On Saturday my brother, Dad and I headed out to paddle the Little Susitna River up in Houston, AK. Its a fairly swift moving river much more so then the Swanson which we had paddled last weekend. The Lil' Sue is also much closer of a drive being only about an hour from the house. My brother and Dad were going to paddle in the Old Town canoe while I would paddle the kayak. We had to do some work on my Dad's canoe as the thing is older then me and in dire need of some maintenance. We fixed the holes with and gouges with bondo and fiberglass.
After finishing the repairs we ended up on the river at about 4 and planned on only paddling a couple hours before setting up camp. The river quickly showed me that kayaking skills are lacking when I went entered a fast flowing section of the river to find out a log was laying across the whole river impeding my path. I tried back paddling to slow down but I was coming in to quick so I resorted to using the paddle to stop me on the log. The paddle did a fine job stopping me but the river had other ideas about the kayak, pulling it out from underneath me and sweeping it underneath the log I had stopped on. I tried to hold onto the kayak as my camera and a few other things were inside it but this caused me to be pulled under the log also. I quickly swam to shore to and empty the kayak of water and hop back inside. Luckily the only damage was my water logged cell phone.
The rest of the trip was spent perfecting my kayaking skills and just having a good time watching the king salmon swimming underneath me. We also had a moose and her calf jump out onto the bank to inspect us and a bald eagle or two fly by. When we got to the end where we parked my brothers truck to shuttle us back he realized he left his keys back at the other car. So we had to call my mom to come bring the extra keys to his truck, thanks Mom.
2 comments:
Your Mom must be the best mom ever.
know of any highly recommended mtb events in AK?
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