Lou ran mini kayak clinics in the eddies along the way. Jeff perched himself aboard stu-


dent rafts. His ongoing narrative to them was, “What do you see? Where are you going?” Expedition rafting is all about controlling boat momentum and using the momentum of the river. “Pull down and slow down,” he reminded the students. You don’t charge forward into meaty lines. You don’t flip rafts on purpose. You try to


never flip, ever. A fully-loaded, oar-rigged raft on its roof is a dangerous mess of alumi- num, oars and a truckload of food and equipment. A lost cooler on the Grand Canyon could be 21 days without bacon or beer—no chance of tip for any guide. The Keeper is one of the last of the Temptation rapids. To the left it piles up into


a small rock face. Most of the river goes straight through a maze of boulder islands and then over a ledge creating a smooth, shallow and deceivingly sticky recirculation— the keeper. On a previous low water run, a friend of mine swam out of her kayak in this sleeper of


a hole. While this water level widened and deepened the lines, it also made the current pushier, and the hole munchier—munchy enough to flip our first raft. As the group scur- ried around the river picking up swimmers and bits of gear, it seemed a perfect time for a cup of hot soup and a review lesson on rigging before Poplar Rapids.


mJEFF WROTE IN THE COURSE OUTLINE: guides integrate paddling skills, on-river anagement and logistics planning in a multi-day whitewater trip format. Students learn


logistics, planning for transportation, gear management and group travel. On-river group management integrates kayak and oar rig safety in a technical river setting. Multi-day trips take what they’ve learned in skills and rescue courses and plays it out in real life. We’d just had a little taste of that. Twenty-five years ago my first guide manager told my group of trainees after an inten-


sive two-week course that we didn’t know shit until we’d been guiding for at least two years. “You guys haven’t screwed up enough to know what you’re doing,” he shouted at us. “If you stick with it long enough you may eventually become competent river guides.” That was a tough pill to swallow when I was 21. If I ran into him today, I’d buy him a beer. Jeff acknowledges the limits to technical training courses. In a recent Outdoor Ad-


venture program review, employers of graduates recommended that students get more expedition experience. They saw great value in expeditions for building leadership skills, judgment and competence. Competence is different than understanding. Competence is being able to apply what you know in whatever situations arise.


e THE LEFT CHANNEL OF THE 800-METER-LONG POPLAR RAPIDS began as we’d xpected. Shallow and spread out. Boney. I cursed the tiny unavoidable pillows hidden


everywhere just below the surface. They snagged the floor and bumped the blades of my oars. Rob and I were way out in the middle when we both got the feeling. “I don’t like this,”


was all Rob had to say. I didn’t either. We’d gotten the willies and started booking it for the river left shore. I looked upstream to signal the others; they’d already figured it out and were moving left. Our gentle class II sneak route was now constricted between the flooded riverbanks


and a rock in the middle the size of the passenger van we rode in on. The approach from where we were tied up was sticky. The drop folded over into a hole with another hole right below stretching out past middle from the right shore. The rest below, as far as we could see, was shallow, fast moving and disappeared down and around another bend. We were way off the typical route and nowhere near a portage trail. Lou and her kay- akers bushwhacked their boats through the thick balsam and cedar trees. Rob and I ran our raft first. The slot was


narrow so we removed our oars from the oarlocks and paddle guided our 14-footer over the drop. The front tubes buried in the seam throwing Rob forward over the front tubes and damn near in the drink. I held him in the raft by his PFD long enough for the boat to come back to level and drain so we could get left to avoid the second hole, get to shore and help set up safety.


Adrian was a strong student guide with a keen eye for reading water. It was decided


he’d run the next boat with Lou. Their 15-foot raft was pushed wide and off line at the top and it came over the lip side-


ways. The seam of the pourover swallowed the downstream tube and the momentum pushed the raft up and over on top of them. This could be really bad. Whistles screamed over the roar of the water. At first we couldn’t see either of the


swimmers. It was shallower than we’d expected. The frame, and gear beneath, bounced off the river bottom and possibly off their heads. As the boat bounced past, Lou sur- faced upstream and was trying to slow the raft down so Adrian could swim free. I dove in the current and the two of us were able to stop the raft from carrying on further downstream. Adrian was still underneath. We feared he was pinned between the raft and the rocky bottom. I hoped he was safely tucked up into one of the upside down compartments.


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