Going to the Ball

Friday May 21st-23rd 2010

When I came to the Northwest the resource I used to start meeting kayaker's and to start getting on the water was professorpaddle.com. It is a Washington whitewater community website, imagine if Facebook was a website dedicated to whitewater, and that you actually knew the people you interacted with. For the past 5 years different people have organized what is affectionately called the Professor Paddle Ball, a group of about 100 folks come from around the state to converge on Leavenworth, WA to camp, paddle, party, and make mischief. This year was especially fun because I was not just hanging out with strangers but with the many friends that I have made paddling in the Northwest over the past year and a half.

On Friday morning Jon Shelby and I loaded up into the truck to drive over the pass with intentions of doing some paddling on the way over to the Ball. We had our sights set on a sections of whitewater known as Fall In The Wall (S. Frk. snoqualmie) or the acronym FITW. It is a VERY short (about a quarter mile) and steep section of class IV-V whitewater, traditionally people will show up and hangout all day while running laps on it. Put-in, bomb down, hike up, repeat.

When we arrived at the put-in to check the gauge, we discovered a very low FITW, we sat around and waffled for a bit and eventually decided that we didn't want to abuse our boats any more than we needed too. So we kept driving towards Lev in search of whitewater. As we approached town we passed by jP's unmistakable military brown van parked at the take-out of Ingalls and Peshastin Creek. I applied the breaks, banged a youie, and pulled my car up next to his, we pulled out the camp chairs and walked down to rivers edge to wait for the group to come down. Our plan being that they could give us a ride to the put-in on their way back to the top to retrieve cars, a good scheme if I don't say so myself.

After a bit of waiting some brightly colored objects rounded the corner and we greeted them jovially. After a bit of milling around jP gave us a ride to the top and Jon and I paddled down the steep and fun Ingalls creek, Ingalls is a short one mile stretch with continuous class IV rapids. The water level was low but not ELF (Extremely Low Flow), I managed to keep my boat off the rocks and in the wet spot. Jon and I took turns leading down the river, and had a ton of fun. At the confluence with Peshastin the gradient flattens out and we boogied through continuous class III wave train's and holes.

After a clean run we loaded up and made way to the Ball grounds, where Jon quickly got working on the task of becoming inebriated, he was quite successful at this task, and by night fall was already slurring and playfully insulting friend and foe alike. He was in rare form. The night consisted of a bonfire, keg beer, good eats, and catching up with long lost friends, telling stories about our kayaking exploits and telling a few white lies about kayaking too (what good is a story if you don't fudge some of the details, right?).

The following day there were two events that I was involved in, the first being the creek race that took place on lower icicle creek (class IV+), and judging the freestyle rodeo with Jon. The creek race was super fun because I was able to raft for the first time in a while, Hans Hooman and I R-2'd down the fast, pushy, and continuous creek. We didn't have a big field of competition, but we did have a serious head-to-head competition with some friends of ours, Tom and Kira. After all the kayakers had started, we peeled out after them. Because Hans had never been down this stretch of river before I was pointing directions and leading us down the river. At the crux ledge we weren't quite in the spot we wanted to be but came out with the smiling side up. Down stream we had a unexpected interaction with a log that was sticking out into the river, it was about five feet above the water and obscuring the channel that we had gotten into by accident. As we approached the log Hans got down in the floor of the raft to limbo the log, and because he was unable to leave enough space for me to join him I hurtled the log as we approached it instead. I jumped over and landed in the front compartment of the raft, putting those 6th grade track skills to work.

Tom and Kira Loading up their raft

From here the rest of the run went smoothly, and we finished in first place, we had finished in 7:25 seconds and won a throwbag and drybag, also bragging rights until next year. The worst part of the experience was carrying the rafts up the very steep path to the cars.

That afternoon I paddled with Jon down to "Grannies" - a large wave/hole feature - to judge the rodeo. It was fun to lay down judgement on everyone, "that was average", "that was below average" etc. No one managed to stay on the feature for the full extent of the alloted time, but there was some impressive displays of freestyle kayaking. My friend Nick won the comp by a landslide in his C-1, throwing down tricks with the most grace and the biggest tricks very cool to watch.

Fish tearing it up on Grannies

Why not?

After the conclusion of the rodeo I surfed a beautiful glassy wave just down stream of grannies that was super fast and fun, I was paddling a long boat with good hullspeed so I was the only person able to surf that beauty, probably the only person to surf it all day. After two laps on that I peeled out and headed for the take-out. Having never paddled this section of river I wasn't too sure where this was but figured it would present itself pretty obviously, afterall I was on the most popular stretch of whitewater in WA. This turned out not to be true, the take out is tucked up in a cove on the right side of an island, and because I was following the current on the left side of the island I missed it. I was also in speed mode in an attempt to get a good workout to finish off my day, also I was trying to work on my forward stroke so I was very focused on the task at hand. After about twenty minutes of paddling down stream I realized that I hadn't seen anyone in a while, and that I hadn't caught up to anyone. I began to get nervous, untill I came up to Wenatchee state park. Here I asked a gentleman what park this was and quickly found out that is was not Cashmere park and that it was several miles back upstream. Luckily there was a rafting outfit at the park for one reason or another. They were a youth ministries group that was finishing up a trip (praise the lord), all young kids that were from the midwest who were working for this company for the summer. As a fellow raft guide I expected a group of rowdy raft guides that were going to make fun of me for missing the take-out all the way back to the park, but because they were youth ministers they were the most polite and friendly folks I could have asked for. When I departed with them I said "bless your hearts", I figured it was only appropriate.

Back at the ball a relieved Jon greeted me at my car, he had though I had gotten my own ride back to camp and was pissed that I had ditched the group, but when he arrived back at the ball and I wasn't around he became worried. Luckily I had the lord on my side to get me back on track.

That night was another night of bonfires, drinking and general jollity. The event organizers had gotten lots of raffle prizes, and had a raffle where they gave away tons of stuff. They also auctioned off a brand new kayak, the proceeds of the auction went to a fund for a kayaker who was a big part of the paddling community but had broken his neck while mountain biking after going over the handlebars. they raised over 2000 dollars for his fund, so it was all for a good cause.

The following day a group of us slowly - very slowly - had breakfast, and geared up for a play trip on the Wenatchee. We had a good group of folks, Jon Shelby, Nick Hinds, Fish, Brian, Sam, and four ladies in Brian's raft. Fish and I paddled our longboats so we could surf the big fast and fun glassy waves that modern play boats are too slow to catch. We had a BLAST! The water level was too low for many of the surf waves to be any good, but fish and I we were surfing everything that we could find. Fish caught the surf of the century on an enormous glassie called "trinity", he must have surfed that thing for a minute and a half, carving all over the face hitting the curling shoulder and coming back to the face, it was a beautiful thing to watch.

The raft ladies, myself, and Jon Shelby ruining a perfectly good photo opportunity.

Brian and I also got to surf his raft in "turkey shoot", we even managed a couple of back surfs and spins. We also surfed a really small raft called a mini-me, a 9 foot raft that is more like an inner tube than a raft.

At the conclusion of the day we drove back to camp and hurriedly packed up before a downpour rolled overhead and soaked everything not stuffed into the car.

All-in-all the weekend was super fun, I got to see all my friends in the same place, at the same time, I got to meet some folks that I only knew by reputation, and made some new connections. the Ball is a good time had by all and I am already looking forward to next years festivities.