After a brutal 12 hours of hiking,I expected to wake up feeling wrecked,but my legs weren't really that sore.My back was sore from the backpack,and my toes were severely bruised from the pounding of going down the switchbacks,but I felt relatively good otherwise.I walked down the trail a little way and I could see the river and I started getting real fired up.We had a slow breakfast in an attempt to recover a little more from the hike,then we packed our boats and got ready to put on.Suzanne the Ranger came down the trail about this time to chat with us about permits,bear cans and what-not,and she ended up hiking a good way to watch us run some of the first rapids as well.One by one we slid into the river and started heading down through the first low/mank section.
Pretty soon we came up on our first piece of bedrock and the first real rapid.It was a manky 10'er onto a long slide,never even seen a photo of it before,but it was a cool rapid.We all had good lines and smiles to a small crowd of hikers and Suzy Ranger,unfortunately that was the end of the granite for the moment,and we started banging through the mank again.This section was like low-water Alum Cave into the upper West Prong.We portaged a big,chunky stairstep slide thing due to wood,and continued on with another portage around a slide to vert falls with a questionable landing zone.Wood was abundant,probably due to record high flows earlier in the season,but we were able to get around most of it.A long,beautiful meadow paddle brought us to some more mank and our first lunch stop of the trip.We had a good lunch,checked the topo,and chilled out for a bit above a nice slide.The slide turned out not to be so nice as we all took a pretty good hit on a shelf 1/3 of the way down.After a little more mank we started getting into the classic bedrock drops of the Middle Kings.Every rapid was starting to get pretty big,with a few portages in there as well.
Big slides and a few big holes led us to the Money Drop.This was one of the best rapids of the trip for sure,and the highlight of day 1 of kayaking.The feeling at the bottom is an undescribable eye-opener to what the Middle Kings is all about for me; unbelievable pain and unbelievable rewards.
After money drop,the river started becoming a blur.One man scouts were the norm,and we ran some stuff blind that probably should have been scouted.We were amazed at how stacked up the rapids were,we knew it was steep,but never knew it was so relentless.It was clear now more than ever that this was going to be the hardest river of our lives up to that point.After a big slide with a burly hole and a cliff on the left,the rapids eased off a bit and cruised some low angle slides to our next big scout.As I climbed up and around huge boulders to get a look downstream,I realized that I was exhausted and didn't have much left to give.The next rapid was just to big for me to run that evening in my state of mental and physical exhaustion.Thankfully after hiking and climbing back up to report the news,Mason and Matt were feeling it too.There was a decent camping spot where we had taken out,so we posted up for the evening.We got out the map and tried to figure out how much ground we had covered.We knew we were close to devil's washbowl,but we didn't know how close.We ate,drank and enjoyed the upstream view of some mellow slides we had run earlier.From the scout we knew that the first morning rapid was going to be huge,so we all went to bed feeling a little nervous about what was to come.Day 1 on the river had been the sickest day of kayaking thus far in my life,and I knew it was probably going to be the easiest day of this trip.
After a brutal 12 hours of hiking,I expected to wake up feeling wrecked,but my legs weren't really that sore.My back was sore from the backpack,and my toes were severely bruised from the pounding of going down the switchbacks,but I felt relatively good otherwise.I walked down the trail a little way and I could see the river and I started getting real fired up.We had a slow breakfast in an attempt to recover a little more from the hike,then we packed our boats and got ready to put on.Suzanne the Ranger came down the trail about this time to chat with us about permits,bear cans and what-not,and she ended up hiking a good way to watch us run some of the first rapids as well.One by one we slid into the river and started heading down through the first low/mank section.
Pretty soon we came up on our first piece of bedrock and the first real rapid.It was a manky 10'er onto a long slide,never even seen a photo of it before,but it was a cool rapid.We all had good lines and smiles to a small crowd of hikers and Suzy Ranger,unfortunately that was the end of the granite for the moment,and we started banging through the mank again.This section was like low-water Alum Cave into the upper West Prong.We portaged a big,chunky stairstep slide thing due to wood,and continued on with another portage around a slide to vert falls with a questionable landing zone.Wood was abundant,probably due to record high flows earlier in the season,but we were able to get around most of it.A long,beautiful meadow paddle brought us to some more mank and our first lunch stop of the trip.We had a good lunch,checked the topo,and chilled out for a bit above a nice slide.The slide turned out not to be so nice as we all took a pretty good hit on a shelf 1/3 of the way down.After a little more mank we started getting into the classic bedrock drops of the Middle Kings.Every rapid was starting to get pretty big,with a few portages in there as well.
Big slides and a few big holes led us to the Money Drop.This was one of the best rapids of the trip for sure,and the highlight of day 1 of kayaking.The feeling at the bottom is an undescribable eye-opener to what the Middle Kings is all about for me; unbelievable pain and unbelievable rewards.
After money drop,the river started becoming a blur.One man scouts were the norm,and we ran some stuff blind that probably should have been scouted.We were amazed at how stacked up the rapids were,we knew it was steep,but never knew it was so relentless.It was clear now more than ever that this was going to be the hardest river of our lives up to that point.After a big slide with a burly hole and a cliff on the left,the rapids eased off a bit and cruised some low angle slides to our next big scout.As I climbed up and around huge boulders to get a look downstream,I realized that I was exhausted and didn't have much left to give.The next rapid was just to big for me to run that evening in my state of mental and physical exhaustion.Thankfully after hiking and climbing back up to report the news,Mason and Matt were feeling it too.There was a decent camping spot where we had taken out,so we posted up for the evening.We got out the map and tried to figure out how much ground we had covered.We knew we were close to devil's washbowl,but we didn't know how close.We ate,drank and enjoyed the upstream view of some mellow slides we had run earlier.From the scout we knew that the first morning rapid was going to be huge,so we all went to bed feeling a little nervous about what was to come.Day 1 on the river had been the sickest day of kayaking thus far in my life,and I knew it was probably going to be the easiest day of this trip.
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