Immediately after leaving the Luling Dam area we came to a slight bend in the river where the current was running into and under a downed tree. There was a crook in the trunk of the tree over the rushing water that looked like it was high enough for us to go under. If that had been all there was to the obstacle it would have been no problem (especially for Men of the River). But that wasn't all there was to it. For one, the crook was to the left of where the current was pushing. For another, there was a bunch of debris, including part of a barbed wire fence, that had accumulated on the bank where the current wanted to take you. Finally, just beyond the opening in the tree was a tangle of large and small branches hanging into the water. We made the decision to try to run through the opening and it turned out to be a mistake. We got the nose of the boat partially in the opening, but then it got hung on a large limb. The stern of the boat, where I was, got pushed around to the right and into the debris on the bank. I was fighting being pushed into the barbed wire. We were stuck and the current was not allowing us to move forward, backward or side to side. We had come through here once before and made the exact same mistake. It's hard to remember every obstacle you pass and how to approach it and now we were paying the price. Both of us could clearly see what we should have done - pulled up on the gravel bar to the left of the whole mess and portaged five yards back to the open river channel.
We tried to back up and align in the hole, using every bit of strength we had to paddle against the current. We were both getting frustrated because we were going nowhere. Finally, Robb got out in the shallow water at the bow and pulled the nose around so the boat was actually facing upstream. I jumped out when I got over shallow water and we hauled the boat around to the gravel bar where we could portage. Right then, two other teams came up and I pointed in the direction of the gravel bar so they'd know not to try to run through the sweeper. They probably already knew. Instead of portaging right in front of the two teams we waited for them to get across and we followed them. The whole ordeal was one of only two or three bad mistakes we made the entire race, and it probably only cost us a few minutes.
There were several other major obstacles on this stretch. There was a large tree completely over the river, a small logjam and Little Ottine rapid. We had seen all of these things once before, so we had a plan of attack for each. At the tree across the river, we nosed up to it and Robb climbed out onto the tree while I braced with my paddle. Then he held the boat so that I could "walk the boat" from the rear to the front and get out on the tree as well. Then we hauled the boat up and over the tree. Robb got into some fireants on the tree because there were some Fritos scattered there that had attracted them. I can't believe that someone would intentionally spread chips on the log to attract ants to get on other racers, but I don't have any other explanation. We were up and over the log all according to plan and moving again. At the logjam, we had a bit more difficult of a time getting through than we'd had on our training run. A logjam is just that - a pile of logs that have come together and stalled in the river. The river flows through and under it and eventually the logjam traps every bit of trash and debris floating downriver so it becomes a nasty mess. Our time through before we didn't really know what to make of it. A mat of small particles had formed within the jam and plants had even started to grow out of it. So it looked like the river just stopped. But all of the boat traffic had formed a sort of semi-solid channel that you could fight your way through. This time, though, there were more or larger logs stacked up making passage more difficult. We came to a complete stop about halfway through it and had to back up and pick our way through. It was a nasty place to be and you just imagine gobs of ants and snakes and who knows what all living in the muck. I just wanted through there and eventually we were able to push and pull our way through using the paddles without having to get out on the unsteady mass. Then, finally, we came to Little Ottine Rapid. I'm not sure if the rapid is the remnant of a dam, but it is made up of many, many smallish boulders with water cascading down it over a distance of about fifteen yards and a drop of several feet. When we'd come upon it before we'd portaged around it, simply figuring it was unrunnable. This time, though, after we'd stepped gingerly all the way down and gotten to the bottom, we looked back up and see Ginsie and Debbie running the rapid easy as pie and continuing on downriver ahead of us. Lesson learned on that one.
Our main goal on this section of the course was to get to the portage at Ottine Dam before dark. Ottine Dam is probably the most dangerous portage of the entire Safari. For one thing, the dam has a way of sneaking up on you. You come upon it after a bend in the river, so you can't hear it until you are right on top of it. It also looks like an infinity pool, so sometimes that's deceptive. Fortunately, a sign has been placed on the side of the river alerting you to the portage. They've also installed one of those blinking lights used for road construction so you can see it at night. Then there's the portage itself. There's a right side portage and a left side portage, but we'd only ever seen the one on the left. There's a narrow muddy channel that leads out of the river just above the dam and beyond that is an old millworks with lots of concrete and huge rusty gears. There are openings in the concrete that you could fall into. Once you get to the top of a little hill, you have to lower the boat down a steep slope littered with medium sized boulders, most of them unstable. It could be a real ankle-buster, or worse.
It was dusk when we came up to the dam and we pulled the boat out and hauled it ashore. We were dead tired as it was, having paddled hard nearly twelve hours straight at that point. We paused for a second to catch our breath and then emptied the boat of water to get it as light as possible as we went up the hill and then down the treacherous path on the other side. For most portages, I stayed at the rear of the boat and Robb stayed at the bow - same as our paddling positions. But when we'd practiced the portage several weeks before the race I had happened to be at the bow, so we did it the same way we'd practiced. The light was pretty low, so we took it slowly. We also communicated all of our moves. "I'm going to step down on this boulder now." "I need to set the boat down and scramble down, can you hold there?" "I can hold here." "Okay, coming down." And so it went until we got the boat back down to the river and into the water. The portage was tiring and it was nearly dark. One of the teams competing for the women's title came over the hill as we were portaging. The other women's team we could see on the other side of the river taking the right portage. They were locked in a close race and it was interesting to witness.
Before we got back in the boat we put on our headlamps and turned the bowlight on. I sorted some more food out where I had easier access. We pulled out of Ottine after both girls' teams, but we caught one of them, Ginsie and Debbie, before we reached Palmetto.
The Palmetto checkpoint just has a good vibe to it. The river is pretty here and there's a short concrete bridge going across. We could hear cheering and voices before we came into view of all of the lights on the bridge. There were about 20-30 people gathered there. We called out our boat number as we pulled in. Someone hollered that we could pull the boat under the bridge, though we'd never done that before. It was a tight squeeze. In all of the confusion of lights and people, I didn't see our TC even though she was standing right next to me on the bank. There was another boat parked there - the other girls' team - taking on water. People were passing information back and forth about other teams. Things were a little frantic getting the water in and the spent jugs and bottles out. I saw my parents there and told them we were doing okay. My mom still wasn't too sure about this whole thing she asked me very pointedly as I scrambled across the bridge if I was allright. I tried to tell her as strongly as I could that we were doing fine. We pulled out of Palmetto just behind the two girls' teams. It was going to be around six hours to the next checkpoint.
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