05.27.08
Memorial Day Weekend , H2 heads east!
So this is one of the busiest times of year for us. This is the time where I head off to go paddling whenever i can sneak it in, which also happens to coincide when folks start climbing more. This year Bela ended up having to work some shifts at the gym for memorial day weekend as his managers wanted to go climbing. So I decided to head out east with my paddling friends to get on some fun rivers in PA/WV. This has become an annual event, mostly known as the “Yough Trip” and we normally get a lot of folks showing up. this year we had 15 people in a B&B where we rented the whole house and had another 10 or so people from our paddle club in and around the area as well.
A group of 6 of us headed out early Thursday morning. We got to PA in time to sneak in a paddle on the Upper Slippery Rock. The river is just to the east of New Castle and was just beautiful with fun rapids and a few playspots. I hadn’t paddled a lot so this was a nice run for me, and it ended up being one of the hardest runs of the weekend for me as well. I ended up flipping once but my roll actually worked 
!
After our wonderful first run we grabbed a bite to eat and made our way to the B&B. After some confusion with locked doors we got in and got settled. The next morning was a bit crazy as we ended up referring to the B&B as the B*tch & Bed, as we were exposed to the caretaker of the house who must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed- that and she took our breakfast items away…. After a long morning of sour faces, we finally got things rolling and Pat made us some superb cherry and cranberry scones. This breakfast really improved spirits and we decided to get on the river.
Due to all the rain PA had been getting many of the rivers were quite high, which also made some of the easier rivers a bit more fun. We decided to run the Casselman river from a little town- i’m not actually sure which one- possibly Rockwood and took out near Fort Hill. It ended up being a long run about 11 miles. The first half of the run was superb, fast moving water with lots of little playholes. We all surfed as we floated down the river. As the day went on it got colder and started to rain. Many of us got a bit chilly and were looking forward to the takeout. I of course forgot to put people’s change of clothes in the takout car so it made for a wet and cold shuttle – sorry guys! they paid me back by pretending to urinate in our boats- evil guys!
– well its been a year and i never finished this! so i’ll try to remember the full story!
The next day i did my usual run to Seneca to hang out with the old buds- Andy and Neely came in from Texas and even Joe and Annette came from DC. had a fun day of climbing while the rest of the folks went to the Narrows to paddle since the lower was too high.
the next day i did my first margarita float down the Middle Yough with Diana, Steve and Anna. we actually had a great time just cruising – played a little but there really wasn’t much on the river and we never really found flipper. its also not a short run, so it took a bit longer than we expected. one of the more memorable parts of that run was diana trying to fling her strawberry flavored beverage either at me or to me and it sinking- we were very sad and she kept paddling to try to find it- why isn’t it floating!?
I think the rest of the crew did end up doing the lower, even with the high water. We opted not to paddle on monday and started the long drive home. I was pretty tired and somewhere in Ohio or maybe it was Indiana at that point but all of a sudden i hear a beep (now keep in mind i had just gotten my car so i wasn’t that in tune to her messages yet). we didn’t figure out what it meant and just kept going. next thing i know there are red flashing icons and the car is stopping, no electric to glide on, and we’d run out of gas! Luckily we were caravanning so our very good friends pat, humberto and jack went to go get us some gas- which unforunatley took a while since we were on the interstate. we did have fun making fun of diana til they got back and humberto topped it with his arrival in the crazy mexican poncho & leopard print glasses – it was a sight!
