I took Stephen’s demo All-Star, so we became the “All-Star Crew” for the day.
The first rapid was uneventful, some class 2 thingie-ma-bob. We paddled up to an eddy to scout the next rapid, which was frighteningly named “Lucifers”. As we were walking up the trail to take a look, Stephen asked if anyone brought a throw-bag, and Nick asked if we knew CPR. I was freaking out inside!
Lucifers had a fun wave to surf at the top, followed by a second wave just left of the first one. Below those two waves was a hole called Lefties, and a HUGE munchy hole on the river right side called Lucifers Anus. (Or, the “bum-hole of Satan” as Nick was helpful enough to explain). It looked like somewhere I did NOT want to go!
They told me I could surf the upper two waves and then drop into Lefties if I wanted. Nick went first, and after he flushed downstream, I went. I was afraid of accidently flipping above and being pushed into Lucifer’s Anus, so at the last minute decided not to surf anything and just paddle through. A curler flipped me closer to the bottom and I got dragged a little in the shallow part, but it wasn’t that bad.
Another rapid later on was a river-wide scary hole except for a sneak on the river left side. We basically had to hug the rock wall and paddle down a little chute. I was terrified that I would get sucked into the hole, but made it out safely.
We arrived at High Tension. This was a STEEP wave with very little to worry about below. I surfed it three times and had a lot of fun, but wasn’t feeling great so spent the majority of the time on shore taking still photos. Once I would catch the wave, it felt like a 10 foot drop from the top of the foam pile down into the trough. What fun!

I’m all giggles.. wheee!
The next rapid was called the wall, where there was a river-wide wall of water that we had to punch through. Nick described it like this: “I saw Stephen come over the wall and then saw the bow of your boat go up in the air and back down. I didn’t see you after that and thought ‘uh, oh, Jen’s surfing'”. Yeah I was! But I held on and was fine.
All in all it was a great day, the weather was warm, the river was fun (and nearly empty). I would really like to go back and run it again sometime soon now that I know what to expect I think I would have a better time!
Here is a link to Stephen’s Trip Report: http://www.jacksonkayak.com/jkarticles05/article.cfm?article=200607241