Hey... here are my impressions, a different perspective... The level was +2 1/4 at the Owl gauge.
>> Christian decided to test his new helmet down to Baby Face.
Well, I lost my paddle in left-side Horseshoe. As luck would have it, it flipped me back up in a perfect surf position, looking upstream and all. But said surf only lasted two seconds, what do you when hole surfing with empty hands... Then I got worked some more into the rocks at the bottom, earning christening scratches on my brand new helmet, as well as a big bruise on my shoulder. That one reminded itself to me every subsequent paddle stroke... So I pulled the plug. I need to figure out handrolling...
By the wave, Baby Face wasn't there, people were surfing Corner Wave at McCoy.
>> Vaillant effort from big dog Grahame for attempting to rescue Rob before he went through the middle pass
We all watched Rob, then Grahame, explore a new line down The Lorne, one of those in which you collect bonus points--oops, scratches on your mellon protector I should say; apparently the water was warm enough for a swim. Garburator was sort of there, nothing to surf, only good enough to flip unnattentive passer-by's.
I had fun in Butcher's Knife, for a change... Even if it meant getting a backender in a huge boil after the hole and ending upside-down. Norman's was beautiful. I had never even flipped there, I said so, the river heard it and it sent just the right kind of diagonal wave to teach me a lesson (a gentle one, I rolled up right away, amidst complains from my shoulder)...
>> We turn around and Matt's and Christian's kayaks are floating down.
That was Coliseum. Here I must add that Matt and I were still in our boats, and rolled up a second later, just in time to go by hole #2; the rest of the run was eventless, so to speak: flipped a couple more time, finish in the eddy watching swimmers go by... What had happened before is that I masterfully and effortlessly caught a microeddy just above the big huge hole that we were trying to avoid. Ok, well, catching the eddy was not intentional, but it allowed me to watch Matt go down and get type-writered from river-left all the way to the center of the hole by a reactionary wave... I thought, from my vantage point, that I could punch that wave and avoid his fate, so I went. Same deal though, driven right in the hole and worked a bit. Except that this time I thought I hit some rocks and branches while attempting to roll up! I didn't know you could hit the bottom at Coliseum at +2 1/4! I discovered later that what I was hitting was Greg's boat and paddle, as we were sharing the big hole...
Dog's leg was more of a puppy paw, although the center slot looked nasty at that level. Black's looked good, but I had only one fonctionning arm left by then, pretty much, so no surfing...
>> T'was a first for Annie, Matt, Rob, Greg and still a lot of fun for all.
You guys were courageous! I must have run that waterfall 50 times by now. But when you first contemplate going down the thing, you wonder what's going to happen. The first time I was there was last year with Ivan Levac. We had no idea what to do, what would happen, we had just read on a website that it was relatively easy and safe to do. Tthere was no one else there, no one to watch, we had to go for it on our own. Only the 5th trial I managed to stay upright.
>> Happy to report no swimming for me...happy change from last year, I'll tell you.
Hey Louis... We could be conservative, and never swim... But I'm willing to accept the occasional one when trying to push my comfort limits a bit. WRSI will like me as a customer...
Cheers all!
--Christian
