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< March/April 2000
	Letter from the Editor
Letter from the Editor

The gauge read nine feet. Flood stage. Commercial trips were cancelled. Tree trunks were buried. I had been down the Selway before, at much lower water. This would be different.

The high water wasn't a surprise; it was what we had come for. Eight of us, all kayakers, drove up from Colorado during one of Idaho's biggest water years to find exactly what we were staring at: water pulsing through bushes normally high and dry. We were looking for Big, and we found it. All of Idaho was going off. On the way up, we stopped at the 6,000-cfs North Fork and saw the Golf Course frothing white for eternity. None of us wanted anything to do with it. We figured the Selway would provide action enough.

When we arrived at the put-in, the river was just coming down from its previous day's peak, the gauge still wet above the morning's mark. At this level the run was too consequential for rafts - a swim might last miles. It was also extremely cold, most of the water being snow only hours earlier. Going self-support was the only option. We spent the morning trimming our kayaks, trying to create a balance between bow and stern with clothes, food and coffee (not necessarily in that order). Our collective mood was serious. At one point, I saw my friend Bruce carefully snipping unneeded bristles from his toothbrush. Weight was at a premium.

At the end of the first day, having made 32 miles after a 1 p.m. start, we shared turns cooking Ramen over the sole stove and shared stories around the fire. Tight with obligations, three of us left early the next day to finish the trip. River maps were relatively useless; scenery passed too quickly to ever get a bearing. We barely saw Moose Creek enter from the right before Double Drop, Ladle and Little Niagara blended into one big blur. Without a car at the usual take-out, we floated alongside high water logs all the way to Lowell at the confluence of the Lochsa, portaging Selway Falls with an eerie mist clinging a foot above the water. In all, our water-logged posteriors covered nearly 90 miles in two days.

For many of us the trip was a milestone, a first self-support coupled with a chance to paddle a wilderness river in flood. But there are those for whom even this accomplishment seems watered down - the people who crawl out of the woodwork to tackle a flooding Zambezi, Grand Canyon or other high water run. Some people just like it Big, plain and simple. And that's what this issue's cover story is all about. For them big water is a drug, and they'll do anything to get their fix. Many of them don't even boat during normal water years, opting to save themselves for when Mother Nature cuts loose.

Our ode to big water, fittingly enough, comes with this issue's debut of our special River Runner supplement, a call back to the publication that merged like so many rivers to form Paddler years ago. Though it includes a piece on paddling the North Fork at the level we saw it, the section isn't all about measuring adrenaline by the liter. It includes a first-hand look at guide school; a piece on big boats plying today's waterways; a missing manuscript from Walt Blackadar; and a Skills story on how to plan a river trip. The latter won't tell you how many toothbrush bristles to trim on a self-support trip, nor how to follow a map on a flooding river, but it will help prepare you for your journey - come Hell or high water.

- Eugene Buchanan