10 years ago I used to be into whitewater kayaking up in Oregon. It was a great way to experience the outdoors and have fun w/ good friends. Photo to the left is me on the White Salmon River... must be at least 12 years ago. We started out doing pretty mellow rivers, but it was only a matter of time before we began pushing ourselves into more and more challenging runs. Of course it depends on your skill level, and its not like we were cheating death on a regular basis or anything, but we were running class IV rapids pretty regularly. Anyway, when we would come up on a difficult rapid, usually we'd pull off, scout it, then get back in the boat and run it.
The thing that used to really get to me was the 'butterflies' you get when you are back in your boat, have you spray skirt sealed, helmet on and ready to shove off. While you are sitting there, a measure of how difficult the rapid was, had to do with how many deep breaths you need to take to get your nerve up... one deep breath, ok, two deep breaths, pretty serious, three deep breaths, do I belong here? The pic here is of my buddy Grant (I wasn't on this trip) but clearly the tricky thing here is to make sure you clear the spout enough so you don't get pulled back behind the curtain... looks easier than it is I'm sure. I wonder how many deep breaths he took? Maybe none, who knows.
Fast forward 10 years, completely different sport, but if you have an idea about how swell size and periods work (bouy data), you can see that we have a monster swell approaching for Saturday. This thing should result in 18 - 20 foot faces... Mavericks will be producing 30 foot waves, helicopters will be buzzing the coast, wave-ski and surf-tow crews will be cruising the coastline, etc. The butterflies are back & I may need a few deep breaths before the AM paddle out.
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