The Buffalo and the paddle lesson.

Buffalo National River

January 3, 2008

I posted a few pictures last January of a trip I made with Walter Velez and a Park Service Ranger on the Buffalo National River. It was beautiful but cold. The temperature was nine degrees in my tent the first night. I took way too much gear and the wind blew in our faces for all three days. We made very little mileage and most of that was my fault since I was the inexperienced slow paddler. I used the same little Mad River Explorer that was so faithful during the previous summer on the White. Of course, during that trip, the little 16 footer had a Mercury trolling motor strapped to her side. This time it was paddle only and 15 to 30 degrees with a serious headwind. Needless to say, I picked a hell of a time to learn how to paddle a heavily laden canoe.

Luckily, I had Walter with me and was reassured that if all went to hell in a hand basket there would be someone there to fish me out of the cold drink. I didn’t tip over and all ended well. The pictures and the experiences were amazing. I wanted to float or paddle this river since I was a teenager but had never had the opportunity. Now I had done it and in the dead of winter to boot. The experience was worth all the trouble a bad planner could put himself into and that is what I had done. I entered the river totally unprepared for the reality of what happens when you bring too much stuff, too heavy a boat, too inexperienced a paddler, too extreme a temperature and too damned dumb to realize what you were facing. Once again, I have learned you cannot fix a date certain on an expedition and then stick to it no matter what. Your entry into the expedition should always be timed with success in mind, not expedience or in my case convenience. Unless, of course you think you have so much experience you can take on anything the river has to offer. In that case, I would suggest you never, never mess with Mother Nature because just two months later the river was engorged by a huge flood.

The river had what has been called two one hundred year floods within three weeks of each other. In March the river rose some forty-five feet in a thirty-six hour period. The water was within four feet of the bottom of Highway 14 bridge. Every gravel bar we camped on was under water by over forty feet. The water knocked down great sixty-foot Sycamore trees and put driftwood high into the cliffs.

When I got back from the Buffalo I knew I could no longer rely on my luck to keep myself safe from the river elements. I taught myself a serious lesson. In other words I realized how much trouble I could have gotten into simply because I was too inexperienced for the situation.