Naiya Days: First Time on the Tieton.

Hit up the Tieton River this weekend and had a blast. It was WRRR (Washington Recreational River Runners) weekend, and there were people galore. The little old lady on the bridge above the wave said she counted over 500 people in the morning half of the commercial trips on Sunday morning. That means that over the course of the weekend, there were approximately 2000 people on the river. Holy crap! There was no avoiding rafts either, you had to maneuver around them, but hey, good run nonetheless. The main stretch of the Tieton is technically class III+, because of its completely continuous nature, but no single drop is harder than class III. The majority of the stretch is class II/II+, run-it-however-you-want boogie-water. Lots of big waves, lots of catch-on-the-fly surfing, lots of sunshine. Did a run on Saturday right after breakfast with Scott Waidelich and James Amandus, took us about three hours, plus a good long session at the play wave, the pictures are from this part of the day. After the first run, we debated doing a second, but since it was already mid-afternoon, we opted for a pnp at the bridge, and hung out there for a couple hours. During this session we discovered that if the person on the wave looked up and opened their mouth, beer could be consumed via a can on the bridge. Too bad we didn't get pictures of that... I managed to get one awesome surf, and a couple mediocre ones, despite how tired I was from the morning. The next day Scott and I ran the main section again, with a bunch of IKs and rafts. IK vs. hardshell carnage ensued when I was trying to make an eddy, right behind Joe, who un-announced, of course, decided to surf the wave right next to the eddy. I promptly smashed my face into his bow, flipped, and rolled up with a nice fat lip. It actually still hurts a little bit. Made for a good laugh though. Finished the run trouble free, and headed back up to camp. We packed up and attempted to head out, but when we stopped to drop off garbage at the store by the bridge wave, I noticed a group of kayakers surfing, which turned out to be a group of friends that I had not seen in quite some time. After about 10 minutes of watching them surf, I was talked into jumping back into the water, and had a nice little sess right before leaving. I'm still tired. =)