Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Palmer Rapids Reflection


                                   Palmer Rapids Reflection   

As someone who has done white water canoeing before, I knew what to expect when heading off to this camp but nonetheless, I was still excited. When we arrived on Friday, we put our stuff down and immediately got on the water. I found I was a little rusty when I was having trouble doing eddy turns and ferrying. We started to get the hang of it after doing it a few times. My partner and I started building our confidence as a team and things where coming a bit more naturally. When we went down the upper set for the first time, we were doing fairly well, until we hit the second standing wave at a bit of an unfavorable angle. Ryan saved us at first with a good correcting stroke, however, we had taken on too much water to be saved and we dumped. In all, I feel like our first day was a good beginning and I started to feel more comfortable.


The second day started off similar to the first one, with practicing out eddy turns and ferrying. Things were going well, until we flipped on an eddy turn. I can say that one was my fault because I did not give enough of an initiation stroke, meaning we got caught on the eddy line. After this, we switched partners and did the upper set again. This second time was much better then our first as we stayed upright and hit the second wave at a much better angle. After playing around a bit more we moved on to the lower set. I was familiar with this set of rapids, meaning I had a pretty good idea for a route to take. We took this route and managed to stay up, but we still got a bit wet from the hole at the bottom. After lunch, we hit the lower set again. I was able to make it down numerous times with out flipping, by taking the same line and not really catching any eddies. Looking back, this is something I should have tried more as it is good practice and can make the river more interesting. For the last run of the day, I switched back to my previous partner, only with him in the back. I had assured him that I would give him directions on our route and how to get us to the bottom upright. This did not happen. I think it would have helped the situation by just letting my partner choose his own line, as me shouting directions probably did not help him make decisions on which maneuvers to make on time. Overall, the second day was a blast and it reminded me of why i love white water.

On the final day, we mostly ran the lower set again. We only dumped once, and that was because I insisted that we should try to plow straight through the hole at the bottom because I wanted to see if we could make it. Unfortunately we dumped, however we were able to tip the canoe back the right way, albeit full of water. This was probably the most exciting part of the third day, as again I did not take huge risks with eddies, which I think was the only thing I regret about this trip.

In conclusion, this was probably my favourite outdoor ed trip for the last three years. It was a good wrap up and I had a blast, even though I got wet a few times. I hope that someday I can go back so that I can do a bit more exciting runs with new and more challenging routes.

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