Many nice photos like this one on the River Gypsies Burn review post.

Leland posted a link on Professor Paddle to his nice review of the 2010 Pyranha Burn, here’s a link to his blog post with the entire Pyranha Burn review on the River Gypsies website.  There are a lot of good photos and he goes into quite a bit of depth about the various paces he put the boat through.

To my unschooled eye it’s hard to tell much difference between the old and the new version, but he and some commenters on the Professor Paddle thread definitely seem to be able notice them.  I think it’s pretty hard to go wrong with the Burn overall, Charles from AquaSports in Redmond says it’s the one boat that in 15 years he’s had only one person return because they didn’t like it, and everyone seems to rave about it as a creekboat.

After doing Tumwater the last two weekends I can definitely say I learned to fall in love with my previous-version Burn, even though I’m still portaging POW and man is it a pain to lug around!  Yesterday I was definitely weighing the disadvantages of possibly losing a tooth on that rapid versus the hassle of dragging the Burn up and over boulders on the river right portage – which is actually even easier than the perilous scramble down to the river if you do that portage on river left.  The tooth won out, but it was a close call….

Anyway, in the past I’ve gotten a little resentful taking the Burn out on the Skykomish to get used to it because I love to do that upper run in a playboat, but as soon as I got on the Tumwater run I loved it.  Mike Peele, who did Tumwater for the first time with me the previous weekend had the exact same reaction about his Burn – we kind of looked at each other at the same time and said, “I love this boat!”.  Although, a lot of people do that run in playboats (and Rob McKibbin of course makes bobbing blithefully down Class V+ Exit rapid look easy in his Dagger Kingpin).  But he’s around to keep the rest of us humble.

(I could explain further, but it would make me sound really, really dumb. Let’s pass.:)

Anyway, Greg Nicoll, Mike Peele and I portaged Boulder Drop, and Sam and Adam ran it doing a line through the Needle.  Here’s the video:

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.  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.

Scenery from the beautiful Teanaway area on the drive home.

The crazy thing is that nearly exactly 12 hours after I woke up I was pulling back into my garage.  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.  All WELL worth it.

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.  The reason I know this is that I had no actual intention of side-surfing and I wasn’t actually trying  to back-surf  most of the times I ended up doing both of those things.

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

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.  He back-surfed it and then spun forward to ferry out of it, which is pretty impressive, especially seeing as he only started paddling last year.

We passed on Rodeo Hole, which only had a small line-up and looked like it would have eaten me for lunch.  Some of the whirpools we saw in eddy lines along the way were pretty frightening too.  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.  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.

Views near Snoqualmie Pass on the way back.

Overall, I love the Wenatchee River!  It’s a III (and not a IV) for a reason.  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.  In my opinion it’s easier than the swirly Lower Green above 2000 cfs, which is only a II+/III.

(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.  I’m always reminded of this when I do the Wenatchee.)

So, here’s something to consider:

In the course of a normal day 12 hours can fly by and leave you wondering what in the world you actually got done.  Days like today create memories you remember forever.

I understand it’s not realistic to take off with a kayak every day of the week, but today reminded me of how much you can squeeze out of 12 hours, and how important it is to make the effort (as in, dragging yourself out of bed after 4 hours of sleep  to arrive somewhere late) to put yourself into situations that can create those kinds of memories.  And of course it’s not guaranteed to be great – and sometimes things end up sucking – but that’s just part of the deal.

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.  Not a bad thing to keep in mind.

These guys get an 'A' in the 'Sure, we've got room for one more boat' department.

Here are some photos taken by Chris Peele and some video of a bunch of people surfing, plus me flipping on Railroad Drop.

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Here’s the video I took going over Railroad Drop.  I was demo-ing the Jackson 2Fun and was bummed that I flipped, but what the heck - all good experience in the long run.

There were a couple of nice surf waves along the way, I caught the first one a few times and was again amazed at how great the Jackson 2Fun was.  Mike VanOrden graciously offered to take video at the next one we hung out at for a while – here’s the video, with the people who missed the wave edited out.  That would be, um, ME.   (Although I did catch it once earlier.)

Here’s Greg Nicoll, Fearless Trip Leader, his very cute dog, and, well, he and I have already discussed the shoes.

And here are Mike, Chris and Jeromy trying to look like people who would never, ever partake of a post-paddle beverage in the parking lot.