I knew it was coming. The second I decided to take my new, 11-foot “Shredder” raft through Westwater Canyon, I knew I was playing with fire. I knew early on that the rapid, “Sock It To Me” was going to be the vortex of my destiny. I knew this in placid Carbondale before I had even loaded the truck. It was all going to come down to Sock It To Me but I was amazingly calm.
Of all the rapids on the Colorado River, “Sock It To Me” has given me the most nuisance. The first time I ran into trouble was when I was a passenger on my own boat, having relinquished the helm to a fellow floater for the last couple of rapids.
In a stunningly flippant moment, the guest pilot decided that “maybe we can surf it,” and proceeded to pull back when he should have been push, push, pushing through the wave at the bottom. Needless to say the 16-foot boat with five people on it flipped in a heartbeat and the frame came down on the head of one of our passengers. By the time I realized that we had flipped I was under my boat in the lonely blackness experienced when you can’t see or find the surface. I pawed my way out from under the boat and clung to the stricken vessel. The last thing I saw as we glided around the corner toward “Last Chance” rapid was two of our crew on river’s edge, one with a bleeding head wound.
Boaters from another trip came along and delivered our passenger to us and we had to row straight to the hospital in Grand Junction. Twenty-five staples to the scalp was all it took to send us home, forever changed by “Sock It To Me.”
Since that first incident, I have approached “Sock” with respect and momentum. The rapid comes at a left turn in the river. You come around the corner and the main current pushes you down a tongue into what looks like a giant catcher’s mitt. The catcher’s mitt is caused by a steep grade and a strong lateral wave. If you get past the mitt the current pushes you left into a jutting rock known as the “Magnet Rock.” The magnet has caused people at least as much trouble as the mitt. Cheating (going around) is not easy, so most people end up going down the tongue and then dealing with the “Magnet Rock.”
Last year my friend Jeff offered to take me on his Westwater trip and join him on his Shredder. The Shredder is an 11-foot, all-rubber “cataraft” with two foot cups for the paddlers. It’s a lot of fun, especially in rivers like the Arkansas, the Roaring Fork and the Crystal. When we Shredded into “Sock It To Me” last year, the mitt rejected us and made the boat skim for a few seconds before sucking it down and spitting it up like a beach ball in a swimming pool.
I knew that when I got to “Sock” in my new Shredder that I was in for a ride. I had designed a custom frame for the boat so that I could row it solo (instead of paddling with another crewman). On my way to Westwater, I called a fellow boater. She confided that for the past two nights she had been dreaming of “Sock It To Me.” Talk about the stars aligning!
After successfully bouncing through the other big rapids in the canyon I eased into a sense of calm determination. I was going to run the belly of the beast full blast, hang on and hope to stay upright. My boat eased around the turn and I saw the mitt angrily spewing white spray into the air. I steered the bow down the left side of the tongue and pushed for the edge of the mitt. As the current swept the Shredder down into the maw, I had a second to push the boat a little right to meet the vortex of the lateral wave (this always works in my big boat). The boil grabbed the Shredder, held it down and then released the boat, not unlike a battleship releasing a cruise missile. The last thing I remember seeing before plunging into the foam was my boat, standing straight up, completely out of the water and heading up, up, up into the air. When I bobbed to the surface I was right next to the Shredder, so I simply grabbed on and waited for kayak support. Oddly enough, the kayaker who came to help was the same lady that came to my aid the only time I’ve ever flipped a boat. That was at Lava Falls on the Grand Canyon, but that’s another tale entirely.
I was so busy getting my boat to rights that I hardly noticed the carnage happening to two of our other boaters on the trip. It seems that “Sock It To Me” was not just singling me out, but was flexing its muscle, hungry for other small boats, and a big one, too.
That night around the campfire I was awarded “10 Points” for the wickedest wipeout of the day. This experience has hardened my resolve to get a Shredder through “Sock It To Me,” and I will attack the mitt again in two weeks.
When Steve Skinner blinks, he still sees his boat clearing the water and flying through the air. Reach him at nigel@sopris.net.
