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Read Mike's article from "The Pueblo West View" newspaper |
Winter paddling in Colorado
Ever since I got my new paddle I've been jonesing to go kayaking. But it's hard to find willing partners at this time of the year. As if the new paddle wasn't enough, my friends Earl and Cheryl (from Colorado Kayak Supply generously gave me a pair of NRS toaster mitts for Christmas, so how could I not go paddling?!
M.A. calls
My friend M.A. called me on Christmas afternoon and said I wouldn't believe what just happened. Her friend John, from Denver, was over for a few days and his nephew Mike just moved to Colorado. Mike was into kayaking, and John said that M.A. should introduce him to her friend Tom (that's me). Mike said, "wait, his name wouldn't be Tom Palka?" Ha ha, turns out that he's the Idaho paddler with whom I exchanged a few emails, making plans to paddle after he got here, Small world... I drove up to M.A.'s house for dinner and met Mike in person.
So, one thing led to another, and with some "Black Bush" single-malt whiskey I proposed we paddle on the weekend. Mike was psyched to do that, and so we made plans to meet at my house at noon on Saturday.
Saturday
Punctually, Mike got to my house at noon, his uncle John was here as well, and so we set out to run the Numbers. Given the weather, we decided to shorten the paddling a bit -- put-in by the commercial spot, and take out just above Number 5. It was a sunny day, low 20F air, and the water was near-freezing. Wind blowing, but from the back. Lots of ice built up on the run, and so it was going to be a creeky run with quick manouvering.
We got to the put-in and started suiting up. John offered to run shuttle for us, which was great -- that way we had someone close-by just in case, and didn't have to deal with hitchhiking, etc. As we were suiting up by the side of the road a car passed by honking the horn. Then another passed by, with a bare-shouldered (or topless, unfortunately they drove by too quickly) girl waving her shirt out the window and screaming. Ha ha ha, I guess we seemed a bit crazy to paddle in that weather!
Next a red station wagon pulled up with the passenger shouting "you need a doctor"! Turns out it was Earl and Cheryl, on their way somewhere north :)
We put on the river, it was on the chilly side, and started paddling. The first drop was pretty bony, but there was quite a bit of space between the ice floes. Breezed through. The second drop wasn't as good.
There are perhaps two small ledges, leading to a drop right above a big (perhaps 20-30 foot tall?) boulder in the middle of the river. I usually paddle left of it, but many people paddle right which works just as well. We couldn't really see past the horizon line, sitting in the eddy, so I told Mike I'd try to go left, and if it didn't look good then he'd see me go right. As I got closer to the drop I saw that the left slot was rather thin, my kayak probably wouldn't even fit, so I moved right, skipped over rocks, and landed in a nice big eddy.
Mike followed me pretty well, but about a half boat's width to the left. The current was a bit faster there, and threw him against the big ice-floe that build up above the rock -- drastically reducing the manouvering space we had. He leaned upstream, away from the ice, got immediately windowshaded, and disappeared under the ice-floe!
The eddy was pretty deep -- I, faster than I ever thought I'd be able to, launched my paddle with the right hand, pulled the skirt with the left mitten-clad hand and pushed my boat out in the same movement. So, within a half second I was chest-deep in the freezing eddy, "running" towards the ice-floe. I took no more than 2-3 steps when I saw that his boat was getting flushed in my direction, and I was able to reach in and grab his arm. I think, sitting now in the safety of my home, that he would have flushed without me there anyways. But, I was there, he had already pulled out of his boat, and so I had him back out of the water super quick. He climbed on the ice-floe by the eddy, feeling OK, but clearly shaken. Ooooof. What a relief -- seemed like those one-two seconds happened both incredibly fast and yet super slow at the same time. I shudder thinking what if that rock had been undercut or the ice formed an underwater span.
We were done -- the first quarter mile offered enough excitement for the day. I fished out my boat from the eddy, walked downstream to find his paddle, and we hiked back to the put-in. While Mike hung out with the equipment I hitched a ride from some fellow Salidians to the take-out, and returned with John and my truck in 10-15 minutes at most. Mike was pretty cold, and as all our gear was frozen solid we couldn't even undo any of the clasps or open the zippers. He sat in the truck, warming up, in all his stuff, while I loaded the rest into the truck and we headed back south to Bongo Billy's for some hot chocolate.
Seeing the very pretty young ladies working at the coffee shop warmed our hearts, the hot chocolate with whipped cream warmed our insides, and so all is good that ends good. I don't think that I'll get to paddle with Mike before May/June, and that's probably just as fine -- I guess there's a deeper reason why I cannot find anyone to paddle with me in the winter, most people are just too smart for it :)
Lessons learned
Just a reminder to self:
- Wear dry-bibs even if you don't think you'll go for a swim. Standing chest-deep in that semi-frozen eddy was comfortable in the bibs, it would have been a major health hazard in my usual lycra leggings and neoprene shorts.
- That also means that wearing better booties might be a good thing. Mine are full of holes, and if I had to stand in the river for 10 more minutes or to hike another mile+ in snow, my feet may have gotten a frost-damaged.
- Ice is dangerous -- don't underestimate it. I did underestimate it, thinking it was (A) thinner and (B) easier to get around. Seems like just the addition of ice made the creeky III+'ish run a solid V, given the consequences and rescue difficulty. We were lucky to be so close to the put-in, and that the boulder/ice-floe were so forgiving.
- Winter paddling is a relative concept. I think that to Mike it was paddling in mid-40F temperatures with similar temperature water. To me that's Alaskan summer paddling, and winter is anything in air colder than 35F. I don't really think that we discussed that either.
Cold gear
Getting out of cold gear is harder than one would think. All the zippers and buckles froze shut. I could stack the gear up one on another if I tried...
The carabiner in the back of my boat froze shut as well, making it rather hard to get the throwbag out. The throwbag itself was frozen anyways, so there's no way I could unwind it -- the rope was so stiff that I could hold the bag up in the air by the long end. Add that to my severely diminished dexterity, and it's kind of like being frozen into gear.
And the famous booties -- while they're almost as thin as rodeo socks for most of the year, perhaps they're not the best choice for winter paddling.
