A chance to reflect

I don´t know who created the calendar we used, or why they chose to break things up the way they did. Not that I care, but placing the turnover to a new year where it is seems a little odd. Why isn´t it scheduled with a solstice or equinox somewhere along the line? Or perhaps the day Pangea finally split apart? That was certainly the dawning of a new era, eh? We could celebrate that annually with parades, fireworks, and belligerence. But most importantly, why is the new year scheduled so inconveniently that I have to take the time right now to do this? Reflect.

Ok, so what to reflect on. Well, guess. What am I completely obsessed with such that it consumes most of my time, money, creativity, and all my time to think freely? Boating, of course. As I hang out down here in Chile and the new year encroaches, I´ve taken a chance to look back at the year I´ve had. 2008 was by far my best season of whitewater yet. In fact, it´s quite possible that I´ll never again live up to the season I´ve had. At least statistically speaking.

The following post is really more for myself than anyone else. But if you´re interested in my quick little recap of a great season, join on in.

Saddle Creek, Grand Canyon

The year started out for me waking up somewhere around mile 238 in the Grand Canyon. We made mamosas. But the important thing was being down there for three and a half weeks with 15 other great people.

It really is a very grand canyon

After the trip, I returned to Corvallis for the winter. Boating there didn´t happen for me, but I made plenty of trips south to Ashland or north to Portland to visit friends and explore the local rain-fed runs. By the time the term ended at OSU, I was done. I left Corvallis with my car and savings from the winter, with my eyes on very little beyond new rivers.

Ready for some All-Tracking

Oregon Hole Gorge, MF Smith

Overnighting the lower McCloud

I spent much of my time in Northern California, but also paddled about some in Oregon and Washington, with trips on the Illinois, Rogue, Canyon Creek, Mollala and White Salmon.

Peter Gandesberry, NF Cal-Salmon

Big Kahuna on Canyon Creek, WA

Ryan Morgan, NF Molalla hike-in

Oregon Rafting Team in the Cal-Salmon Race

Darin on one of many, many Box Canyon laps

My favorite move on my favorite run: Upper Clear Creek

Green Wall Rapid, Illinois River

Green Wall Rapid, Illinois River

As May ground onward, I found myself enjoying hot, sunny days from the Cal-Salmon to Pauley Creek.

Darin McQuoid, Kidder Creek

Disneyland rapid, SF Cal-Salmon

But after an unfortunate swim in Federal Falls at flood, I decided to take a little break from boating. Afterall, it was only a couple weeks before the commercial season started for me in Idaho. And it started with a bang.

I was a little thrown off by the colder weather and water when I put in on Marsh Creek in late May without pogies. But a couple days later, I was no longer risking frostbite and was happy to be kayaking on the Middle Fork at 6 feet with the OARS training trip. Over the course of those 13 days, I strung together the entire Salmon sequence, from Marsh Creek above 6,000 feet to Heller Bar on the Snake below 1,000. Altogether, the trip was over 300 miles long. As the Salmon was where I got my start with whitewater, it has always been a dream of mine to run do all three popular wilderness runs as one trip. As an extra bonus, I got to see Devil´s Slide at 40,000 cfs and have a first-hand account of the rapid that keeps people off the river at half that flow!

Dropping into the Slide at high water

It was a busy work season for me with leading several trips and spending a little too much time on the Lower Salmon instead of the Main and Middle Fork. Luckily, I was able to maintain sanity on days off with trips on the South Fork Salmon, Lochsa, and Kootenai rivers.



At the beginning of Summer, very few of us had concrete plans for the fall. Throughout the season, we would discuss options over cocktails at the guide house and ultimately, Mike, Zak and I agreed on Peru after our work was done. So just before I launched on another Grand Canyon trip, we bought tickets.

Mike and I ran a couple laps on the Green Truss on our way to LAX to meet with Zak and fly out. Getting our boats on the plane was a bit of a struggle, but everything worked out in the end and by October 7th, we were happily moved into a hostal in Cusco looking for the next river. Over the course of the next two months, we found our way down ten different runs including five overnighters. We topped off our stint in Peru with the classic Colca-Cotahuasi circuit and made tracks for Chile.

Toothache rapid, Apurimac River

Beers under banana trees at the takeout


Black Canyon, Apurimac River



Peruvian children loved our boats



Locked in to the Lucumayo



Portaging through Ollantaytambo



Figuring out the Mapacho



One of countless good rapids on the best river anywhere: the Mapacho

Mike and Zak had been in Chile four years ago, so they had a good idea of where to go. The day after arriving in town, I met up with some locals for a morning run on the local classic, the upper Palguin. It´s a short-and-sweet run with three clean drops, and I ran my first 20-footer that day. It was the perfect place to get used to running waterfalls, which have been the focus of most of our travels around Pucon. After a couple weeks hanging out in town with more runs on the Palguin, we took off for our Christmas road trip.

Falling on the Fuy



Allen on the Llancahue


Zak, Upper Palguin, Drop 2
Blue Angels on the Fuy


Zak finishing off the best rapid I´ve ever run. Río Gol Gol

Christmas day was my last day on the water for the season, with a great warm day on the Fuy. In the week leading up to it, we also ran the Llancahue, Gol-Gol, and the Negro. I ran the first rapid on the Lizan, but don´t quite count that as a full day of boating. So here´s the count:

Total days on the water: 174
Unique runs: 52
Personal first descents: 36
Gear lost/broken: 1 paddle, 1 helmet, 1 mosquito net, 1 cotton sock, some foam blocks, a door on Tupper´s Subaru.
Degrees of lattitude covered: 93
Runs missed out on that I´ll get next time: MF Feather, Clear Creek Headwaters, Bridge Creek, Wooley Creek, NF Feather, SF Yuba

Thanks for reading!

I just love this picture too much to not post it again!

Come out and vote!

The new poll on TeamKettle requires a bit of an explanation, so here´s the latest update on my travels in South America. My return flight is scheduled for the day after tomorrow. I have decided to stay down here longer so I can run the legendary Futaleufu River in the southern part of the country. Now I´ve encountered some obstacles with returning home.

After severals hours of outrageously intimidating phone conversations in spanish, I was finally able to speak with the right person at the airlines and successfully communicate my desire to change the date of my ticket. Much to my dismay, the charge for such a simple maneuver turned out to be much more that I had anticipated: somewhere around $1,000. And then I would still have to spend $150 and four days getting to Lima, a city I have no desire to return to.

So now my search has begun to find an alternative way to get home. Here are the options that jump out at me immediately.

1) Get a new flight
After a few minutes online, I was able to find a more affordable ticket one-way from Santiago to LAX. This would be the easiest, but least adventurous option imaginable.

2) Take a boat
I don´t really know anything about this one, but the travels of my uncles Bob and Rob have gotten me thinking: it could be pretty neat to spend 10 days cruising back north via the great Pacific Ocean, with a few days in port at various cities. But I would imagine a cruise to be a tad cost-prohibitive.

3) Drive
How stupid of me would it be to spend a bunch of money on a truck, plan on driving it the 10,000 kilometers back to California, then have it break down in Colombia, if it even made it that far? But I really do want one of the pickups everyone down here has......

4) Ride
Perhaps it would be even stupider (though cheaper) to buy a motorcycle, learn how to ride it, and spend a few weeks on the saddle working my way through all of South and Central America.

5) Hitch
Alternately, I could stick my thumb out there on the Pan-American Highway and see who I meet. It could save me a lot of money unless I get into some real trouble. Like a kidnapping or something!

6) Give up
It sure would be convenient if I just fell in love with some beautiful Argentinean lady who loved cooking and wanted to take me and my friends kayaking on a regular basis. Then I wouldn´t have to worry about this travelling nonsense.

So look over the options, think about them, and cast a vote in the little box in the right-hand column of the blog homepage. If you have another idea I haven´t yet considered, leave a comment. Let´s see how creative everyone can get!

The New Flavor on the Block

I was wondering through our local market the other day. It was a normal shopping experience. But, as I was perusing the beer and chip aisle I was struck by a huge surprise. Kettle came out with a new flavor! Sweet Onion! Oh momma I was excited. Of course I bought a bag to acompany my six pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and headed home. The pairing was great.
The chips are definitely more sweet then oniony, but have a perfect onion finish. I ate the whole bag and drank the hole six pack in the one sitting. I was left wanting more!

(photo courtesy of Kettle Foods)

Sweet Onion is a great new addition from Kettle Foods and I look forward to eating another bag soon!

Smalls Portugal?

One of our favorite young rippers studying abroad in Portugal for this school year. Ben Smalls is an up-and-coming snowboarder, kayaker, mountain biker, and awesome dude. While Ben is in Portugal he is maintaining a really cool blog, so we wanted everyone to check it out!

The link is: Ben in Portugal

We hope you enjoy!

Halloween 2008

If you saw last year's Halloween post, then you already know that Halloween in Ashland is a BIG deal. If you didn't then take our word for it. Much of Ashland, and those from far and wide, pour into the city center for a huge party in the plaza. Around 2,000 people show for the festivities in the downtown of our small town. Every bar is packed to the brim and the bartenders can hardly keep up with the demand of libations. Of course, we celebrated in style. Travis dressed as Oscar the Grouch. Verelle dressed as Ursula.

Río Mapacho: V - Day 4

The gettin´ gits good!

As we staggered into camp the previous afternoon exhausted from portaging half of the last three km, we were pretty unenthused to see the next rapid. Just below camp, the river divided around, under, and through more big boulders in a steep drop. It seemed like the seives of Orange Canyon continued for quite some distance. Upon closer inspection, however, the rapid looked very manageable. We got to start our day off with a steep class V, one of the best rapids of the trip.

The rapid, dubbed ¨Buenas Dias,¨ was particularly intimidating because our warm-up consisted of a dicy seal launch and paddling around in a 20-foot pool above the rapid. The twisting channel was only about 5 feet wide and required a couple boofs into cross-currents, the second one landing between a sticky hole and an undercut. In the end, we all made our way through the rapid unscathed with big smiles, and started looking forward to the day to come.

Peruvian topo maps are most widely available in the 30´quadrangle series. The entire run on the Río Mapacho spans five of these maps; we were able to get one of them. Conveniently, we arrived on the map the day before, around lunchtime. The map indicated that our gradient was tapering off from the afternoon before, but we still had five kilometers to Puente Sahuay, the landmark indicating the end of Orange Canyon. In spite of a great wake-up rapid, we were fearing a torturous morning of portages.

Below Buenas Dias, the river indeed opened up. We took turns leading through class III boulder gardens until a horizon line where one of us got out to scout. It turned out to be another clean class IV with a great boof. Such was the character of the river for the next several miles. The enormous orange boulders disappeared and gave way to black gorge walls. We saw fewer and fewer undercuts and, to our delight, not a single portage.

Mike and Kase below Orange Canyon. You can sort of make out the elevation drop of the rapid hidden behind the river-right wall

We had a few more scouts and plenty of good class III/IV whitewater leading up to the welcome sight of the Puente Sahuay bridge.

The road doesn´t cross here, but does come within a few hundred feet of the river on the left. From here it switchbacks up and out of the canyon, into the neighboring Yantile River valley which is more populated. This is an optional take-out/resupply/evacuation point, but traffic is non-existent and the hike out would be....long.

Zak at Puente Sahuay

Below Puente Sahuay, we enjoyed several more miles of continuous, mindless class III boogey water. We were all able to relax a bit and pound out some much needed miles (We were already a full day behind the 7-day schedule.) We left Puente Sahuay around 10:30 and by noon, we were cold, hungry, and opted for a long lunch break. It may not have been the best time to subject ourselves to food comas, because some of the biggest whitewater of the trip waited just downstream. Just before lunch we stopped briefly to talk with a local who was setting up his fishing lines. He gave us a bunch of fresh oranges and avocados. When we inquired about what lay downstream, ¨mas saltos,¨(more waterfalls) he said. ¨Mas saltos.¨

We didn´t really know what to expect, but the topo map indicated a single kilometer dropping 50m, a gradient of 250 fpm. Shortly after lunch we saw why. We arrived at a major horizon line, with no view of the river below, except for the huge boulders and narrow canyon. Scouting looked great on the left so I made my way over to an eddy. Kase and Dave on the other hand, seemed to be considering boat scouting. Kase hovered just above the lip of the drop giving it a close look, then looked at us with a big grin and disappeared over the edge with a right boof stroke.

I didn´t know what to think, but Kase seemed to feel it was good to go. One by one, Dave and Zak followed suit and vanished. I joined Mike in the ¨scouting¨eddy and was able to see the rest of the team down below. About 20 vertical feet below. Intimidating as the gradient was, we were getting hand signals that it was clean. Mike dropped off next leaving me separated from the group by a steep, unscouted class V drop.

Mike on the entrance ledge. The boulders obsure the view of the bottom half of this drop.

From the pool above I couldn´t see much of the first drop, but they said boof left. I could see that the second part was a slide with a tight line between piton rocks and the right wall. After that, no ideas. So I took a couple breaths and went for it. I got a running start towards the lip and launched off the ten-footer with a hard boof. I kept the boat flat in the air, landed with a loud splat and started driving right for the next slide.

I don´t even remember the rest of the rapid. I went screaming past the other guys in an eddy below the slide and I vaguely recollect going deep into a pillow and resurfacing like a breaching whale, only upright. Or perhaps it was more like a dolphin saying ¨so long and thanks for all the fish.¨ Anyway, I kept the upside up and parked in a pool below feeling elated with what was by far the largest drop I´d ever run blind.

Mike on a rapid shortly below the big one

For the next half-mile or so, we continued to run class IV+ and V rapids without scouting, thanks to incredible probe work and good communication from Kase. Eventually the class V´s vanished and we kept momentum going through several miles of good class IV whitewater.

Mike evading focus but nailing a boof

Around three in the afternoon, we started looking for a camp and quickly stumbled upon a great beach hidden by boulders. We lost a lot of elevation today, and the canyon was starting to show signs of the jungle. Namely, a banana tree in camp, a small plot of coca (as in cocaine) plants, and spiders the size of my hand.

Río Paucartambo/Mapacho: V - Day 2

The Fun Begins.........Then Ends Abruptly

If you haven´t read it, start with day 1.

We woke up in the morning, did our morning business, and eventually had our boats loaded up and on the water. Right out of camp we rounded a corner, passed under a swinging footbridge, and left the arid braided river valley for good. The vegetation turned distinctly greener, but was of course nothing compared to the jungle to come.

The river flowing through a greener canyon

We also got to some of our first rapids. The morning was mostly manky class III/IV with a few fun moves and no scouts. It proved perfect for our team to learn to paddle with each other and get used to the heavy boats. Since all the weight was in my stern, my Hero actually boofed pretty well several times, so I had that going for me.


One of the earlier boulder gardens

The day wore on slowly with more boulder gardens toward the afternoon. The whitewater already didn´t match the description we brought with us at all, but around 2 pm we arrived at what we presumed was the ¨first class V.¨

At our flow it wasn´t too difficult, but extra manky. The river divided and dropped steeply through a boulder garden with tight channels. We started boat-scouting through the first few meters. Kase and I went for a channel on the right while the other boys went left. I hung out in an eddy while Kase probed and soon he was out of sight.

I never saw him again to get beta and couldn´t tell if he was safely through the rapid. Dave on the other hand, was through and Mike gave me a signal that his side was fine, so I made my way back left. When I got there, Mike was out of his boat scouting. Zak seemed to be portaging. Dave and Kase were out of sight. Mike told me the line was scrapy, but fine and pointed me through a good channel to the next eddy.

Mike finishing off the steep rapid

I hopped out to scout the next drop while Zak continued dragging his boat around the drop. When Mike caught up to me, he filled me in on the situation. Zak had probed, gotten pinned, and dropped his paddle. It had taken off downstream so Dave and Kase had given chase looking for it.

Mike and I finished off the rapid, met Zak below, and got out Mike´s breakdown for him. The three of us then charged ahead, running one more scrapy class IV rapid before catching Dave and Kase. They hadn´t seen the paddle either. We doubted it could have stayed far ahead of us and imagined it was upstream still: in an eddy or pinned under a rock.

It was already 3:00 so we decided to camp there and search for the paddle for the rest of the afternoon. We split up to both sides of the river, leaving one person at camp to watch the river, and hiked back upstream. It was only a half-mile back up to the rapid, but still took us over an hour to scour the eddies. After thorough searching, we ultimately returned to camp defeated and prepared another dinner.

Gearing down at the end of the day

So there we were. After only eight days of paddling in Peru, we had already broken/lost two paddles between the four of us. Both of our breakdowns were now in use and we still had eight more days of reportedly difficult whitewater ahead of us with only a couple of known bail-out options. Kase still had a spare paddle, but I still went to sleep that night wondering if this Paucartambo mission was really such a great idea.......

on to day 3

Río Paucartambo/Mapacho: V - Day 1

A Grand Farewell

It´s not like we knew any of them, but we seemed to be pretty big news for the residents of the colonial pueblo of Paucartambo. Hundreds of people gathered on the historic stone bridge and the village flood walls to watch our departure, ignoring the local parade a couple blocks over. Here were five gringos sitting in colorful plastic potatoes talking about travelling by river from their mountain town to the jungle 8,000 feet below. Since its first descent in 1986, there have likely only been about ten complete descents of the Paucartambo River, several of which have started further downstream and the end of the valley. It´s entirely possible that many of these locals have never seen kayakers before, hence their excitement to play with our equipment and wave us off into the canyon.

Anticipation for this trip had been building for over a month when we first discussed this run amongst other Peruvian destinations. Initially, I was only moderately serious about considering the Paucartambo. The three pictures I´d seen looked pretty, but write-ups warned of strenuous portaging over unstable landslides, continuous class V dropping 250 feet/mile, and something about an unscoutable, unportageable class VI gorge. However, as our team assembled and we acquired more beta, our hopes rose and we started planning our entire trip around running the Paucartambo before the rainy season hit.

This river goes by many names. Road maps and kayakers refer to it as the Paucartambo. Locally, it´s known as the Mapacho for much of its length until the final stretches where it winds through the jungle under the name Yavero. Our put-in was at nearly 10,000 feet above sea-level and over the course of 230 km (140 miles) the river drops to around 1,500 feet near the edge of the Amazonian Rainforest. Other teams had completed the run in five to eight days with full days on the water and strong teams. This is a full-on expedition with some fairly daunting statistics indeed.

Zak marvels at a trash avalanche into the river, reminding us that we´re still roadside

With our group of five, we chose to pack for ten days, nine nights on the water and take it slow, especially the first couple of days. The quantity of food in addition to our camping and emergency gear meant the heaviest boat I´d ever paddled. I had a trash bag full of bread sitting in my lap just to make everything fit in. Fortunately, the first day didn´t challenge us with any real whitewater.

Mike draws the attention of more locals downstream in the valley

After leaving the crowded bridge at Paucartambo, we started working our way through the 15 miles of braided channels and gravel bars in the lower end of this agricultural valley. After an hour or so, a local farmer waved us down to chat. We told him what we were up to and he offered us some of the hot boiled potatoes he was having for lunch.

Around 3:00, we had passed the town of Challabamba and the end of the real road, so we decided to call it a day. We found plenty of firewood to cook up our no-frills meal of soup and lentils, then got some rest for the next day´s whitewater.

on to day 2