One for the books (part 1)

ad·ven·ture

an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity.

synonyms:exploit, escapade, deed, feat, experience

One of my main life goals is to partake in as many authentic adventures as possible. Unfortunately a side effect of getting good at planning these adventures is that they tend to lose a little bit of their edge. For instance, every year on Memorial Day weekend, myself and a group of good friends heads out for a float trip/camp to a new smallmouth destination. This trip originated nearly a decade ago with a couple dudes that had ZERO clue what they were doing. It was a blank canvas that turned out some very memorable experiences. Most of which came from navigating our way through the dumb decisions we made. Needless to say they were very authentic adventures. Fast forward several years and this trip has turned into a thing that we talk about year-round, and spend a lot of time trying mold into THE trip of the year. Each season we seem to get better at it. So much so that it had sort of lost that wild feeling. Each part of the trip is meticulously planned to the point that everything is accounted for. Good food, cold drinks, and warm shelter made it almost as comfortable as a beach vacation. When you keep learning the lessons from the previous years it's only natural to correct any missteps going forward. I thought I had this thing down to a science. Ironically enough, the last blog I wrote was about how to actually plan one of these trips (you know, like I was an expert or something). Well, let's just say that I got a big slap in the face from mother nature this year.

We had narrowed our destination list down to 2 possibilities: The Menominee River and Upper Mississippi. The Menominee won out on a coin flip decision, so it was on to the planning phase. I had volunteered to take on the task of plotting out our route. The Menominee had some unique challenges with respect to trip planning. We only like to do free flowing sections of a river, and there was little-to-no info on these parts of the Menominee. I used the tools at my disposal such as Google Earth and other online resources to get some basic info on the river, but that will only get you so far. I called around to some guides and tackle shops close by, but wasn't getting any quality info from those guys. It came down to a lot of guesswork, and assumptions. I didn't feel 100% about it, but wasn't too worried there would be anything we couldn't figure out.

As the trip approached we were all pumped to get up there and start the trip. We met Wednesday evening at one of our houses, loaded up, and set off for our "adventure". On arrival around 3:00 am we were all pretty wiped. After a little chest puffing and arguing like grumpy old men, we decided to forego any major naps and get this thing started asap. At this point we were going on 24 hours with no sleep, so we were running on pure adrenaline.

Day 1:

From a fishing standpoint this trip started out like gangbusters. By the time we dropped off the shuttle car and returned, the guys that hung back had been fishing for a bit and were doing well. I couldn't get in my kayak soon enough. I paddled upstream a bit and immediately started getting bit. The first 3 hours or so of this trip couldn't have gone any smoother. Everyone had landed a good amount of fish, weather was great, and river conditions were ideal. Then we heard thunder in the distance which kind of foreshadowed some turbulence ahead.

After a torrential downpour for about 30 minutes or so we arrived at our first obstacle. You know you might be in over your head when you see whitewater rafting trips pass by as you approach a rapid. This was a class 2-3 rapid and one I had planned on floating through. I pulled up onto the island that separated the two parts of the rapid to scout it out. As I approached the end I really wasn't too intimidated, but we had 2 guys with us with little to no kayak experience, so I was more worried about getting them through unscathed than anything else.

After doing some planning, 2 of the guys in the inflatable drift boat made it though with no issues. We planned to send the less experienced guys off to the far left chute as it was much less turbulent, but had rocks sticking up all over. This was our first mistake. As Derek (inexperienced guy #1) made it through with minimal problems, Aaron (Inexpereinced guy #2) wasn't so lucky. His 13.5 foot kayak was just too long to navigate without getting pinned in between 2 big rocks. As I watched him from the top of the rapid, I was yelling for him to lean toward the rock and scoot off it, it was too late. His whole kayak filled with water and I watched as a bunch of camping equipment started floating off his boat and through the rapid. I took off in my boat towards him. After almost losing everything in mine I was able to give him a hand and get his boat back operational. He ended up getting stuck again, but another one of our crew was able to get to him and navigate him to safety. After seeing Aaron get suck, I decided to back out and go through the main chute. While this chute was more turbulent, there weren't any rocks protruding out of the water. After making it throught the initial rapid, I thought I had it. Little did I know I was about to get bucked off my kayak like I was on one of those mechanical bulls. As I hit the next portion of the rapid, my kayak got pushed into a wave sideways and I got thrown off into the rock-filled water. I was somehow able to keep my composure and snagged my $500 depth finder/battery pod as it flew into the water and started to sink. I threw it back into my kayak and was able to shove my now passengerless kayak through the rapid into calm water. Meanwhile I was ragdolled through the rest of the rapid and my right leg was beat to a pulp. Luckily, I had my PFD on (which I always have on) and was no worse for the wear besides a few bumps and bruises.

After all that here is the damage:

1 lost Nalgene bottle
1 lost cooler with drinks/food
1 beat up right leg

Ok, we can deal with that. On with the trip.

As we floated down the river it wasn't long before we came to our next obstacle: Piers Gorge. Now, I knew we would be going around this one. This is a legit class IV rapid, and we weren't even thinking about taking it on. The thing I wasn't really sure about was the portage though. As I pulled up to the beach where the portage trail began there were some whitewater rafters/guides hanging out getting ready to take on the gorge. One of the guides named Zack started chatting with me. This dude was a true river OG. You could tell he had been down those falls more times than he could remember. I was asking him how long the portage was, and he was kinda like "good luck dude" so I knew it was going to suck. Not only did we have 3 kayaks with 100+ lbs of gear on them, but we also had a freaking drift boat. Yeah, didnt exactly think that one through. As Chris and Miah (aka, the drift boat gang) pulled up, Zack spoke up and was like "You guys gonna carry that thing?". In the back of my head I was thinking about lugging that big old drift boat down the trail as he said "Sh**, I'll take that thing down the falls!". Without hesitation Chris pipes up and was like "Sure". I was honestly very surprised that Chris would let a stranger take is brand new $6000 drift boat down a class IV rapid, but he did, and he did. No sooner than I topped the peak of the overlook carrying the first load of gear did Zack pop over those falls with nearly a 6' drop and plunged that drift boat right over like it was nothing. Him and a student were leaning over the sides paddling that thing right though this rapid that looked like it was straight out of Jurassic Park or something. I looked over and Chris had both his hands on his head just waiting on them to trash his brand new boat. After they were able to navigate through the worst of it we just kind of looked at each other in disbelief. Did that just freaking happen? Words can't describe how in awe we all were of what just went down. This trip just took a turn for the crazy.

An hour and a half later after lugging all of our gear down the 1/3 mile trail we met Zack at the other side. Just another day for that dude. We were all ready to get on with this excursion though. Zack had asked us how far we were going and I explained that we would be doing straight through to our take-out 25 miles down river. He was like, "How are you gonna get around that dam?". I responded with something like "I guess same way we got around this rapid". After a quick chuckle he let us know that the portage for the dam was approximately 1 mile long and uphill. This day was far from over.

To be continued...