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< July-August 2007
	Gray Matters
A Beautiful Composition The seasonal cycle of the North Fork reveals the classic rhythms and cadence only offered by the greatest rivers Doug Ammons

Learning the moods of a river is one of the great pleasures of kayaking. The first few years, you’re all excited about the whitewater, or the surfing and playspots. After a couple of seasons watching local rivers ebb and flow, a different feeling arises because you’ve started to learn the cycle of the river, seeing it as the living force of the surrounding landscape.

Here in western Montana and Idaho, a river’s cycle is a celebration of the seasons. The waters lie low under the frozen ice and gradually wake as winter’s grip turns to spring. The melting snow up in the high mountains swells the flow, set loose in earnest by the first hot days and warm rains in May. Spring runoff is a frenzy of racing water that slowly ebbs toward summer until the skeleton of the riverbed shows itself, revealing the boulders that formed the rapids. Heading into fall and early winter, the last water begins to freeze, and the cycle is ready to repeat.

Of all the rivers I’ve run, one of the greatest is the North Fork of the Payette, about 60 miles north of Boise, Idaho. A full run has the title “top-to-bottom”—15 miles and 1,700 feet of romping Class IV+ and V+ at regular flows. The North Fork’s cycle is not quite normal, because it is dammed. But amazingly, releases are managed in a way that amplifies some of the best qualities of the cycle of seasons. One of these is making the river’s summer moods linger from late June all the way to October.

The North Fork Payette can never really be summed up. You can experience it from outer limits big water cascading along at 30-plus miles per hour, to measured steep creeking down what seems like an infinitely long boulder garden. There are so many rapids and they vary so much across water levels, that it’s almost impossible to memorize details. That keeps it fresh no matter how many times you run it.

Over the years, I’ve run the river in every way I could think of—for the challenge and fun, the difficulty, and the intimacy with the water. Three of the most demanding ways I’ve experienced the North Fork were making high-water descents, hand-paddling, and running multiple top-to-bottoms in a single day.

At high water above 5,000 cfs, the North Fork defies description. It has a narrow, steep riverbed, so when it fills up there isn’t any place for all that water to go except downstream as fast as it can. The huge boulders try to slow it, but all they succeed in doing is riling it up into a tumble of exploding waves and mounding holes. Even from the bank it’s breathtaking. But when you put on, you shift into a parallel universe. The water becomes a beast of a different order, like a hungry T-Rex stomping downhill trying to catch its dinner. Reflexes honed for lower levels don’t work, and you play catch up as the water accelerates away from you.

We ran the river repeatedly at high flows, always coming to the bottom with our eyes wide open and shaking our heads. The height of my own experience was running a number of complete top-to-bottoms at nearly 7,000 cfs, including Jacob’s Ladder and Golf Course, which together have to form one of the most beautiful and powerful sets of rapids anywhere in the world.

Talking about the highs also means mentioning the lows. Mine occurred while getting massacred on another such run in 1995, plastered at high speed on the front of a boulder. That hit, together with the ensuing frantic scramble for my life through another 300 yards of Class V+ while paralyzed on one half of my body, left some indelible memories of what water can do. But that’s part of learning the river.

Hand-paddling was another step in the natural progression of exploring the river. Frankly, hand-paddling looks stupid from the bank, but I don’t care how it looks, because it gives an intimacy with the water that can’t be found any other way. You have almost no power compared to the current, so you have to make up for that with your sensitivity. Angle and anticipation are everything. Your hands are directly in contact with the water nearly all the time, and you feel the current threads, the bubbles, the quick shudders from the rocks whipping by underneath. You caress the wild beast, enmeshed with its power. The river opened up in a subtler way, and I realized hand-paddling gave me two versions of an all-time great river. It was possible to run everything cleanly at any of the normal levels, and even complete top-to-bottoms at almost the highest flows. But at the upper levels, I reached a point where I was merely going where the river put me instead of being able to choose the line. I decided I’m not out there just to survive, but to be the river’s respectful partner in flow.

Multiple descents in a day was another step. Bob McDougall did the first-ever vertical mile in 1988, three top-to-bottoms, which I thought was outrageous. I followed that with 6,000 feet in a day by running the center five-mile section seven times. Think about it, 5,280 feet of whitewater. That’s a lot of drop. Splay it out into rapids, waves and holes, lead-ins and run-outs. Doing things like that force you to look at barriers differently and not to accept what you thought were limits.

A couple of years later, I tried doing two vertical miles of whitewater in a day—six top-to-bottoms. That’s 90 miles of Class V—10,600 feet of drop. It’s a distance that encourages the use of different measures, like 10 Empire State Buildings, three El Capitans, the distance from base camp to the summit of Mount Everest. It was for the challenge and the sheer mind-bending perspective, for the training, and for the aesthetics of knowing the river as a unitary run. There’s a whole universe out there that doesn’t care about our human limits. I wanted to give it a look.

Several younger friends came along because the idea excited them, too. We started at 5:30 a.m. with a thick fog over the river. Big holes would rush out of the mist, and if you didn’t know where you were, it was a scramble. At 7:30, after we finished the first run, my younger friends had second thoughts and did every other lap. At 9 p.m., after five complete runs, I knew that if I went ahead on the sixth it would get dark about halfway down. I had a vision of being enticed to finish No. 6 in total darkness, which suddenly struck me as a good reason to quit. My hands were blistered and raw. I was exhausted. So I called it a day after 8,500 vertical feet.

Multiple runs are not just a grunt, yo-yoing up and down the river. It is inspiring to flow with all that power around you, like taking part in the most intricate, lovely music or the most beautiful dance with nature. The greatest pleasure is closing your eyes, feeling dozens of long rapids and thousands of moves flowing through you like the water itself. Mozart once said he had entire symphonies come to him in a single instant, hearing all the different instruments, harmonies, and melodies in his mind. I can close my eyes and feel the entire 15 miles of the North Fork in my body—the lines, paddle strokes, and boat angles, the wild flowing water all the way down like a symphony. I found my Mozart experience on the river. How can I not love the North Fork for giving me that priceless opportunity?

The river is constantly changing, and it always has more to offer.

The highest I ran it was about 7,000 cfs, but the North Fork went up to 13,000 in the late 1990s. I tried to make it down there but all the highways were washed out. And I’m sure it’s possible to do two vertical miles in a day. Six top-to-bottoms in a day. I think that’s a good challenge for some young hotshot stud. All those Empire State Buildings worth of whitewater, and the Mozart experience of your life. I did a vertical mile of hand-paddling and high-water runs, but Jim Grossman took high-water hand-paddling further than I did, claiming that playing the holes was a constant rodeo all the way down—until he got stuck under a log—but that’s another story.

Every river you will ever run has a distinct personality at each level. It moves through its own beautiful cycle, and it will always teach you something new if your mind is open. The music and dance are there, the intimacy and laughter with your friends. Have a good time.

Doug Ammons has been a world-class kayaker for 25 years and is author of The Laugh of the Water Nymph, available at www.dougammons.com.