ARG Richland Trip Reports + Jess's Photos

[davidbob]

First of all, and I cannot stress this strongly enough, Marcell is banned for life. More on that later.

The full cast of ARG (Arkansas Raft Guides) put rubber on Richland today. Cap'n Downstream, Lippo and I R3ed a Super Puma. Ranger Rick, ARG President and Director of Safety and Risk Management, oar rigged a Super Puma. Dr. Arliss Dale "canoe" Barton (a TRUE friend of ARG if ever there was one) rowed his Shredder, and brand new ARG wannabes and Richland first timers Jeremy A. and Jim C. R2ed a Puma. Marcell (who had called BEGGING to paddle with us) showed up late at the put in. After telling us about a tree in the water below Green Room he had seen on a run the day before, he left to paddle Hurricane Creek (because he felt sorry for Walter (or so he said)). Because of Marcell's intransigence ARG had to deflate a raft (on a muddy road), change our plans, and hastily call a meeting of the ARG membership committee to double ban Marcell for life. It looks like the odds are better that Pete Rose someday will be commissioner of Major League Baseball than Marcell will get voted into ARG.

The level was close to 5.5 and the temperature was right at freezing when we launched (right after Rick's safety and risk assessment lecture). Then it started spitting snow. You expect nothing less when Richland knows it's under a frontal assault by ARG at full strength (and them some).

For most of the day Dale ran first, then Rick, the newbies next, and the ARG paddle boat ran sweep. Everything down to Green Room was routine. One tree across the river near one of the willow jungles above the gorge had to be negotiated, but that was about it. Dale made an ugly run at Green Room, then Ranger Rick decided to try an ARG line instead of the line most people run when they don't want to swim. He turntabled the raft on a rock above a part of the drop where you don't want to be, then sought refuge in the bottom of the raft until the worst was over (an advanced safety technique). The newbies cruised through without a problem. Then we saw the tree.

We spent about an hour lining the rafts down to and over a tree that had fallen across most of the creek, with a nasty stob in the middle of what little room there was to try to sneak around. I'm sure the yakkers had no problem, but the slot wasn't open or wide enough for a raft to risk it. Supervised by Ranger Rick, the operation could have been a model safety demonstration. For a group that prides itself in not standing waist deep in cold water, we sure stood waist deep in cold water for awhile.

After we all flopped over the Falls we stopped at the confluence for lunch. Now I don't know about you, but I consider balogna and cheese on whitebread to be about as fine as dining can get, especially on the river. Rick brought 2 and we split 'em. I think that was the safest sandwich I have ever eaten. We needed a good lunch because the fun was about to start.

Dale took off and before we could even get the ARG paddle raft pushed off the gravel bar I looked up and saw the Shredder's seat was empty, and a helmet that looked an awful lot like Dale's was bobbing along in the water beside it. Then, at the house sized rock at the bottom of the rapid, the Shredder went one way and Dale went another. Rick found him on river right and safely transported him to an eddy on river left, just below the eddy where the Shredder had parked itself to wait for it's operator. I thought Dale should have just whistled for it, like Roy used to do for Trigger, but he waded in and went to it instead. Rick asked him if he needed any help and Dale said "No, I've done this before."

A rapid or two downstream the newbie raft motioned to us from an eddy. Seems that the creek grabbed Jim's expensive new paddle out of his hand and held on to it. Jeremy said he saw it solidly pinned in shallow water back upstream so we parked the boats, and the newbies took off on foot to look for it. The search might have been mission critical because the newbies, being newbies, carried no spare. The Captain followed them, but we are not sure whether he went along to offer assistance in locating the lost paddle or negotiating the rental price for the spare paddle we carried in the ARG paddle boat. I decided my time would be better spent putting on a pair of dry gloves while waiting for the paddle to magically appear at my feet, and Lippo decided to stay at the boats with me and whine about the fact I now had dry gloves. Just about that time Lippo looked down and saw a t grip sticking out from beneath the bottom of the raft, right at our feet. How Jim's paddle went from being pinned in a rapid to floating underneath the raft in an eddy a couple of 100 feet downstream is anybody's guess (the "Roy whistling for Trigger" theory being as good as any). Ranger Rick stressed the important safety implications of a spare paddle to the newbies. Turning the incident into a teaching opportunity and safety lesson, he indirectly chided Lippo and me for creating the false (and therefore unsafe) impression for the newbies that the wait-for-the-lost-paddle-to-magically-appear-at-your-feet scenario is a common occurrence on remote runs like Upper Richland.

After Dale gave the newbies some pointed advice about Cindy's Hole (something like "punch it hard or that raft might stay in the hole for a couple of days"), Dale proceeded to demonstrate the hazards of not hitting the hole with enough speed. We figured out something wasn't exactly right when Ranger Rick backed into an eddy just above the drop and the newbie raft caught one too. From the pool above Cindy's we kept looking downstream for the Shredder but never saw it. Then we saw Dale's helmet even with the horizon line doing more of that bobbing thing. It started out bobbing in place, except this time it was air bobbing instead of water bobbing. Then from our viewpoint it would shoot side to side one way or another across the drop without moving upstream or downstream at all. Turns out Dr. Dale decided to show the newbies how to surf a hole. He surfed it this way, he surfed it that way ... he was just surfing up a storm. Minutes passed and he was still surfing. After Cindy finally tired of playing with him and we caught up with him sitting in the Shredder in the pool below, between gasps of breath he said he was having so much fun he thought about jumping out of the raft on the downstream side a time or two when the angle was right just to get a little relief.

You'd think the way day had gone so far there'd be lots of good stories about Apple Pie, USU, LSU and Maytag. In actuality the rest of the run was routine, except for the exceptional safeness of Rick's run through Apple Pie and the newbies' decision to boof Maytag Rock. The run the ARG paddle boat made down Lower Screw Up was the best I've ever made in any boat at any level. This was probably due to weight and balance corrections made after lunch, which resulted in the Team Big Water members in the raft (Stewart and me) gaining more control over the raft at the expense of Lippo, the only member of the Sugar Britches Division of ARG, also on loan for the day to Team Big Water from Team Flat Water (who says labeling is wrong).

We broke down the rafts as the snow began to pick up and the lead group of yakkers' doing their second lap of the day (props to them) pulled up to the campground bridge. In retrospect ARG unanimously agreed that Marcell had made the right decision for him (after all the water was pretty high). Ranger Rick declared the day a safe success, and we all headed back to the B Paddle N Ranch for dry clothes and cold beverages.

[Charlie Ford]

Mr. Davidbob, I'm new to the sport so I'll probably never be up for induction into the ARG but I do enjoy reading about the adventures of such a prestine club of rafters I always get a kick out of reading about the adventures of this elite club of rafters.

[prophet]

Mr. Davidbob, I'm new to the sport so I'll probably never be up for induction into the ARG but I do enjoy reading about the adventures of such a prestine club of rafters I always get a kick out of reading about the adventures of this elite club of rafters.

[lbaker]

I soooooo enjoy living vicariously thru others, and it doesn't get any better than right here on the ACC board! Thanks for the fun!
Leigh

[canoe]

Sunday was another matter. Warm, sunny weather, easily over a hundred boaters on the creek, nice water level(but marginal for rafts) at about 3.5-6. Marcell and I paddle shredding, Stewart oaring Judy McCune, Jim Mitchell oaring himself, Pal McCune and Wills R-2 a Super Puma, Terry Prater and (sorry) another Oc-1 from St Louis, Ty Yamashita c-1, PRESIDENT AMOS TURNNIPSEED k1, and a hundred other yackers. Highlights that I can recall, include Marcell and I being 5ft. offline for the center line at the Falls, hanging up for a long time, and finally penciling in vertical, me falling 95% out of the shredder with only my left foot still in the foot cup, and poping right back in the shredder, just as Marcell was scrambling out of the floor of said shredder. This was so much fun, we missed Stewart gettin flipped out of his raft on the right line, leaving Judy to man the boat by herself. Most of the other highlights seem to involve Lippo Hanging up on rocks, the 2 best where his run at Door#1 Where he was able to accurately pin his bow on the stump of the marker tree(that I had on a previous trip taken out 95% of said tree) while his stern got pinned on the far right rock against the bank. After, oh, probably an hour(maybe less), Nick Hobbs waded out and pulled Jimbo into a position where was able to under complete control, run door1 backwards, without any oars in hand, but the remainder of the stump, stuck into the bottom of the raft(sections can be bought as starter money for the Boater Guide to Hiking Richland). Jimbos run at Maytag, resulted in a ride up the face of Maytag Rock, and extreme highside and near flip, and at the Falling Water /Richland confluence getting snagged be the log that is wedged between the forks of the tree on river right. This required Wills and Paul to do a sliding into 2nd stop just above the tree, and Paul and Stewart to grab the upstream end of the log and pull down(pretty funny Watching them hang 8 ft up in the air levering the upstream end of the log down so the downstream end could come up out of Lippos raft, but even then it wouldn,t have happened if Wills hadn't done some of magic to finnally let poor Jim end his day. And as a bonus, Randy Jackson's kayak was found just above Green Rock, Damaged but paddleable. Magic, wonderful day in paradise. DALE

[Jessica]

Great day today, gorgeous weather, good friends. See below link for pictures.

http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/5707 ... t=outdoors" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[davidbob]

Thanks Charlie - you may have more in common with ARG than you realize - we were all new to the sport once ourselves and we like reading about our adventures too.

Thanks Leigh - you may have the best idea yet - experience a Richland trip with zero chance of tearing up your garage and the roof rack/rails on your wife's Suburban (like I did Friday night), screwing up the shuttle (ARG is famous for that), or walking out of Richland (see, e.g. The Paddler's Guide to Hiking Richland Creek).

Grant - what part of "Elite" don't you understand?

Brad - What happened to your post?

[prophet]

Grant - what part of "Elite" don't you understand?

it was really the "pristine" part that caught my attention

[T Yamashita]

Excellent pics Jessica! Especially of shredder crew's run through richland falls!!