WhiteWater Adventure

Well I went up North to see my buddy Mike. We went on Saturday morning to look at a little opiece of land on the upper Sturgeon River near River Valley. Neat little spot.



After that we took my buddies canoe up to the rapids on Sturgeon. We had been watching that stretch as a potential for boating. We decided that we would run that stretch of river in the after noon.

We left my car on the side of the logging road and drove the canoe to the top stretch of the river.There we embarked on the incredible journey.

The scenery was spectacular and we were quite excited to reach the fast water. My buddy Mike is an expert Kayak er. He was not at all concerned about what lay ahead. I've done a bit of whitewater and survived so I was up for the challenge. I made the cognicent decision of not putting my camera in the dry container as I wanted the shots. We did lash down the cooler and the dry container.

The black flies were horrific. Thats a bug jacket in the front of the boat. It wasnt needed....yet.

You will notice that in this pic the camera seems a lttle foggy. Thats what happens after it has been dunked, submerged and dragged across rocks in the spring run off rapids. So my buddy the expert helmsman was shouting out the orders. He was holloring left,left,left,right,right,left,hold,hold,left,fast,faster,fast,

shit...swim...swim..hahha. You better beleive it...we sunk the ship!

We took in more and more water until finally the last wave flooded us. It was crazy. We both got bruised up abit. We lost everything that wasnt lashed in. We hung on and then righted the vessal in shallow water and hit the river again, this time in search of our belongings. We found the life jackets, the paddles, the bug jackets. We didnt find the bale bucket or MIkes boots.

We laughed and laughed at our stupidity. As we were counting the costs I realized...one more tragedy......MY CELL PHONE...ha. DagNabitt I lose more cell phones that way!

As we hit the last stretch in the river we encountered another decent set of rapids. We navigated the first OK but took on a little too much water. As we went over the three footer the nose of the canoe dove in like a submarine and slipped out of site! Ha...NOT AGAIN! Yes again. The canoe slipped out of our site and then back up. It was like 30 feet deep and we had nothing to grab onto or to stand on. We tried to swim it to shore. My buddy Mike was shouting that we abandon ship and head for shore. Hypothermia was setting in and we were both quite numb. We yelled push push as we tried to swim the boat to shore and out of the next rapids. We finally reached shore and then we noticed the boat.

We had put 4 large breaks in the hull. They looked to me like the 4 marks that would happen if a canoe got got folded like a pretzel and touched end to end. Sure I am embellishing the story a bit, BUT, we did ruin that Canoe. It was practically brand new. It cost Mike $1600.00

As we were sitting around his kitchen table laughing and licking our wounds I said... "You know Mike. Some people would pay $1000's of dollars for an experience like that!" He said.....WE JUST DID!...haha good thing he was at the helm and not me!