COME HELL ON HIGH WATER
When the Squamish River unleashes a torrent from angry glaciers awakened too abruptly from their winter slumber, it commands the kind of respect you had better heed, lest it swallow you in a watery grave. Thus was the lesson for my partner and I, as we hit the water on the way to our river spot, top-heavy with a 10-bale load of Pro-mix and 50 clones in four-inch pots in wax tree planter boxes propped on top.
Now the last thing you want to hear when you are overheated, overloaded and at the mercy of a raging river is the sound of a chopper coming up the valley on your trajectory. But thats just what we heard, as we bucked the surf, whooping with exhilaration, trying to maneuver the boat through the defiant current. I was on the bow, my partner in the stern, frantically plunging the paddle into the water to try and slow our momentum, desperately trying to commandeer the boat back from the clutches of the river.
By the time I heard the chopper over the foaming torrent, it was almost on top of us, coming right at us, about a quarter-mile away. "Chopper!" I shouted, hearing the faint clack of rotors as we came up swiftly on a hairpin bend in the river. My partner responded by cranking our tail perpendicular to the bank with one deep thrust so we could paddle with all we had to the cover of shore.
It was too late! We were sucked into the vortex of the river bend. Instead of hitting shore, we came up wide on the portside, heading straight for a huge deadfall snag jammed in the bend. With barely time to brace, we hit it broadside with a sickening thud and were pinned there, the boat unstable and taking on water - fast. The iciness of the glacial runoff took my breath away as it over-spilled the sides and soaked my legs on the boat floor. I went into flight/fright overdrive, my heart pounding out of my chest, and grabbed the slim log trapping us there. There were lots of branches, thank god, so I was able to balance and support myself.
Water thundered past us in foamy torrents. Over the roar, I barked at my partner to grab the machete. He frantically did and I ferociously chopped branches on the down-stream side of the log. We pulled the boat over the snag and set ourselves free, before the river could sentence us to a hideous death.
Judiciously, my partner pulled the boxes of clones out of the boat and balanced them precariously on the log. He managed to get all the bales and clones up onto the snag. I stuck the machete into the log to help him grab the filling dinghy and pull it out of the water, but the damned boat was so heavy with water we could hardly budge it. Our lifeline being snatched away in a tug of war with the mighty river, we yanked and pulled, balanced on that log, death almost a certainty on either side.. Using our bodies as counter- balance, we finally got the dinghy up onto the log and turned it over to empty out the water.
A menacing branch just below the surface was obstructing our launch point, so I went for the machete, kicked it lose by accident and watched it plop into a frothy eddy, gone forever.
No time to waste. We flipped the boat to the other side of the snag and into the water, then proceeded to load it again from the downstream side of the log. The current was diminished here because the log was acting as a dam.
With the goods aboard, my partner got on board the bow. I jumped aboard the stern and struggled frantically to shove us off with the paddle. With no time to worry about puncturing the hull, we broke loose and were sucked back into the river, almost instantly hitting white water and forced to shoot the raging rapids. As white water sprayed our faces and flung us about violently, we whooped and yelped during our little rodeo ride about our near-death experience. Finally drifting into the still, black waters, we paddled to shore right in front of the patch. And all this before morning coffee!
After working the patch, at the end of the day we returned to the boat only to find it deflated. The hull had, in fact, been punctured and had a slow leak. I looked out at the river, now swelled even more and realized that the once placid setting had again become a cauldron. Because of a single act of nature, our lives had hung in the balance.
We patched the boat with our emergency kit, pumped it up, and took to the water again to reach our vehicle before nightfall.
. If you want to see how it ends, see the movie version --go to youtube and enter browndirtwarrior ... my feature production is unfolding there (I can't give you the link here until I've make 15 posts apparrently)
