy lines might have been closer to a II), some more successful practice rolls, and the takeout. Everybody had a superb time, and we even made it back to Madison (slightly) before 10pm. Anyhow, I was impressed with how quickly the new folks were picking things up and how cleanly the trips were run (not to mention the food organization and the people who drove after long days on the river).
