Over The Top

Mazda pimped out with yaks

Bear with me. There's a story here, but first I need to get something off my chest.

Connecticut might be about the 50th most hard-core state. The "land of steady habits" is not usually the first place that comes to mind for seekers of X-TREME outdoor activities. There are no mountains over 3,000 feet, no big ski areas, no forest fires, earthquakes or other entertaining forms of devastation. Do you like surfing? Fuhgeddabout it! Way back when, some asshole  invented Long Island, thereby screwing Connecticut out of its oceanfront. 

Other places have dangerous animals—grizzly bears in the Northwest, alligators in florida cougars (both kinds) out in California. Over here, we have fisher-cats, three-foot animals that look like lemurs. Now that these interesting animals have started to return to the region, people go on lockdown every time they hear about them in their neighborhoods. There are yet to be confirmed reports of a fisher eating someone's face off, but when there's nothing to worry about, people will worry.

Most of the rivers here are also a yawn. The silty meandering bodies of water are fine if you want to put in some miles in your kayak, but whitewater is tough to find and often seasonal.

 A couple of weeks ago my friend Andrew and I decided to try out a Roaring Brook in Canterbury, which is supposed to be a fast  moving, badass class four. If we'd read the water gauges properly, we would have known that we were in for a slow moving, lameass trickle.

Our hope that this would turn into a killer torrent downstream turned out to be wishful thinking

After 20 minutes negotiating shallow river, we heard the thunder of falling water up ahead. At the other end of a millpond was a large, concrete dam. The water ran over the lip and  fell for an unknown distance down the other side. Andrew and I paddled up to the edge and got out of our boats.


I looked over the other side, where the water dropped about 15 feet into dark pool below. 


How deep?  I wondered, trying to envision what would happen when I paddled over. 


So far, the kayak trip had been a mixture of boredom and frustration. What was supposed to be a badass Class 4 river had turned out to be a feeble trickle between rocks and branches. We'd already had to get out of the boats a couple of times because we were scraping bottom. Turns out that we had misread the info online about the river height, and it was barely a tenth of what it was supposed to be in order to ensure a good ride.


With disappointment behind us and lameness in front of us, the dam was really the only opportunity for excitement on the trip. Of course, it would hardly be worth the extra excitement if I hit rock and broke my ankles or flipped and hit my head. I tried to think of a conclusive method that would allow me to weigh potential risks, versus feeling like I chickened out.


A couple things gave me confidence though. One was that I had dropped from that height out of a kayak once before. While I was with the Kayak Club at NUI Galway in Ireland, they had loaded each of us into kayaks, put our spray skirts on and thrown us over a bridge. I was the first to go, and had some nerves about what would happen to me. .


"You guys do know what you're doing right?"
"Just paddle hard when you hit the water, you'll be fine."


With that, they slid my boat off the railing and I dropped into the canal below. The kayak sank so that my head was submerged and water went up my nose. Also, the spray skirt broke, and the kayak got filled halfway to the brim. But I had lived, and it was awesome. 


I think about those crazy bastards sometimes. To say they were skilled would be an understatements. These guys could do a roll in whitewater. They could do pushups with their kayaks in the water. Also they had a reputation as the drunkest club on campus, which was saying something at a university in Ireland. I once had to miss one of their trips out on a river up in Donegal and the next day I heard that someone had chipped a tooth, someone else had a broken collarbone. Shit, that must have been some dangerous paddling. I thought. 


Actually, the tooth was the result of dancing on, and falling off a table in the course of heavy drinking. The collarbone belonged to a guy who had decided to get in the water seriously hungover. Surprisingly, this decision had led to poor results.


People who display the best decision-making generally consult the internet. There's a picture of a guy going over the dam and he had lived to write the post. Thus, it was only logical to conclude that the dam was a safe bet--in any boat and in any conditions. 


I had noticed that there had been about three feet of  water going over the edge in the photo, instead of three inches, which was what I saw in front of me. Immaterial.


I got back in my boat and paddled away from the dam so that I'd have some speed

I couldn't be as cool as this guy. There was only a narrow trickle in the middle when I went over.

I got my boat up to top speed, aiming for the narrow spillway. Over the top I went and the nose pointed strait down. Before I'd had time to appreciate being airborne, the front of the yak crashed into the rocks, probably about three feet below the surface. I lurched forward out of my seat, and broke my left foot peddle. 


The kayak was afloat. I was totally uninjured. It was also nowhere near as cool as the picture I'd see, or getting pushed off a bridge for that matter.


I had Andrew ready with my cellphone camera, but honestly haven't figured out how to get the photo onto my computer. The pic proves about as much as the latest Lochness shot, so I'll just let it go. You'll just have to take my word that, yes, I did actually paddle over a drop and hit a bunch of rocks.


Afterwards, we realized that there were several ways we could have tested the water depth other than with the nose of my kayak. One way would be using the rope we had, using a rock for a weight. Also, we could have taken a kayak down there and probed around with a paddle. 


Then again, the two of us have made some less than brilliant decisions before, such as almost getting killed trying to scuba dive with a backpack full of rocks and a bucket overhead.


The cool thing was that though my judgement was incredibly poor, it also yielded almost no consequences. Even the peddle that broke off reattached easily. Maybe next time I'll do it hung over.