Getting Soaked on the Snake River By Kurt Repanshek, Member, American Society of Journalists and Authors
Shooting the rapids
Craggy peaks framing the Snake River Canyon, cold river water, hot sun overhead. It’s a perfect recipe for an afternoon of bucking the rapids on one of the West’s most fabled rivers.
Nearly 200 years ago the Snake River and its many tributaries were flush with beaver, which lured the mountain men to this strikingly wild corner of Wyoming. These days it’s the river itself that lures me and thousands of other wannabe whitewater cowboys anxious to ride the Snake’s swirling, heaving and churning pockets of air and water. Oxbow Bend further upstream on the Snake might enjoy a national reputation for scenic beauty, courtesy of its Teton Range backdrop. But it’s the eight miles of seething river that flows in a ragged cut between the Snake River and Wyoming mountain ranges south of Jackson that earns top grades for its waves, “holes” and chutes that test paddlers’ skills.
Wearing little more than shorts, T-shirts, life preservers and smiles, we push off from West Table Creek armed with paddles, determination and a fair amount of apprehension. As the guide implores us to paddle hard and in unison, we manage to accelerate the rubber raft into the main current, swapping the cottonwood-lined shore for the more fluid flow of the river.
For at least 43 years, rafters have been floating the Snake River, both its calmer waters inside Grand Teton National Park and along
Soaking in the scenery
this stretch that leaps, jumps and bounces southwest towards the Idaho border. There are eight commercial outfitters permitted by the U.S. Forest Service to ferry clients down the Snake, which gains its rowdy reputation from a series of rock ledges that churn the river as it flows over them.
Between our “put in” at West Table Creek and our “take out” at Sheep Gulch stretches an 8-mile-long ribbon of liquid bareback bronc, a frothing rope of water broken on occasion by mellower stretches that don’t demand as much attention as do the true rapids.
As our yellow-bladed paddles churn the water, we think of the rapids that await us. The initial assault will be on Station Creek, S-Turn, Cutback and Little Kahuna, rapids that carry Class 2 designations, little swells that splash but are of no consequence. But beyond those beginner rapids are others more often categorized as Class 3, thanks to their standing waves and holes. The river’s personality is reflected in the names of those larger rapids:
Taco Hole can at times fold unsuspecting rafts in half. Three-Oar Deal commands the utmost respect at high flows. Big Kahuna, a schizophrenic patch of whitewater, provides a bigger kick at low water than at high. Lunch Counter offers a nice shoreline for taking a break but ridiculously huge standing waves at high flows. Rope, with its wave train, can buck the unsuspecting
Getting soaked
out of their raft. Cottonwood is one of the river’s most technically challenging stretches at low flows thanks to the rocks that are revealed.
When not focused intently on the river, those with good eyes might spy bald eagles and osprey roosting in the fir and pine trees climbing the canyon walls, while great blue herons stalk the shallows in search of a bite to eat. Closer to shore, mergansers and wood ducks paddle in flotillas. On rare occasions, moose and black bear come out of the mountains to visit the river for a drink or to browse the lush vegetation.
Although it typically takes less than two hours to run through the canyon, at times it seems like an eternity for us to navigate some of the bigger rapids. “Hard left, back on the right!” the guide shouts as he maneuvers our raft back and forth across the river to line us up for the perfect line through the rapid at hand, one that will provide the maximum “buck” for our effort.
Back in 1997, when a huge snow-pack generated record runoff into the river, flows reached 38,000 cubic feet per second, shuttling rafts down the 8-mile stretch in 35 minutes. But the current flows are closer to normal, and by the time we beach the raft at Sheep Gulch we’re ready to regain our footing on terra firma. Behind us is a river that has cut through granite, one with a rambunctious reputation that we’ve managed to tame, if only this one time.
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