I don't usually write "trip reports" since my life seems to be one adventure after another and I'm usually more focused on the current one than what has already happened. But @OneClick 's recent paddling adventure, and the similarities between that one and some of the ones we have, inspired me to write about one of our more recent ones.
This summer was totally occupied w/ a transpo gig that I took on heading up a fleet of rigs and trailers to move an art installation a thousand miles and back. Once we returned all I wanted to do was throw my kayak in some water and feel that glide across the surface that happens when you're paddling. Of course around here, Arizona desert, our options are pretty minimal but there's this crappy little lake that has several boat-in only camp spots not super far away. So we threw the gear duffles in the 4Runner, yaks on top, and headed out for a couple nights.
We picked a spot that we knew we could hang in and set up a nice relaxing camp. There was a light afternoon rain on the second day that made for an excellent midday nap. Over all a pleasant trip getting back the feeling of being one w/ the kayak and photographing the wildlife (which most of got deleted w/ an unplanned reformating of my card). Then came pack down / reload the kayaks day since we had a "check out" time on the site.
I had my stuff down and loaded early (because I'm that way) and went out for a paddle while my lady did her slower teardown and load.
While I was out it started to rain again but no big deal, I was wearing my semi-dry top and had the spray skirt on. But I did feel I should get back to the site in case my help was needed.
In camp things were a bit frustrating as she was still loading things. I watched the weather as it was coming over the mountains. At first it looked like it was going to be one of the usual on and off desert rains so we stood under the trees in our paddling gear and waited. That was fine for a while and then some real storm clouds started to show over the mountains and a wall of pouring down rain was headed our way. Hmm, not what you want to see while your gear is all packed in.
I decided that a tarp was at least needed and popped off my cockpit cover to grab out dry bag w/ tarp and hammock all while it was starting to pour. It's times like this that have me stashing the tarp behind my seat in the kayak and not in one of my dry hatches.
I managed to get the tarp strung before it just opened up on us hard. We ducked inside and just held the sides down, no time for stakes and in a moment it was obvious that they wouldn't have helped. The winds that come w/ these desert storms slapped us around a lot and we were barely able to maintain our squatting positions inside the tarp . . . then it turned into hail, big hail, like up to marble size. Holding the sides of the tarp and working on not being blown over kept us from being rained on, it did not keep us from getting the crap pounded out of us while it hailed. And this was not short lived, it probably went on for 10 or 15 minutes. It actually poured down rain and hail so much that the ground where we were squatting under the tarp started to pool w/ water, but not just rain water, all the hail piling up made that water ice water and I was in my usual state of being barefoot.
By the time this all slowed enough to stumble out from under our minimal shelter I could hardly feel my feet and there was at least an inch of hail everywhere.
The first thing I did was to hobble to the lake edge to check on our kayaks which were tethered, but not beached, to make sure all was good there. Standing in the lake water help take the numbness out of my feet.
When I went to take down the tarp I noticed that the ti clip that I have on the end of my tarp's CRL had bent open.
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A few weeks later we did another paddle camp and things were less adventurous (if we don't count me spending time in the water working on wet exits and reentries, several of which failed), I'll include some pics from that trip just so this is not all words. . The first one is from this trip, the rest are from the one after that.
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