Ooof, we woke up with not enough sleep and too much of a hangover. Today was Matanuska day -- this stretch, as a big water class IV, was too intimidating for me last year. But now the river was lower (1600 cfs?), and I paddled a lot in between.
First day of funk -- Brian graciously offered to throw some of my gear into the dryer with his stuff -- thus passing the stink of his gear to mine!
Meeting at Carrs -- we picked up some munchies for the day, still had some smoked salmon that Steve and Rick caught earlier this year. I had a big portion of shrimp fried rice and gen. Tzao's chicken for breakfast, soon we were all there and moved on.
Again, we drove out to the Matanuska Glacier. Today the group was: Brian, Eric, Jody, Chris Christensen, and myself. The river is fed by glacial melt from Matanuska Glacier, and so it's full of gray-silverish silt, and very cold. I decided to wear my thin fleece pants and waders (being that I don't own dry bottoms), and it was decidedly too much. I was way too hot, and ended up stripping down to a polypro top and drytop.
We started on Clear Creek, a mile's paddle away from the Matanuska. Lion's Head has a bunch of drops in it, and we scouted the first few. Maybe I was being too cocky, but I felt very comfortable running the drops first. Just call me The Probe :) The water was low enough not to be particularly pushy, and the holes were reasonably visible. White foam on silverish water isn't that visible, but it was good enough.
Towards the end we spent a fair amount of time on a playwave -- it wasn't too sticky, but it was possible to do a flat spin. Eric ruled in that department.
As always, the run was fun. We took out in the early evening, and dried our gear as much as possible to minimize the funk. It didn't work too well. Looked like a yard sale.
