From Left to right

Jenn, Josh, Jeromy, Seton, Becca, Shanna, George, Nick, Kevin, Will, Roger, Noah, Susan

(not pictured.. Andy and Lora)

 

The weather and the river level cooperated for the annual Halloween Paddle and Party.  We had a great turn out for the paddle on the Lower Green River Gorge (class III) and the sun made an appearance from about noon on.   We had along 3 guests as well, hopefully they had a good time and will want to join the club in the future.  There was a total of 15 of us.. 2 fantastic Halloween costumes (Queen of Hearts from Alice and Wonderland and a human size banana), a couple sets of headband ears (Wolf and Bunny) and 11 costumes of lazy kayakers (is that an actual costume, or an everyday boating costume?  Haha!) 

 

We had 3 kayakers that were brand new to the gorge and got a first descent on the Lower.  Super fun!  Everyone did great, we ran rapids like Coal Bucket (there's actually an old coal bucket at the bottom of the rapid near the shore), Mossy Rock, Cave Wave and a rapid called Claudia's.  In Claudia's near the end of the run, there were three kayakers which came down one behind the other, one flipped, rolled.. the other flipped rolled, and the last one flipped, missed a roll, waited, set-up again, and rolled up.  Success!  Throughout the day we only had one swim, pretty good for 15 people and 7 miles!  

 

In honor of Halloween, we also placed 10 pumpkins throughout the run.  We tried to find high rocks which we could reach from our boats, but not too low so the water wouldn't knock them off.  Putting pumpkins out is a fun way to get lots of exercise and also challenging because it makes you think "how am I going to get that pumpkin on that rock ahead".  Kevin our human sized banana, made some pretty good difficult moves to place his pumpkins.  Jeromy and I stuck to the easier reached rocks, where we didn't feel like we were going to put ourselves in jeopardy of flipping over and losing our wigs!  This time of year a lot of rivers have pumpkins on them, they can last till we either have higher water levels or usually about Thanksgiving.  

 

After the paddle, a few of us made it to my sisters for a poker & pool party with lots of good eats and fun people.

 

Thanks to those who made it out and hopefully next year we'll have more paddlers who show their Halloween spirit!