Montana, Day Six: Aiming for Hazards

Don is a calmer, more specific navigator. Then again, he’s Tom’s son. His father was so much kinder than Jim’s was to him.

“We’re aiming for that rusty pine on shore.”

Counterintuitive, but we trust him. We aim for it and he rudders us away from it.

“Aim for that big rock. We’ll go left of it, but aim right at it.”

It’s hard to get used to aiming for hazards, but with power at the rudder, it works so well.

More perilous rock gardens. Out of the raft to portage again. I can’t hold on to the raft as we traverse them, because its weight pulls me forward almost to toppling.

We make the confluence of the White River. As promised, the South Fork broadens, but it also accelerates.

We flash over whitewater, waving our paddles in the air at success and to signal the other raft we made it, but only for a split second, because here comes the next hazard.

We think of rapids as water, but they are actually rocks, our hidden saboteurs. Exhilarating to get over them, but they dislodge and spin and confuse and toss us out of the rafts, and there is no steering clear of this clamoring river population.

Lauren wants to try the pontoon. She does fine for a while but then gets swept into shallows. We pick her up at an exposed rocky island where we stop for lunch.

We munch chocolate and nuts and pee behind a hunk of rocks. It feels good to rest the muscles, to look at the sunny mountains.

“Horsetails followed by fishscales,” says Ro, observing the clouds. “That predicts moisture.”

Oh, not really. Really? We have a ways to go. It’s only one-thirty. Please let us make camp before the “moisture” hits.

I try to blot out the thought of tomorrow’s red danger rapids swelling with rainwater.