| Cat's Meow |
 |
 |
| Written by Mike Kord |
| Thursday, 01 March 2007 08:26 |
|
A Washingtonian is the first woman to cataraft Idaho's dicey North Fork Payette Shelly Becker was rehearsing the river in her mind as she pulled on her dark wet suit and PFD in preparation for her 16-mile confrontation with Idaho’s legendary North Fork of the Payette. Becker was the only woman in a party of 10 catarafters that included her husband, David, also a North Fork first-timer, and local virtuoso Mark Cramer. “We’d scouted it so much I could draw every rapid,” Becker said. But just as critiquing art and painting the Sistine Chapel are two different domains, there was no way for Becker—a web programmer from North Bend, Washington—to fully understand what the river held for her and how she would be delivered at the end. Yet by the conclusion of her odyssey, Becker had survived a brush with Taffypull—the hole whose handle aptly describes its sticky character—reclaimed a lost oar mid-river, passed the biggest test of her extensive river-running life, and became the first woman ever to complete the Smith’s Ferry to Banks run. “I had no idea (I was the first woman) until I was told at the bottom,” Becker said afterward. It was a scorching-hot day when the group arrived at Smith’s Ferry last September 2. The flow was an optimal 1,400 cfs and the water was warm, yet everybody donned wet suits, more for body armor than the threat of exposure. The group had scouted the run—whose stout ratings illicit cries of sandbagging from some out-of-towners—and had nothing left to do but get changed and haul their considerably heavy crafts (Becker’s was a 220-pound AIRE Wave Destroyer prototype) to the water while pre-run jitters infiltrated their psyche. “It was definitely nervous time,” Becker said. “I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ I was just hoping I was going to be on my game that day and tried to make sure I had the run all set in my mind.” Becker put on and left her anxieties behind as she resolved herself to the river and such hazards as the notoriously fiendish Nutcracker and Jacob’s Ladder. Following Cramer’s lines, Becker passed each test as the crew approached Jacob’s Ladder. With David right behind her, Becker led into Rock Drop on line but strayed toward Taffypull at the bottom. Then an oar, which was tethered to the boat, came free from Becker’s hand, and the risk of a flip and a mile-long swim through Class V became a reality. “It’s a bad, bad place to swim,” said Becker. David and Shelly met in Ohio. She lived in Cincinnati and attended Sunday morning roll sessions in the pool at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where he was stationed. One day on the Ocoee, Shelly, in a hardshell kayak, entered the notorious playspot Hollywood Hole. “I saw this little gal jump in and just get trashed, but she came up smiling,” David recalled. “She was a ball of energy.” Becker works out four times a week and can bench press up to 220 pounds (Note to gentlemen rafters: No, that’s not a typo.). “Most women couldn’t even put the bar up,” said David. “Pound for pound, she’s the strongest woman I know.” Now, however, David saw his wife heading dangerously close to Taffypull with one oar while attempting to reattach the other. “If you rush it too much, you can screw up,” said David. “You have to make sure you do it right the first time.” Becker did, and then regained her line with a series of powerful strokes en route to the completion of a distinctive first that could lead to others. “I really want to do Robe Canyon of the South Fork of the Stillaguamish (in Washington state),” Shelly says. “I’ve heard it’s harder than the North Fork.” Originally Published, Paddler March-April 2007 |
Share This Page!
