Trip Leader:  Jon Almquist; attendees: Claire Hews, Nick and Katie Newhall, Dale Bonson, Rick Schoen, Toria Matteson, Laura Orr, Shanna Gachen

"The adventure started when we broke the ax . . ."

By Jon Almquist

The adventure started when we broke the ax chopping the tree out of the road so we could get to Matheny in the first place…. You could tell it was a good crew when everyone jumped into action without second thoughts, getting scratched and scuffed as we dealt with the minor road blockage. Right then and there I knew the trip was bound to be memorable!

By Dale Bonson

Oh Boy!!

Upper Matheny class IV (feelin’ a little IV+ ish at times), which I ran with John Almquist, his partner in crime Claire, and Nick. We had to trudge through a mile or so of marshy dense forest to get to the creek.  Entertaining and a little fast paced, but could be done slower if we hadn’t had to be in a rush to get down, due to daylight time restraints.

Once on the creek, what a blast, it ran through a shallow, watershed style gorge with mossy views and many small streams coming in from all directions.  The creek started out with a couple of class III type ledges, which we easily scraped down and then it quickly became pool-drop, three to five foot ledges, class IV.

With our time crunch we didn’t get out of our boats, but were given precise instructions on where to go and how to run the ledges by Jon or Nick, right down to where to place each paddle stroke. If there was any scouting to be done it was Jon who jumped out, surveyed the drop, and sent Nick down to see if the plan was OK.  Then he herded us through.

I’ve never run anything in that fashion before, but it was pretty cool.  I didn’t have to get all worked up about the drops; just go! Nothing like paddling up to a horizon line having no clue what the drop looks like, reading, running and hoping I saw the right line while saying a few Hail Mary’s or praying to whatever god seemed fitting at that particular moment.

I had a pretty clean run, well OK, except the last class IV drop.  I missed a stroke and flipped at the bottom, threw a back deck roll to get up quick (not a good habit on a creek run).

I didn’t hit anything and I ran the next ledge clean.

We met up with the Middle crew, or at least Shanna, at the put-in for the Middle section.  Rick was the only other kayaker “sort” of present.

He was hanging from the cliff half-way down, like Tarzan.