It was a normal day at the office, when a former NRS employee called and asked "Do you want to haul some gear... down the Selway?" I quickly responded: “Sign me up - and by the way, how much gear?” It turns out that a friend of a friend had drawn a 16-person Selway permit and had two spots left. That afternoon, I went home and explained to my wife that we needed to find child care for the second week in June "'cause we're going boatin’!".

As the launch drew nearer, I checked the flow levels each day on the NRS River Links page, getting butterflies each time the Selway exceeded 12,000 cfs at the Lowell Gauge. We were in for a full river with a brisk flow.

As the details unfolded, I learned that my boat would need to carry two kayakers’ gear, plus two passengers with their gear, plus food for all five of us. I had run the Selway two years earlier - also as a “gear pig”. Since I was now planning for big water and even more gear than before, I upgraded my “weapon of choice to” a 16-foot NRS River Cat. I was glad I did. At the time we launched, the river was reading 16,400 cfs at the gauge, and just under five feet on the stick at the put-in. While the flow alone was very intimidating, my uneasiness was compounded by the fact that I was hauling the heaviest load I've ever pulled, and floating with a group of complete strangers of unknown boating abilities.

The first two days, my wife and I wore NRS wetsuits and Black Rock splash gear. This worked out well, since the first rapids were small ones and the weather was fairly decent. Afterward, though, the number of rain showers increased and so did the size of the whitewater. By day three we both decided to upgrade to full drysuits.

As the tributaries combined, the river widened and the rapids continued to grow more powerful. An intermediate kayaker in the group was sucked into a very large whirlpool and got spooked, and so decided to strap the kayak to the back of my cat and ride on the cooler. By the time the most difficult day of whitewater arrived, we had our boats “dialed in” for optimal passenger capacity and balance. I lined up and ran all the Class IV rapids perfectly – except one. This one is the rapid I’ll remember forever.

It was a relatively straightforward, two-part rapid starting on river right and ending on river left, and divided by a large pool with a wicked eddy line. I ran the first line correctly and started to pull to the left as hard as I could. To my dismay, I just couldn’t pull my big barge across the river in time. In my desperation to correct my line, I neglected to square up, inadvertently choosing a new line.

I’ll never do that again. As my cat fell sideways into the first hole (twice the size of the 16-foot River Cat), the cat stayed upright but completely submerged. After a few seconds (it felt like hours), the cat recovered and all four corners rose out of the hole at once. I guess all that cargo - cooler, dry box, four York Packs (one on each corner), five 3.8 Bill’s Bags, plus three passengers - actually came in handy after all, stabilizing the cat and preventing a flip.

But just as the cat surfaced, it crested over the lip of the first hole directly into another one that was just as big. I pushed and pulled on each oar but didn't make any progress. Amazingly, all my passengers held on as they watched the massive 25-inch-diameter tubes go under again.

The river gods finally let us loose and allowed us to join the dumbfounded group watching below. Many of my new friends said they’ve never seen a boat make it through a hole that big - let alone a cat. And I hope they never do again.

Lesson learned: if you miss the line you intended, make the decision to run a different line before it's too late to do anything at all. That just might be a good rule in life, as well as in rafting.

Rett Clevenger
Former NRS E-Commerce Manager