8-12-07

Another normal week at school followed by another weekend on the coast. When we first arrived we went to a rural bar outside of town to find a helicopter pilot named Bruce Dando. We thought we might be able to fly in at some point so we wanted to see what this guy was up to. The bar was really cool to check out as it was like walking back into time when we talked with a few of the locals. Didn’t stay too long and we were off to camp at the takeout for a run called the Lower Styx. It rained hard all that night so we thought we should check out another creek that we hoped would come up. Of course it had not rained enough so we turned around to hike into the Lower Styx. It was high and brown, but these kids thought it would be fun to check out any way. We got to the top after being soaked by the rain and decided it was a little too high to run some of the first few drops. So we hiked back through a couple side creeks and put on. This was a larger volume of water than what I was use to, but made it down without any problems. Although we spent most of the day hiking with a stupid heavy kayak I still had a fun day. We then camped out again in a free campground on Saturday night and I got to use my new bivy bag for the first time. We woke up to the sun shinning and quickly ran into town to meet another boater and then back to the Styx again. This time the water had come down to a nice medium flow and we suited up to wait for my first helicopter ride. We crammed two people and the pilot at a time into the smallest helicopter I’ve ever seen and flew up river to the start of the Upper Styx. It was a great feeling to be dropped off in the middle of the mountains and to paddle down another unfamiliar creek. It was a great run with a lot of good class IV boogy water, fun boofs, and eddy hoping. It was a little continuous until we came up to one portage in the middle of the upper run. Paddled down the rest and soon came to the start of the Lower Styx. This was the most exciting part of the day with big class IV+ boulder gardens and a lot of great boofs. The rest of the run mellowed out as we came down river back to the cars. Then on the way home I got to experience driving on the left hand side of the road for the first time. It was the same as driving at home, but I now had to judge how wide the car was from the opposite side. Made it home safely and was happy to get home after doing some more boating.