Navarro River trip report April 11 and 12
A group effort:

Dear Bill and all,
On behalf of Peter, Marianne and myself, thank you so very much for an adventure to rival first descents down the Amazon, the Nile, the McKenzie and now… the Navarro. I have heard that National Geographic is looking for volunteers. We had a great time. I kept thinking of that old cartoon: George of the Jungle and the theme song; George,George of the Jungle…Watch out for that tree!!!
BTW-did anyone see an extra “handy” (European term for cell phone). Peter seems to have mislocated his. Let me know.
Thanks again,
--Keith-the Intrepid Insane Paddler.

Dear Y'all,
I know its weird but I really enjoyed the super "technical" aspect of the river, although by the end there I did succumb to cursing and ever increasing depression whenever one of those evil, brush laden 90 degree turns showed up. My wonderful partner, Jan, kept apologizing for putting me in the branches but I could only blame the xxxx river because there was nothing to get a grip on to get out of the branches. We thought about trying to paddle on the same side but I just couldn't do it. I've been trained like a seal to do one trick, paddle on the opposite side as my partner. Thank you all for a great weekend.
Charlie's comment was that he would do this trip with the same people again; Everyone was trustworthy and solid.
Keith, you were very intrepid and.........yes, insane. (you said it first) but brave to risk your feet like that. I often bring an extra outfit for unexpected swims but never thought of bringing an extra pair of shoes. What’s your size? SYOTR
--Kit

From Karen Jarrell (aka Peterson):
This was one of those trips that will be talked about for years. (What WAS the official flow on Sat. and Sun, anyway?)
I, like Kit, loved this new and different aspect of what 'technical' means. I also learned that there are worse places than in the brush. Brush can be used to help you turn your boat. If you torpedo a thick patch at the proper angle it can set you up for the perfect back-ferry and get you the heck out of there before you wreck.
I collected a variety of flora, an interesting set of bruises, some new muscles, most of the spiders in the county (except for the one that is living on Don's hat), and at least three dragonfly larvae.
I kind of felt sorry for the dragonfly larvae. There they were, minding their own business of climbing up a bush and turning into dragonflies, when some crazy out-of-control woman in a boat careens into the brush and knocks them head over heels or whatever the insect equivalent is. ("What the hell!?")
It was SOOOO beautiful. The crystal clear water, the sweet smell of crushed willow, all the lush happy green new plant growth. The egg. The tuffets. The flowers. The deep shade of the redwoods. The soaring feeling when the water gets deep and you float above it like a silent hovercraft.
The deep joy of being in such rejuvenating spaces.
We even had a mystery. What DID happen to Vince?
Best, there is this group of completely crazy people who are old enough to know better, all on this marvelous adventure together. WHAT a great group. I agree with Charlie; I'd do it again. As I sit here at work, I'll take even that G-turn in a flash.... especially when Don is at the bank helping us along. (I do love my husband, and yes, I love to say that!)
Thank you Bill! You're a great shepherd and organizer.
Thank you, Charlie, for doing an awesome job first time paddling solo!!!! (ed note: Charlie has paddled solo many times but never in a tandem filled with gear).
Ditto for Stephanie! Truly her father's son and her mother's daughter! It was so good to have you along.
Thank you, whoever made the decision to go for camping on the river.
Thank you, Don, for helping me on that turn so I didn't join Stephanie and Mary in the river.
Thank you, whoever decided to take ALL the boats.
Thank you, everyone who brought the great food! Thank you, Keith!
Keith. Yes. The name "Keith" is just not adequate for all he is and has become. I think, in the longstanding Indian tradition of changing names after a significant event, our fire building, high-energy dynamo of a friend deserves a new name. Chief Crazy Man. Like Burning Man, he has become a symbol of greatness in his own way.
I'm still sore. Marvelous trip.
--Karen

Dear POST,
Most of you, when you think of drought are thinking of ways to conserve water; take shorter showers, wash the car on a lawn, plant drought tolerant plants. Every drop of water you use becomes a note in the discord between need and comfort, hoarding and sensible conservation.

I am sad to add to this angst by saying that my recreational activities are being impacted as well. I know this sounds like the whining of the over-privileged and I hope I don't sound like the ugly American. Many of the rivers in California are naturally seasonal and without dams to trap their flow during the short rainy season or during the snowmelt, by May or June most of them have dried up or at least are running at a very slow pace. This year’s drought has given us streambeds with marginal trickles by early April. Next month they will be bone dry.

What drought means to us canoing fools is that at the risk of life and limb we go boating when the flow of 135cfs on the Navarro River is so low you couldn't drown a cat in it. After wading into the water without wetting our ankles the trip leaders decided that the best thing to do was to divide the pile of gear amongst as many boats as possible even if this meant some of the more skilled paddlers ended up paddling solo in tandem canoes filled with gear(-- did I mention we were going to spend the night on the river?) It was funny to have people scouring the group gear looking for heavy things instead of the most lightweight. The solo paddlers needed the ballast to keep their boats level and steerable. While it made sense to have lighter boats, I was not at all sure the solo paddlers were going to have any fun. I pictured them zigzagging along trying to stay in the current, frustrated beyond belief.

Charlie, my husband, was chosen to be one of the solo paddlers so I was partnered up with Jan which made me very happy. It was refreshing to paddle with Jan, who has been leading canoe, kayak and backpacking trips in Alaska and Florida for the Sierra Club for many years. So she knows her stuff even though she keeps saying, "I'm just a beginner."

So after breakfast we waded out into the river pushing our tons of gear in the canoes and began our hike down the Navarro River. In the little fog bank of a brain that I live in most of the time, I heard someone say that the run was 25 miles, so when, after over an hour we approached the bridge at the Hendy Woods Park entrance and someone with a GPS said we had gone 2 miles I freaked, quietly, to myself, no one knew that my brain was cooking up a worry.

On those occasions when there was water actually flowing in a channel deep enough to float the boats we were being pushed into the sweeping willows that arched over the water. There wasn’t enough water to use a paddle effectively and the current was just powerful enough that we were almost helpless. You couldn’t take the inside of the turn because it was only about an inch deep and the eddy around the bend was dotted with dry pebbles so the only place to go was the six inches of water that dumped you into the brush. Jan and I took this challenge and worked on several strategies in hopes of avoiding the brush but if a stroke could have saved us from the shrubbery we couldn’t make it because our paddles were tangled in willow branches and our heads were ducked below the gunwales. Then when the river widened out it thinned out, too. Lovely shining pools from bank to bank looked inviting but like the Missouri (and some types of intelligence) it was a mile wide and an inch deep. Jan and I took the best routes we could find, used the leading boats thump and crash as a guide to places to avoid and paddled hard when things started to thin out. Then we got out of the boat and pushed/pulled across the gravel. I was wet from the waist down from splashing. We had to bail out the water we dragged in with our pants and shoes every time we climbed back into the boat.
I think there are people who paddle as if they were keeping score like in golf. Flipping a boat is like a 16 over par, shooting an impossible Class III with finesse is 20 under par. Lining a canoe costs you points, getting out of the boat costs points, you get a better score if you never touch the shore except to eat or stretch. For these people I am sure the trip was a special form of torture. Every 20 minutes they were hitting bottom, dragging, lining, crashing through brush, near misses of every conceivable kind. Those of us who live in the moment just figured that it was easier to line anything that looked even remotely like a sweeper or a shallow and I think we were much happier. You know, go with the flow, even when there is none.

When it came to the GPS crowd I was in agony. I still had the idea in my head that we had to go 25 miles in two days. Impossible! And those folks with the GPS kept saying really despair- inducing things like, “we’ve gone 4 miles in the last 3 hours!” as if that was something to be proud of! Around 4 pm I was done. Ready to have a snack, take a long nap. Walk home. We kept paddling. Around 5pm, we stopped once again to line a trivial chute and when we came around the bend, ta da! The lead boats had been at camp long enough to lug all the heavy stuff up the beach and set up the canoe kitchen table without our help! Yay! That is one very good reason to be sweep! The GPS folk said we had gone 8 miles. What! That was when I found out that the whole trip was only 12 miles. What a relief.

Dinner – this brings up the whole food issue, a very important part of POST. There was a slight complication of the POST van driving up to Hendy Woods on Friday night so some people were having breakfast in camp and others were arriving after breakfast. The food was planned as a potluck with the trip leader providing Saturday breakfast and dinner and others providing Saturday Lunch and Sunday breakfast and lunch. Like all good plans it ran into some trouble. The folks who were bringing Sunday breakfast didn’t show up at the put in so the trip leaders had to pack their leftovers so we would have something to eat in the morning. This turned out to be a non-problem because the people who brought Saturday lunch brought meatballs, potato salad, and pasta salad in such quantities that we had them for breakfast and then again for lunch on Sunday. Charlie sliced one of the meatballs up for sandwiches, what a treat! The only disaster was that 2 and a half pounds of coffee were left in the cars at the take out and nothing in camp for the caffeine addicts except my two pitiful tea bags which I shared. There were some excellent chocolate bars left over from lunch that helped, too. So the score on food for this trip was, as usual, perfectisimo.

Speaking of things left behind, one boater ended up on this trip, of all trips without shoes! He did all the dragging, lining and portaging in bare feet. I would have died. He did get in some frightening howls on occasion but I think that is part of his dramatis personae more than an expression of sincere desperation. His demands that we drive his car upstream to mile 11 met with humorous disregard.

There was one flip, where the brush won the constant argument with the canoes, but nothing was lost and the partners were still speaking at the end of the trip so it couldn’t have been too bad.

I don’t really know how to explain this without sounding like an idiot, but I had a really good time. I probably won’t do the Navarro at anything less than 400 CFS until I forget all the work we went thru. But Jan and I got to really practice our tight maneuvering skills, and I got to be in the woods camping and eating with POST. It was a lot of work and worth about 3/4 of the effort.
--Kit

From Don:
Ah, yes! A great time! And, at only 110 cfs! Who said you couldn't get loaded canoes down that river at such low flows....

Repair party notice to follow shortly.....

--Donald R. Jarrell