Most people who regularly engage in adventurous activities have a story or two about a trip turning epic. Maybe it was a day hike that morphed into near hypothermia and a night in the woods, or a mountain expedition in white out conditions, three days without food, and more time in a tent than ever hoped for. Perhaps it’s lightning on a peak and a hail storm on the way off the hillside, or just an excruciating hike out of some remote trees at the local ski resort. And I’m talking about epic not in the sense of a glorious experience, but as in a Murphy’s Law situation in which nothing happens the way one might wish it would. Epic as in one questions if the experience will ever end, and how. Maybe no one gets hurt, maybe no one dies, but there’s a fair amount of time spent wondering about what is going to happen next. Our second day on the Jarbidge is the day our trip turned into that story.

The best thing about epics is that they make for much better stories than trips where everything goes according to plan. Like most stories though, it’s probably better to start near the beginning and tell the story the whole way through. And in the beginning I hung around the muddy little take-out for hours before finally waking the boys up. I rode my bike in circles, paced back and forth, sat in a chair trying to read, and watched in envy as several other groups came and went, usually with a look of contempt in the direction of my companions–haggard lumps on the ground next to a tacky fire pit surrounded by beer cans. This was the day we were supposed to put in on the Jarbidge River in Idaho for a week of whitewater paddling and wilderness experience. Instead, I waited with building frustration as sunny morning turned to brilliant blue afternoon. The sleeping bags, giant slugs beneath the cloudless sky, showed no semblance of motion.

The Jarbidge and Bruneau Rivers flow through southern Idaho and serve as part of the drainage system for the Jarbidge Mountains, a small range of peaks in northwestern Nevada. Like most desert rivers, one would scarcely believe in their existence if not sitting on the river bank. Driving south from Boise, there’s scarcely a sign of the verdant plant life we generally associate with a living environment. For as far as the eye can see there’s nothing but brown grass, rolling hills, and the occasional dirt road stretching for miles into the horizon. Next to the river, however, abundant vegetation lines the waterway, and several irrigation canals divert into sprawling riverside fields where local farmers eke an existence out of this otherwise barren land. And it was next to one of these bug infested irrigation canals that I stewed in the mid-morning sun thinking about the remote river upstream, and wondered why I was sitting there in the first place.

Most of my experience with river trips came from years of working as a commercial guide. I was accustomed to getting up and doing things–loading rafts, meeting customers, even cooking breakfast if it was a multi-day outing. We were always on the water by nine and tucking in to a nice deli spread around noon. I soon realized there would be none of that enthusiasm or efficiency on this trip, and as I sat there I tried to relax and enjoy doing nothing. It was early May and I was migrating from Texas to Washington. One river season was ending while another was just getting started.

In the past couple of years I’d been following the water from job to job. Summer in Oregon, winter in Costa Rica, spring in Arizona. The next summer in Tennessee, fall in West Virginia, a winter in Kenya and Uganda, and most recently springtime canoe trips in the Big Bend. Guiding was the one job I’d ever had which I was passionate about. It was a way to travel, to know and experience new places. But as much as I loved being on the river every day, at times it was a lot of work. There was always something to be done, the next part of the trip to consider. There were always customers to deal with and questions to answer, which meant little time for solitude and personal experience.

I was looking forward to doing some private trips with competent companions, people who could take care of themselves. I’d wanted to get into doing more trips with friends in order to fully appreciate the rivers. The trip also fit perfectly into my current downtime between jobs. And, after several years of sitting in a raft, I’d finally started kayaking and wanted to spend some time in a smaller boat. This trip was also an opportunity to run a couple of rivers that only flow at the end of big winters in the Northwest. Some years they run, others they don’t. Trips have to be spontaneous, which means less people on the water and less people in the know. Until a month before, I’d never heard of the Jarbidge or the Bruneau, two of the three rivers we were going to be running over the next couple of weeks. Running, that is, if we could ever get moving.

What kept me from waking up the guys earlier was that I was only friends with one of them. Most the people on the trip were from Durango, Colorado, where I’d lived for five years, but I thought I only knew Chad, a grumpy twenty-eight-year-old with an afro of tight, blond curls, and a huge shotgun scar on one of his calves from a hunting accident. Oddly enough, I didn’t know Chad from Durango, but from Costa Rica where we’d met the winter before. I’d also run into him in Arizona a few months after leaving Central America. Chad was a good person to know because he made plans with the intent of following through with them.

The two of us had spent a couple days prior kayaking the Payette, just north of Boise, but had been separated the day before as we drove through town. I ended up heading to the take out and going to sleep, while he waited for the rest of the group, acquaintances of his, and drove down later. At least that’s the story I got after I finally did wake them up and they began to move around at a painfully slow pace. Chad said they got there around midnight, drank around the fire until early morning, then decided they needed to go back into town for beer, cigarettes, and handgun ammunition before the trip. (Quick note here, there would be no firing of guns on the trip, or a need for any ammunition.) Once there, they watched the sun rise, ate breakfast, and terrorized a couple of shop owners before driving back to the site and going to sleep, just about the time I was waking up.

Chad told me the story, while the rest of the guys began to groggily emerge from their bags. “Duuude…” one of the mangy heads announced, and I knew at once the voice belonged to Scotty Baker, a kid I didn’t really know per se, but whose unmistakable surfer bro expressions I’d heard penetrating the room at many an après ski event. I’d never really talked to him before, due to the annoying nature of what I imagined to be his affected Spicoli demeanor, but Baker ended up being one of the most positive, funny, and original people I’ve ever met. He’d spent the year before paddling some serious whitewater in Ecuador and could talk for hours about rivers around the world he’d never been to. He avoided the high cost of rent in Durango by stealthily living in a storage unit while going to college, sold light-up belt buckles as a side business, and subsisted on dollar double cheeseburgers. His best stories included the triumph of bringing a girl back to his makeshift room, and the recent challenges of sneaking in and out of his unit while the owner landscaped the premises.

The other three guys on the trip were Clint, a mellow stoner type who worked on the Gunnison as a river ranger and moved at the speed of drifting continents; Johnny, a hardcore Class V boater with a carefree attitude and a love of whiskey; and Johnny’s old high school buddy, Jeff, who had never been on a river in his life and would probably never get in a raft again after the week was over. There was also Chad’s dog Kayden, an aging retriever whose only animated moment of each day came with the removal of her life vest. When freed of the burden she would spring to life for three quick, spiraling jumps then promptly find a place to sleep.

Long after noon, we were finally on the move. The trip from the take out to the put in entailed driving for hours on a washboard dirt road across an Air Force bombing range. The land was dull and flat with the exception of the Jarbidge Mountains in the distance. The river was almost never visible. It flows through a deep crack in the earth, hidden by the monotony of high desert landscape.

The put in was a small parking lot with a couple of Forest Service signs. The signs were meant to inform passers by about the river, and to provide information to those about to embark on a boat trip down the Jarbidge. The boating sign consisted of a map, a couple of photos of the bigger rapids, and a concise message that basically said that under no conditions should groups attempt to navigate the river in a raft. Due to the nature of the river, we learned, kayaks were the only recommended craft, though it was possible to get a small, light cataraft down as well. This information did not conform to our plan, which was to load all of our stuff (six or seven drybags of personal gear, an entire kitchen setup–wooden folding table, big, steel box full of pots, pans and utensils,  propane tank, four-burner stove, etc.–a couple of coolers, about twelve cases of beer, and so forth) into Chad’s raft, along with Jeff and the dog. We would then spend one or two of our allotted six days floating the Jarbidge until we met up with the Bruneau. The total trip distance was just over 70 miles, which meant that even though we’d basically squandered the entire first day, we should still have plenty of time to float along at a leisurely pace.

After a brief discussion about the sign followed by a some serious dicking around and beer drinking, we started pulling gear out of the vehicles and readying ourselves for the week. As we pumped up the raft, started rigging the frame, and began carrying all of the gear down to the boat, Chad, who had way more vested in the equipment than anyone else, expressed his concerns that maybe there was something to the warning. While a decent enough rafter, he’d just spent a couple thousand dollars the week before in the acquisition of a 14-ft. boat complete with all the accoutrements necessary for the riverside opulence raft trips are known for. Understandably, he wasn’t excited about the prospect of having to leave it all in the canyon if something went wrong. We began to reassure him. This sign wasn’t for people like us. Johnny and Baker were expert kayakers, Clint was a river ranger, I was a seasoned raft guide… This sign was for idiots with no experience and no clue. The Forest Service was always putting up stuff like this, rating hikes, rating rivers, trying to scare people away. It wasn’t meant for people who actually knew what they were doing. And besides, we were already there. We continued to carry our personal bags to the boat, to cram a couple hundred cans of beer into any space we could find, to help Chad tie down the fire pan, the wash buckets, a couple of fishing poles.

As we pushed off the bank a couple of hours before dark, life was good. A swift current carried us down the river. We made a couple of easy miles in no time. It was a beautiful evening, the sky a glowing gold around us, and we were finally in motion. For now, life was as it should be. We felt more confident about our decision as we cruised around each corner on our way into the canyon.

Not long after getting on the water, we decided to stop and make camp. We found great spot on the left bank with a big, sandy beach at the base of a large escarpment, pulled everything back off the boat, and set up for the night. We made dinner, made a dent in the beer supply, and did as much exploring as the area would allow. There was a sketchy climb up loose boulders to a cave which provided a good view of our surroundings, and a spring in the side of the cliff. There was also a long, rocky beach where we gathered driftwood for a fire.

It turns out that the massive driftwood piles were an omen for what we were in for the following days. When rivers flood, they carry large amounts of debris downstream– sticks, logs, and even entire trees. And this debris sometimes amasses in very inauspicious places, places where the current heaps it together into solid, deadly formations that resemble monster beaver dams. Known as strainers, or sieves, fixed wood represents one of the biggest hazards in whitewater sports. Like a spaghetti colander, water rushes through while larger objects, like bodies for instance, do not. They stay pinned to the wood by the rushing current, and even moderate flows can create lethal situations.

While gathering wood, I noticed a skeleton wedged in a pile of logs that had been formed in an earlier flood. It was the remains of a mountain lion that had been caught in current too swift to swim in and then shoved into this strainer on the outer bend of the river. Perhaps it had been going for the shore, but couldn’t quite make it in time. I’d only seen a mountain lion skull, reminiscent of a saber toothed tiger, in a magazine, and was excited about the find. But when I told the guys back at camp about it, I found out that Johnny had already seen it, and planned to take the teeth as a souvenir, something I might have done as well if he hadn’t already claimed it. We would later attribute our bad luck to this decision, but only because it was easier than just admitting that the truly stupid choice we made was loading down the raft and pushing off in the first place. Even so, I will remain forever weary of disrespecting animal spirits. It’s best to let sleeping cats lie.

Day two was the day things took a turn. Maybe the trouble began when Chad picked up his tent that morning only to find that two large rattlesnakes had been keeping themselves warm beneath it. Every time he set the tent down to try and fold it up, the snakes would hurriedly slither to get back under their shelter. But the real difficulties started about the time we decided to try to pull over for lunch. Now here, I must say that I’m not trying to make the Jarbidge out to be anything more than it is. It’s a stunningly scenic river which flows through a narrow basalt gorge, but very low on the level of difficulty as far as whitewater goes. It’s basically continuous Class II (out of a scale of I-V) interspersed with a few larger rapids. Kayakers doing self support trips can easily run it in a day or two, and do so on a regular basis when the river is flowing. The issue for rafts, especially when loaded with 1,500 pounds of cargo, is that the river doesn’t stop. In a kayak it’s easy to catch small eddies, the calm water behind obstacles and bends in the river, but it’s almost impossible to stall a big boat anywhere. This was the fact that began to concern us as we swiftly floated deeper into the canyon. The banks were no longer banks, they were steep slopes of scree butted against dark, towering cliffs. Having brought no map for reference, we had no idea where the major rapids were, or if the boat would have time to stop above them. We were also increasingly worried about the wood that might be awaiting us around every bend. An unexpected and unavoidable strainer would mean serious consequences.

The four of us in kayaks went out in front of Chad, sending paddle signals when appropriate to guide him from one side of the river to the next, or to alert him to any potential hazards. It was fun and fast moving for the first hour or so, but when we decided to look for a stopping point, our concerns were confirmed in that finding a place to beach the raft began to pose a problem. We spent the next hour or so scouting banks, slipping into eddies, and watching Chad pull hard on the oars trying to get himself into a position where either we could grab the boat, or Jeff could jump out with the bowline and pull the raft to shore. The second option was quickly becoming nullified, however, as it became apparent that Jeff was about as athletic as Oprah Winfrey. It was kind of hard not to feel sorry for the guy. He’d flown out from Tennessee just for the trip, not having a clue as to what he was getting himself into. I don’t think he had any idea as to the reality of the things Johnny was accustomed to doing in a kayak. And I also don’t think Johnny ever bothered to consider the sedentary nature of Jeff’s life. I suppose the trip just sounded like a great adventure to Jeff. He was probably hoping for the bonding of Deliverance without the hillbilly butt sex. His borrowed wetsuit with a big hole in the rear end, his oversized life jacket, a bicycle helmet, and goofy little booties probably didn’t do much to inspire self-confidence. Not only that, but he was occupying Kayden’s normal seat on the padded cooler, which meant neither Chad, a cranky misanthrope to begin with, nor Chad’s dog, were very happy about his presence on the raft. In short, he was out of his element, dressed like a total gaper, and his performance as an agile and helpful crewmember left plenty to be desired.

At one point we all ended up in a big, swirling eddy full of foam and debris. The boats were cycling around each other in circles at the base of a 50-foot cliff, along with a bunch of logs and the occasional plastic bottle. We decided against trying to fit everyone on the raft to eat lunch, and elected to leave the eddy in order to try to cross over to a sunny beach on the other side of the river. As I mentioned earlier, I was a novice kayaker. While I knew how to read water, I didn’t always know how the kayak would react to it, and even when I did I wasn’t always capable of dealing with it. The current formed a powerful eddy line of tricky current which fed right into the cliff wall. As I was paddling out of the eddy, I flipped over, washed into the wall, and was forced to swim out of my boat when I couldn’t roll up. As Baker and Clint went to chase my boat, they crashed into each other and the wall, and bounced around for a while before making it out and heading downstream. Then, as both Johnny and the raft tried to leave the eddy at the same time, Johnny ended up upside down between the boat and the cliff and ended up swimming for the first time in years. After cleaning up the pieces, we didn’t bother trying to stop for lunch again.

Luckily, behind a lot of big rapids the water backs up, forming a calm enough pool to pull over in and get out and scout. This was the case with Sevy Falls, or at least we guessed the rapid was Sevy Falls when we looked at it, since the only information we had to go on was our brief familiarization with the pictures at the put in. Most of us stood on the bank looking at the entrance to the rapid while Johnny took a quick look from a little further downstream. It was a nasty looking rapid mostly because of the rock sieves just downstream of the first drop. The move was to go through the drop, then ferry quickly across the river to the left, where, (and it turns out Johnny just kind of assumed this) there was meant to be a nice clear channel. Baker went first, cleared the first drop, was pushed precariously against the rock sieve for a while, then calmly made it through a small chute that only a kayak could fit through. Chad went next, leaving Jeff and Kayden on the shore as a precaution in case things went wrong. It was a hairy entrance, so we helped line the end of the raft into the slot, then sent it floating down through the rapid with Chad on the oars. The boat went over the drop, then stopped suddenly. It looked as if the raft was getting surfed in the hydraulic, but it had actually gotten stuck on a tree branch concealed just below the surface. Chad struggled to move the boat forward while water coursed violently over the back half of the raft. Meanwhile, I ran onto a boulder which jutted out over the rapid, and managed to jump into the front of the boat hoping to put some extra weight there in order to free the raft. It worked, and Chad started frantically pulling on the oars in order to make the next move. He back-ferried around the big rocks in the center of the rapid and lined up for the exit. Only once we were around the rock did we see that there wasn’t actually an exit, only a massive strainer all the way across the channel with a large amount of current pouring directly into it. When we hit the logs, Chad was cussing so much that he didn’t bother to get on the high side of the raft as it started to fill with water. I wasn’t about to die lamenting the gear, however, and promptly climbed over the side and onto the strainer, a solid mass of wood four-feet across with most of the river disappearing beneath it. Soon enough, Chad was up there too, and we couldn’t do anything but watch as the boat was sucked under and nastily pinned against the woodpile. We held onto the frame and tried to pull the boat up as high as possible, but it was quickly ¾ underwater and not going anywhere any time soon, if ever again.

Johnny, who couldn’t see what was happening from the right bank, jumped in his kayak, cruised through the first drop, and came around the corner to the same sight we had, only with a boat fully wrapped on the strainer instead of just the strainer–not that one was any worse than the other. He slammed sideways into the boat and Chad and I were able to grab his life jacket as he leaned into the tube. He handed his paddle to Chad and was able to precariously make it out of his kayak, onto the raft, and then onto the logs. It was a scary situation. Anyone who would have gone under the raft would have no chance of rescue. They would have been instantly pinned beneath both boat and wood.

Baker had now made it over to our side of the river from down below, was out of his boat, and next to the raft with the rest of us. Chad was so angry I thought he might just throw Johnny back into the current, but he managed to restrain himself. He was convinced that all was lost, and it certainly looked like it initially. But we started to cautiously take what we could off of the raft, unloading it so that we could maybe pull it free somehow.

It was a slow and chancy process to stand in the rushing water and unstrap the gear, which was then handed to someone else to carry to the bank. And while the four of us were dealing with the boat, Clint, Jeff, and Kayden were still on the other side of the river, along with my kayak and paddle. I tried to yell at them to walk downstream, but my instructions were apparently misunderstood. When I looked over again, I saw Jeff getting ready to push my empty kayak into the rapid. I shouted at him again to get his attention, then made a few hand gestures meaning “don’t you fucking dare.” After a while I walked upstream to the calm section and swam across the river to get my kayak and let Jeff know what was happening, since it was going to be a long time before the group went anywhere. When I got to my boat, there was no paddle in sight. I hiked it up and over some rocks to get to where Jeff was standing, and noticed what looked like Clint’s paddle, or at least half or it, lying on the bottom of the river. I later figured out that Clint had taken my paddle for some reason, leaving his at the mercy of Jeff, who accidentally dropped it in the river when he was trying to shove my boat into the water.

I talked to Jeff, gave Kayden a pat on the head, and swam back across. Clint stayed in his kayak to pick up anything he saw floating downstream. Chad was still fuming while Baker and Johnny unloaded everything they could, and the situation was not looking promising. It was also starting to get late. After a while though, the front half of the boat was almost empty and we decided to try to pull it up and off the strainer. The only way it would work was if we could flip the raft over and pull it to shore. Thousands of pounds of water pressure ensured that this wouldn’t be an easy task, but the only way to unwrap a boat is to find the spot with the least amount of force pushing against it and try to use that to gain an advantage. We attached several ropes to the heavy-duty rings on the top tube and worked our way upstream to look for strategic positions where we could stand and heave. Initially, the raft didn’t budge, but then, inch at a time, we were able to work the top half of the boat out of the water, which allowed the current to help us pull it upside-down and over to the side of the river. Once there, we were able to resituate our ropes and flip the raft right-side-up. After this was accomplished, we still had to unload the rest of the gear in order to lug the boat and frame to the other side of the wood where we could reload it.

Once Chad realized that he still had a raft and most of his gear, he was in a much better mood. The two of us stood in the boat unloading the rest of the bags, while Johnny and Baker carried everything downstream. As this was only the beginning of events to come, I will tell you now that we racked up some bad river karma throughout the trip by losing a good amount of equipment to the river; but one thing had to be done that I still regret even today–we had to empty our toilet into the Jarbidge. Truth be told, it had only seen one morning’s use. There was only a small amount of waste in there, but the normally leak-proof container, having been submerged for a couple of hours, was completely full of water. When Chad unstrapped it from the bottom of the boat and realized the situation, he did the only thing feasible. He set the box on the side of the raft and unscrewed the valve. The angle he was holding the box at meant several watery turds slid over his bare hand as he hurriedly tried to free the cap. While the act itself was shameful to witness, watching him dry heave for several minutes afterward was by far the most comical part of the day.

The whole process took several hours and the sky was turning to dusk when we finally got everything loaded back in the boat and strapped down. Chad managed to ferry across to the other side to pick up his passengers. I rode across with him and hiked upstream to my boat. Clint was fairly unhappy to learn that his $200 paddle would be staying at Sevy Falls, but he wasn’t a bad sport about it as Chad had thoughtfully brought along a spare paddle which meant he could still kayak. Miraculously, the only other gear we were missing (for now) was one of Jeff’s two drybags, and about three cases of beer. Everything else we managed to salvage, or find in the strainer once the boat was free.

Once I caught up with the trip, the group had managed to get the boat to shore about a half-mile down the river. A couple of the guys were in the process of unloading the boat in order to camp for the night, but a quick look at the surroundings showed that not only was there no place to set up the kitchen, there wasn’t a flat spot big enough for even one person to sleep on. Like most of the canyon we’d been going through that day, the bank was nothing but huge boulders balanced on a 45° slope topped by spectacular basalt walls. It was certainly scenic, but no place to spend the night. A quick discussion ensued. While a couple of people thought we should take the opportunity to camp while we had one, the majority, myself included, voted to go downstream just a little farther in search of something better. There’s got to be something, we assured Chad, while helping him hastily strap down the gear that had just been derigged.

We paddled away in the kayaks. It was almost dark and we anxiously scouted around every corner looking for somewhere to pull the raft in. The current was still moving steadily downstream, and eddies were as scarce as ever. Our plan was to get to the best place we could find, get out of our boats, and stand ready with throw bags and manpower in order to get the raft to shore. After a quick mile, we found the perfect spot. There was a little beach just around a sharp right hand bend, and the four of us hurriedly paddled over, jumped out of our boats and stowed them on the bank. Johnny ran upstream to get Chad’s attention so that he could make the move in time.

After a couple of minutes Johnny yelled down to us, “The raft is coming…”

We were prepared to do whatever was necessary to get it to shore.

We weren’t prepared for what happened next.

“The raft,” Johnny hesitated, then continued in a matter-of-fact tone “is upside down.”

How this happened I still haven’t a clue. The water above the beach, while moving rapidly, would be considered Class I, but somehow the raft had shot up onto a branch lodged in the river, broached, and flipped over. Chaos ensued. We threw lines out to swimmers who didn’t get them, there was gear floating everywhere–drybags, sleeping bags, buckets… at one point Johnny, or maybe Baker, had a hold of the raft but had to let it go. We ran to get in our kayaks in order to chase the raft, in order to pick up floating gear, in order to make sure the passengers were okay. Jeff was nowhere to be seen, neither was Kayden. Chad had managed to swim to the left bank and was working his way downstream, searching for his dog and pulling jetsam out of eddies when he found it. While the other three kayakers gave chase, I walked upstream to see if I could see Jeff. He had just crawled out of the water onto the shore. He was notably unhappy when I told him we had to get going.

I rushed him down to where my boat was, got in the kayak, and told him to get in the water and hang on to the back of the boat. He complied, but was understandably reluctant to do so. Again, I was a novice kayaker and nervous as hell about paddling myself down the river–trying to drag Jeff across to the other side was not something I was excited about. I paddled as hard as I could, trying to keep upright and get to the other side. As soon as we left the beach we started moving into three-foot waves and working our way around a rocks which were almost impossible to spot in the low light. When we were almost to the other side, I yelled to Jeff, “Let go and swim.” We were probably about five or six feet from shore, but Jeff was having none of it. “I can’t touch,” he yelped. I screamed at him again, “Just let go and swim!” He did, and he made it, and I nervously headed downstream in the dark, noticing all the while that the river was getting faster and faster and thinking that the raft could be long gone. Not too far downstream, though, the boat had washed into a couple of big, triangular rocks and was again up on its side, pinned against them by the current. It was close enough that we could reach it from the shore, but it wasn’t going anywhere as the guys tried to heave on it and get it off the rocks. Most of the gear was in disarray, loosely strapped to the frame, and there were no oars in sight.

Kayden and Chad eventually showed up, followed by a soggy looking Jeff. Once everyone was finally there, we were able to painstakingly right the boat and began to assess the extent of our losses. By this time, it was completely dark, and had just started to rain. Somberly, we built a fire, ate our lunch, and tried to dry things out. It continued to drizzle off and on. Later that night, we hiked upstream to look for the gear Chad had pulled up onto shore, but it was almost impossible to walk the shoreline, instead we hiked up a huge scree slope and dropped back down to the banks, crawling over loose boulders the whole way.

Before we went to bed, we knew this: we were in the middle of a large wilderness surrounded by formidable walls, we had food for a few days, we had one oar (the spare) and basically no way to get the raft, or the people and dog who came on the raft out of the canyon. Most of my things were dry, as were Chad’s. Everything else was soaked. Around midnight, I went to sleep completely exhausted. The other guys stoked the fire all night and shivered in their sopping sleeping bags.

In the morning, everyone moved incredibly slow. The despair was unspoken, but palpable. Jeff’s fear was apparent. Everyone else just kind of moped around not saying much of anything. The sun wasn’t out, but it had stopped raining. We kept the fire going for a while, and tried to warm up and dry out. Again, I don’t want to make this sound like anything more than it was. We knew that we weren’t likely to die out there–we always had the option of paddling out in the kayaks and going for help if necessary. But having to be rescued in any form would certainly be an ignominious last result.

Late in the morning we made breakfast and discussed our alternatives. Jeff was adamant about hiking out, and Chad was even considering it, but the realities of that option weren’t practical. Even if a person could have scaled the 100-200 ft. walls, they would only do so to find themselves in the middle of the bombing range, with no available water and at least a day’s hike to a road that was likely to be deserted. About that time a group of three kayakers paddled by. We motioned them over, told them our situation, and asked them to be on the lookout for any of our gear. They said they would, wished us luck, and continued on downstream.

When we prepared to leave shore later that morning I was sitting in the center of the raft holding on to the one oar. My kayak was strapped across the back. Chad and Jeff were up front, with Kayden squeezed between them. Chad had thought to bring along one regular raft paddle, which had been crammed in the bottom of the boat and was now bent in an S-shape. Jeff warily rested it on his lap, while Chad held my kayak paddle at the ready. The plan was for the two of them to move the ridiculously heavy boat forward and backward while I steered with the oar. They were both sitting in awkward positions which made it difficult to paddle, and it was unlikely their strokes were going to be effective regardless of where they were in the raft. There was simply too much weight for the tiny paddles to be efficient.

None of us wanted to consider the repercussions of our plan not working. But we all knew it was ludicrous. We had at least another 20 miles to go before a road came into the canyon, and there was a lot of whitewater between where we were and there. As we pushed off, the tension was high. We immediately found ourselves in the middle of a long rock garden with plenty of opportunities for failure. Clint, Baker, and Johnny were out front, pointing anxiously with their paddles, and we did the best we could to follow their directions.

We ran several rapids this way, and the Class II water all of the sudden seemed to have Class V consequences. It was non-stop anxiety. Thankfully, our preposterous arrangement was short lived. After a mile or so of some of the most intense riffles I’ve yet to experience, Baker spotted an oar which the group that passed us that morning had been kind enough to prop up in the weeds on the side of the river. There was much rejoicing. We managed to get the raft over to shore where we celebrated with a few of the remaining beers. I went back to my kayak, Chad took control of both oars, and Jeff and Kayden resumed their struggle for the cooler seat.

Five minutes later, we noticed something lodged in a big strainer on one side of the river and pull over to investigate. A heroic rescue netted us the bag of beer we lost when the boat wrapped the day before. Further celebration ensued. The sun came out.

That night we camped above one of the bigger rapids. It didn’t look extremely difficult, but we decided to play it safe and portage the gear around in the morning. The campsite was nice and sunny; our dinner of macaroni and cheese, steak off the grill, and garlic bread was great; the fire was huge, and cheap bags of wine appeared from the cooler. Most of the gear dried out and everyone got a good night’s sleep.

And everyone would be thankful for that sleep the next day, which turned out to be much like day two. We scouted often and cautiously lined the raft through questionable sections. At one point we had to figure out a way to get the raft off some rocks in the center of a big rapid. We unloaded and reloaded the boat several times in order to get it up and over trees which had fallen across the river. We had to push it and pull it through other places. The found beer was lost again. In eight hours we managed to make about four river miles. That evening, Johnny decided to throw the mountain lion teeth back into the river.

The most comical part of that day came when the raft almost flipped again. It went sideways into a sedan-sized rock in the middle of a pretty big rapid. We watched in resigned disbelief as it started to wrap around the boulder. Jeff, Kayden, and Chad scrambled for the high side. Jeff and the dog, who were both committed to not swimming, had enough time to make it over the tube and onto the rock just before the boat popped free. Chad was still in the raft, which went another two-hundred yards downstream before coming to an abrupt stop in the middle of a wave train. Jeff and Kayden were left standing on the rock in the middle of the river with rushing current around them, while the raft aggressively bobbed up and down in the current below thanks to Jeff’s botched bowline coil, which had come free and caught fast in the river’s rocky bottom.

Neither Jeff nor the dog were going to jump off that rock on their own, so I swam out in the current, barely catching the eddy just behind the rock. Once there, I managed, without Jeff’s help, to scuttle up onto it. A couple of the guys threw us a rope, pendulumned Jeff to the bank, threw it out again, and pulled me in along with a shaky, pissed off dog. Chad had to cut himself free, and the crew eventually rejoined a good ways down the bank.

Late in the afternoon, we arrived at Jarbidge Falls, the one rapid we had anticipated portaging the whole trip. Everyone was tired and sore, but started doing the necessary work with renewed energy. We realized we were almost to the confluence with the Bruneau, where we could expect three times as much water and hopefully none of the trees.

The raft had to be completely derigged, deflated, and carried several hundred yards downstream across a maze of loose rocks, along the rest of the gear. It was like lugging everything to the end of a long jetty. We strapped the boat onto the oars and carried it like a palanquin. Clint almost broke his leg when he went pelvis deep in a hole with the boat on top of him, but other than that, everything went pretty smooth. We set up camp about halfway along the portage, and rigged the boat up downstream so it would be ready the next morning.

The location turned out to be an awesome camp right next to the soothing sounds of a boulder strewn set of falls. Everyone slept well. In the morning we completed the portage, secured everything in the raft, and looked forward to bigger water. After a mile or so, we were at the confluence and much happiness ensued. The Bruneau presented a large river, with room to move around, and easy to get to banks, and plenty of stopping places for the raft. It was big and deep and mellow, and there was still plenty of canyon scenery to admire as we floated for many miles. It was now the fifth day of our six day trip.

We pulled into a spacious camp in the late afternoon, set up for the night, and sprawled out in the sun. We killed the bagged wine and drank the last six shots of whiskey. One shot each. Spirits were high even when we ran out of alcohol, which was probably one of the more demoralizing events of the week. Even Jeff seemed to be in a good mood, now that he knew his chances of surviving the trip were higher than ever before.

In fact, Jeff was so cheerful the next day that we all awoke to a waiting breakfast of reheated spaghetti. And not only was there reheated spaghetti, there was warmed up pasta in every pan in the kitchen. As it was his first real attempt at helping out, we tried to hide our chagrin while slyly scraping a full skillet of the stuff into the garbage so we could cook up the last of the bacon and eggs. It was another sunny day, and there were reportedly some good rapids on twenty miles to the take-out. Probably the most fun was Five-Mile Rapid, which, when we got there later that afternoon, was a fairly accurate description and a welcome respite from the miles of flat water above it. The whitewater ended with a cool little pillow at Burro Rapid, then it was a long float through farmland back down to the muddy little take-out where I’d spent the first morning wondering what the trip was going to be like.

That night we ran the four-hour shuttle back down the dusty road to get the cars at the put-in, then made it into the town of Mountain Home for some dinner. We ended up at Charlie’s Bar listening to some of the worst music I’ve ever heard, a fact unanimously supported by the rest of the group, drinking draft beer and being thankful we didn’t live in Mountain Home. One night here had us longing for the river we left, and looking forward to the rivers we would soon run.

Lest anyone think we are a bunch of disrespectful redneck dirtbags destroying the wild places we love, I would like to take this opportunity to say that never before, nor since, have I been on a trip where so much was lost to the river. But the final tally was something like this: group: a couple cases of beer; Clint: kayak paddle; Johnny: river knife, gear bag, a good hunk of flesh next to his right eye; me: a couple of carabineers and straps; Jeff: some clothes, a pair of boots, and any prior notions he had of becoming a boater; Chad, poor Chad: fishing poles, throw bags, wash buckets, an oar, and maybe a few years of youthful appearance.

In the morning, Jeff caught a flight back to Tennessee. Chad went to buy an oar and a river map of the Owyhee, where we were headed that afternoon. Ironically enough, the map turned out to include the Jarbidge/Bruneau as well, allowing us to spend the next week speculating as to where we might have been when each event occurred. The rest of us went to the store, shopped for another week’s worth of groceries, and made sure we had twice as much beer as before. Later that evening we met up at the take out, consolidated our gear, and readied ourselves for whatever the next section of river had to offer. In anticipation of an early start, the guys all went promptly to bed at three in the morning.