A sunny Saturday morning. It was warm and majestic in this Gorge of Gorges. At the put-in I looked down, and, after a week of serious rain and serious paddling, realized that my equipment was in tatters! My boat was coming unzipped at the seams, my secondary paddle cracking and my skirt ripping. How did this happen?

I noticed that I had broken my favorite paddle and only dimly recalled the incident. There was an amount of duct tape on my paddle jacket that appeared to have been applied in haste, perhaps while in a rapid. Yet . . . how could I give this much thought, with such a river at hand?

Two in our party chose to meet us below the Birth Canal, so it was four of us who sank our teeth into the tasty rapids from the top.

The ragged, torn skirt that I noticed I was using kept popping off, which worried me less than one might imagine. Ah, to have run class V for a week straight!

I felt in control and excited during the dramatic passage into the Birth Canal. Our descent from here was careful and smooth, culminating in all four of us "cleaning up" Rebirth and out of the crux.

We met up with our two friends below here, and ran down to Tester, today's hardest drop. Three boats portaged and three ran. Fred took two runs and had one right-side-up run -- the only one of the three of us!

From here we chased each other down the endless class IV drops of the lower gorge. I eddied out several times just to enjoy the early scenery. This is a place that only kayakers can visit.

At the takeout I persuaded Katie to join me in running the 42-footer (jumping off the 125 bridge) which we both "ran cleanly!"

This river has haunted me ever since I began boating, and today for the first time I felt at peace with it. As a freshman I used to joke that running the Gorge would be the "pinnacle of my boating career" but who would have imagined me actually running it someday? and in C-1? Not me, not for an instant.