Facing A Fear

On my first raft trip as a kid, I stared with awe at the guide sitting at the oars. He was bearded, and struck me as infinitely wise and experienced, (though I’m sure he was no more than 25). I barraged him with questions about the boat, the waves, the rapid rating system, until eventually my mother had to tell me to shush. 

As we approached the first, and only real, rapid of the day, my questions erupted again. It was fear talking, I was scared, and to calm my nerves I wanted to know everything there was to know. 

I’m not much different now. Whitewater still scares me, (though now, I’m usually the one at the oars), and I still try to calm myself by finding out everything there is to know about the coming obstacle. 

On a trip down the Grand Canyon before running the huge and terrifying Lava Falls, I asked an oarsman who’d run the Grand a dozen times if he still got nervous. He paused from zipping up his dry suit and raised his hand toward me. It was visibly shaking. “You never get over it, if you do, you find yourself in trouble.” 

That day, he ran the rapid to perfection. In his tiny 14-foot raft he slid into the V-wave, a towering recirculating monster that seems a great frothing maw. His position was perfect. He dropped his oars to kneel in the bottom of the boat as the wave buried the raft beneath the torrent. Emerging on the downstream side he grabbed oars and gave a small tug and pull motion, correcting the angle just a hair as the final great wave of the rapid loomed ahead. He’d described that wave during our scout as a garage door. Apt, I thought, since it was about the same size, and like a garage door, was either open or closed. Open and the water flowed smoothly up to the summit and down the other side. Closed and it and it curled like a breaker on a beach, ready to send any mis-aligned or too small raft tumbling back up river. The wave was closed when the current began pushing the raft up its lower slope. From the boat, it was a terrifying sight, an avalanche of water. He pushed on the oars, adding some momentum to his little raft and rose into the beast. Like magic, as the bow of his boat came under the tumbling water, the door opened, and with barely a splash aboard, the blue raft rode high over the red wave to slide gracefully down the far side into the quiet water beyond. 

I’ve told that story to many a fellow guide, and client on my own river trips. Often, I suppose, I’m using it as a diversion, or perhaps justification for my own fear. But just as much I’m reminding myself that the fear is healthy, and maybe even necessary.

Just a few weeks ago I was guiding a raft trip down the Kongakut River, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. The Kong, as it’s nicknamed, is a blue river, flowing cold and clear out of the mountains of the Brooks Range. It tumbles with enthusiasm through the valley, in a series of rapids, runs and pools. On the second paddling day, the river enters a three-mile gorge, and passes through the largest rapids on the trip. 

The first, with the biggest waves, we scouted on river right, pulling over on a tricky gravel bar just yards above the rapid’s first rocks. My clients, co-guide, and I walked down the big-rock bar toward the sound of tumbling water. The water, jumping from the river became visible as we approached.

Jumping water is a source of anxiety for me. Those high splashes are always the first thing to be visible when approaching a rapid, often coming into sight before even the sound of the waves. It looks like popcorn, frightening popcorn.

From the shore, the rapid was straight-forward. Big, but straight-forward. A simple, long curving wave train. The crux was a large slightly cresting wave, perhaps the only one in the train that might be capable of flipping a mis-aligned raft. It was the 5th or 6th in line. 

Below the wave train there was a short pool before the river dropped into the second rapid. River right was choked with rocks, impassable, but from above we could see a clean line entering the top of the rapid on the left. I took a mental note of a pyramid shaped rock. The ideal entrance would be about one paddle length right of that rock. The rest was a read and run, rock-dodging affair. 

Walking back up to the boats, I took deep breaths, staring down at my dry-pant clad legs and warm neoprene socks. In such situations, there is a battle ongoing in my head. It is a fight between what, logically, I know I am capable of, and my fears about what might happen if things go awry. 

“What if, the boat spins before that big wave?” Fear asks. 

Logic replies, “I won’t let that happen.”

“Yeah, but what if you hit a rock in the lead-in?”

“The waves aren’t that big, I could run the thing backwards if I had to.”

“But how about that second rapid, can we really make the ferry to the entrance?” pesters Fear.

“Of course we can, it’s practically a quiet pool where we need to cross”. 

“But what if-”

“Hey, Fear?” interrupts Logic.

“Yeah Logic?”

“Shut the hell up.”

Silence.

With quiet once again reigning in my head. I gave on more look down the rapid, smiled, and said to myself. “Now this, THIS is going to be fun.”

It was a perfect run.

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