Every summer, I try to make it up to the Wolf to go rafting. Section IV meanders through Menominee tribal land which means (a) the forest is spectacular and (b) any yahoo can hop in an unguided raft and float through class III-IV rapids. Said yahoos don't typically understand the importance of PFDs and helmets, and many of the rafters are often 100% fueled by booze. Needless to say, there have been some pretty major accidents on this stretch of river.
For the past couple of summers, I've tried to turn my annual rafting fun run into a Hoofers How-to-Guide trip. (This is at least partly inspired by the miserable approach to rafting I see most people take on Wolf IV.) This year, the stars aligned, and we had a group of eight for the river. Getting out of Madison turned into quite the debacle, but once we threaded our way through a bunch of delays and a ton of deer, the northwoods were ready for us.
We woke to stunning weather Saturday morning - highs in the mid 70s, sun, and only the occasional light headwind. The wildflower carpet that was around over Memorial Day had disappeared
from the banks of the river, but some more brightly-colored
flowers were coming in (including one lady slipper - the first I've seen
in Wisconsin). There weren't too many other patrons down at Shotgun Eddy's (one of two rafting companies that operate on Wolf IV), and nobody was fall-down drunk (yet). We got on-river pretty quickly, and the other Hoofers picked up the basics of steering in no time.
Wolf IV is a pool-drop run (meaning there are nice calm spots between each of the big rapids), so we were able to scout almost everything. We had one flip at the bottom of a less-substantial rapid (1/2 of the crew was hiding in the bottom of the boat instead of paddling and none of the crew high-sided when the raft got surfed), but nobody botched any of the big drops on the river. By the end of the river, we even had a couple people that were starting to look and sound like commercial guides!
Ali guided us through a darned-near perfect line on Big Smokey Falls this year. I still have yet to guide a good run on that rapid. In fact, whenever I'm steering, we usually end up running the drop backwards. (Maybe I just hate being dry at the end of the day.)
Sunday, three of us headed to the Wausau Whitewater Course, a really awesome dam diversion channel turned slalom/freestyle paddling park. The first time I went to Wausau, I was pretty nervous and couldn't get into any of the surf waves (mind you, I didn't really want to be in any of the surf waves, which tends to make surfing difficult). This time, I had a giant boat (which I'll be taking to Idaho) and a much, much more trusted roll. Ali and I ran the course a couple of times and tried surfing in several holes near the bottom of the course (the easier ones). While neither of us are very good at freestyle kayaking, both of us were improving by leaps and bounds. (Just to give you an idea,
this is surfing/freestyle kayaking at it's best and
this is about the best that I can do.)
Just one more month (and one more planned boating trip) before the Selway!
