June 3rd, Staff Day - Total Carnige on the River

Well...our boss had the great idea of having a staff day for us... and what else would river guides do on their day off? of course... they spend it on the river! We took the sport yaks out on the river and maybe that wasn't such a good idea. The two man inflatable Kayaks, turned into 7 people, 4 boats, and 6 paddles swimming in the river with in the first 10 minutes of the trip. My boat being one of them, but luckily Paul and I ended up in the eddie behind the hole we flipped on. Paul and I stayed back and helped rescue Chris and Deanna, and eventually kept heading down the river. We stopped at a near by waterfall to make sure everyone was okay to keep heading down the river. As we sat there, we were looking at the river, and some of the debris comming down from the water being so high this day... we saw a 'log' coming down the river, but it seemed to be crossing the river... and at this point my boss yells "Holy Fuck lets get out of here, that's a bear" and sure enough, our juviniell black bear friend was swimming accross the river, right to us. He climbed up on shore, shook himself off and look at us like'what are you guys doing" Coolest thing i've ever seen. So cute too... Anyways, later on down the river, we were all doing fine,heading through the Rock Garden... so far so good and just as we thought we were almost through it, somehow Paul and I ended up in the river before we could even realize what had happened. We ended up flipping on a hole we thought we were past, and Paul was stuck inthe hole with the kayak getting recycled, while i was swimming down the river, between rocks on one side of me and big ledge holes on the other. Lets just say i was not a happy person at that time and was frantically trying to scream at Finn (our boss) to get him to paddle to me before i went over the unavoidable ledge drop that was coming up. Thank god Fin got to me just in time for me to grab his boat as we road over the ledge through the wave together, then paddles to shore. i was so terrified and looking upstream for Paul, who luckily managed to get himself out of the hole and into the kayak to paddle to find me. As soon as paul got to me and finn, i jumped on him and hugged him like there was no tomorrow... we got back into the kayak and took out a little farther down and i got in the truck with the photographer and the others that had quit earlier up the river. After we all got off the river, we went and had lunch and then had a tennis tournament and lots of beer to chat about the days events that turned out rather funny now that you think of it. Anyways... that was our day, and there's more photos to come about it. Cheers!