{"id":236,"date":"2009-06-07T23:31:28","date_gmt":"2009-06-08T06:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ireneskayakingblog.com\/?p=236"},"modified":"2009-06-07T23:35:35","modified_gmt":"2009-06-08T06:35:35","slug":"love-the-wenatchee-river-at-12000-cfs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ireneskayakingblog.com\/paddle-trips\/love-the-wenatchee-river-at-12000-cfs\/","title":{"rendered":"Love the Wenatchee River at 12,000 cfs!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I was just amazed by how ‘close’ Leavenworth and the Wenatchee River are to Seattle, even though it’s around a 2.5 hour drive.\u00a0 I was supposed to get up at 5 a.m. to drive up and\u00a0meet Butch and Clea for a short run, putting in at Turkey Shoot, but instead (in my defense, I was doing work online until 2 a.m.) I woke up at 6:36 exactly.<\/p>\n

Truth be told, I did lie there for a few minutes debating whether or not to bag the whole idea, but I had a feeling things would work out and hustled out the door swiftly by 8 a.m.\u00a0 Butch left directions for Turkey Shoot, there was conveniently a police arrest going on right at the spot where I got lost (I felt kind of bad pulling up to 4 squad cars and a guy in handcuffs just to ask for directions – but hey, I was lost), and it turned out to be an amazing day.<\/p>\n

\"Scenery
Scenery from the beautiful Teanaway area on the drive home.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The crazy thing is that nearly exactly 12 hours after I woke up I was pulling back into my garage.\u00a0 Around 5 hours of driving, 5 hours on the Wenatchee River, and 2 hours of farting around car shuttling, plus hacking an inch off of my footpads with a bread knife at the put-in.\u00a0 All WELL worth it.<\/p>\n

With the Wenatchee at around 12,000 cfs, Turkey Shoot was this big, friendly fluff-pile of a surf wave that just pulled you around and made it really easy to get sideways and backwards.\u00a0 The reason I know this is that I had no actual intention of side-surfing and I wasn’t actually trying\u00a0 to back-surf\u00a0 most of the times I ended up doing both of those things. :)<\/p>\n

Mike Peele and I did another full run after everybody left, and it was a blast.\u00a0 The waves were huge, but the river seemed easier overall than when I did it at 5,000 cfs.\u00a0 (Either that, or I’m getting much better – realistically, odds are on Theory #1.)<\/p>\n

Snowblind was a hoot with a line through the middle, and on Drunkard’s Drop Mike actually got stopped at the top of a wave and slid back down it as I blew past him.\u00a0 He back-surfed it and then spun forward to ferry out of it, which is pretty impressive, especially\u00a0seeing as he only started paddling\u00a0last year.<\/p>\n

We passed on Rodeo Hole, which only had a small line-up and looked like it would have eaten me for lunch.\u00a0 Some of the whirpools we saw in eddy lines along the way were pretty frightening too.\u00a0 Apparently Scott Richardson and a friend got caught up in one yesterday, and the people who immediately decided to not share in that experience reported seeing nothing but the tips of kayak bows and paddles flailing.\u00a0 Fortunately they made it out OK, but seeing as Scott is amazing at bracing and even he thought he was going to be in trouble, I can just imagine it was pretty hairy.<\/p>\n

\"Views
Views near Snoqualmie Pass on the way back.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Overall, I love the Wenatchee River!\u00a0 It’s a III (and not a IV) for a reason.\u00a0 Even though the waves are huge, they’re friendly and, at least at this level, they leave you plenty of time to figure out what to do with them.\u00a0 In\u00a0my opinion it’s easier than the swirly Lower Green above 2000 cfs,\u00a0which is only a II+\/III.<\/p>\n

(When I worked on fishing boats on the Bering Sea a long time ago I learned that choppy 15 foot waves from a recent storm can be harder to deal with than the spaced-apart 25 foot rollers that you often get from a storm that has been going for a long time.\u00a0 I’m always reminded of this when I do the Wenatchee.)<\/p>\n

So, here’s something to consider:<\/p>\n

In the course of a normal day 12 hours can fly by and leave you wondering what in the world you actually got done.\u00a0 Days like today create memories you remember forever.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I understand it’s not realistic to take off with\u00a0a kayak every day of the week, but today reminded me of how much you can squeeze out of 12 hours, and how\u00a0important it is to make\u00a0the effort (as in, dragging yourself\u00a0out of bed after\u00a04 hours of sleep\u00a0 to arrive somewhere late)\u00a0to put yourself into situations that can create those kinds of memories.\u00a0 And of course it’s not guaranteed to be great – and sometimes things end up sucking – but that’s just part of the deal.<\/p>\n

Some of my best memories are of events that, on the day I was supposed to get started, I really wanted to just stay home.\u00a0 Not a bad thing to keep in mind. :)<\/p>\n

\"Four
These guys get an 'A' in the 'Sure, we've got room for one more boat' department.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I was just amazed by how ‘close’ Leavenworth and the Wenatchee River are to Seattle, even though it’s around a 2.5 hour drive.\u00a0 I was supposed to get up at 5 a.m. to drive up and\u00a0meet Butch and Clea for a short run, putting in at Turkey Shoot, but instead (in my defense, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[65,38,51,23,72,13,56,54],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ireneskayakingblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ireneskayakingblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ireneskayakingblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ireneskayakingblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ireneskayakingblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ireneskayakingblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ireneskayakingblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ireneskayakingblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ireneskayakingblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ireneskayakingblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}