The Ever Varying Flood - Part V
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride
In December of 2017, seven of us ventured to Tasmania, once known as Van Diemen’s Land, to boat a river only one of us had ever heard of before this trip was planned - the Franklin River. This is our story. It will take several ‘parts’ for me to tell it. I’ll post a ‘part’ - whenever I can - until the story, from my perspective, is complete.
When I left off a few weeks back we were partway through the second major whitewater impediment in The Great Ravine of the Franklin River - The Coruscades.
Our trip down the Franklin, and a short, but memorable section of the Gordon, was 129 kilometers long. About 80 miles in American terminology. It’s a trip that should, under normal conditions, require a week to eight days. An aggressive, skilled kayaker could manage it in four days. We were advised to allow 11 to 12 days in the event the weather and the river decided to have a high water event as we had seen via the graphs before we had launched.
The Great Ravine is one section of that journey, a very short section actually, but it harbors the most serious whitewater and back-breaking portages. Within the Great Ravine are four rapids of consequence: The Churn, The Coruscades, Thunderush and the Cauldron. Each need to be approached with an abundance of caution because a mistake with any of them could be fatal.
It’s imperative you reach and portage the third monstrous rapid in the gorge - Thunderush - when the river is not varying high. Because the only portage is along the shore over massive boulders on river left while the water level is on the calmer side. An old high water portage on the right bank, involving humping your gear over land, above the cliffs and through the matted forest had been eliminated some years back by a rock slide.
Chutes and ladders.
Or - maybe - the carnival ride where you are in a contraption shaped like a tea cup being shunted from side to side, up and down, tilted one way and then the other. I think it is often named The Octopus.
Those disparate thoughts were running through my mind as we were scouting what was really an appendix to The Coruscades. It was called The Forceit.
(The words “forceit” and “coruscades” are not in any dictionary. In fact, whenever I go to type them, spellcheck wants me to substitute “forfeit” and “coruscates”, which means ‘sparkling virtuosity’. I have no idea of their origin. Franklin explorers must have made them up ‘out of whole cloth’.)
Maybe it’s supposed to be two words - force and it. As in, don’t try to force it! Go with the flow. Or when we would go through rapids without paddles, oars or any kind of propulsion. Essentially the raft becomes a glorified inner tube. Whenever we did this sort of nonsense, we would intone - “Trust in Raft”.
And then we would laugh and giggle hysterically.
Or, perhaps, forceit (does it rhyme with forfeit or conceit?) is very olde English and it means faucet, because you are about to swirl down the drain.
Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride also popped into my head. I was clueless there was an actual Disneyland ride of the story within the story of The Wind in the Willows. (It was created in 1955 which gives you an idea of my knowledge in regards to Disneyland and its rides.) The description is reminiscent of what we were looking at with The Forceit.
The Mr. Toad ride is based on the character from The Wind in the Willows. Riders accompany J. Thaddeus Toad, Esq., a poor driver who takes his passengers on a wild trip through scenes from the stories. . .
Mr. Toad is going "nowhere in particular," and riders get a glimpse of the toad's lavish mansion Toad Hall before they set off. It's not long before they're skidding through the house, crashing through walls and out a window. You'll avoid hitting a sheepherder and his flock (but just barely).
Then things get even worse. Police are in pursuit. You're wondering why you ever got into the vehicle with the demented toad. And that's before you crash through scaffolding and ignite an explosion. Arrested and sentenced, you have to find a way to escape.
Or how about this? For you river runners reading this. Imagine Boulder Drop Rapids on the Skykomish River squished down into 50 yards instead of 300 yards, and only half as wide. With all the same features.
I’m exaggerating. (I think.)
The launch into The Forceit was the equivalent of a double black diamond run at your favorite ski area. It was hard to determine how much to use my two aggressive paddlers. All three of us were the least viable swimmers on the trip. We were the “deer in the headlight” boat, even though two of us had more experience with whitewater than everyone else combined. We were also the elders.
It felt like we were a sparkling virtuous fleck of fool’s gold sloshing about in a gold miner’s pan.
The next thing I knew we were rounding a boulder having zagged once right, zigged once left and, as I was zagging back right, I misjudged our head of steam and split the difference between two pointed rocks. Splitting the difference meaning almost getting stuck on one of them and then getting sucked through the aperture between them that was not really large enough for our raft. As we slid down the backside of one of the boulders, our tiny boat was as vertical sideways as it could be without spilling all of the contents into the river.
The other two boats were moored behind these rocks and, in the chaos of the moment, with unknown whitewater downstream, fast moving water all around us and the outcome undetermined, I remember seeing someone’s face in one of the other rafts and I can only describe it as being demonically gleeful like the face of a NASCAR fan anticipating a spectacular wreck.
Miraculously we remained upright.
The conclusionary whitewater was unremarkable. Or, more to the point, uneventful. I honestly cannot recall the end of that series of rapids nor the stretch of the river leading up to Thunderush Rapids. (I am sure there is GoPro footage out there somewhere. Our three rafts were equipped with about eight often running GoPros.)
I don’t know how closely we were tracking it but the Franklin’s rise over the past 48 hours seemed to have peaked. But we couldn’t be sure.
Fortunately for us, it had been ideal, according to the commercial guides we had spoken to, for challenging the whitewater of The Coruscades. The water levels appeared to be ideal, as well, for our portage of Thunderush.
Not so high that we would have to paddle any portion of the ‘meat’ of the rapid, but high enough that the arduous portage over snotty river side boulders would be no longer than necessary.
As we pulled into the lefthand eddy above Thunderush, we were all business. Because the humping of rafts and gear over slippery rocks with abrupt edges and crevices everywhere, whose sole purpose could be described as ‘breakers of ankles’, would take time.
And that was a concern. We had no idea how much time we had.
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Incredibly alert reader Shan Perera noted that Invictus, the poem by William Ernest Henry, was not only one of John Lewis’ favorite poems but it was also one of Nelson Mandela’s. Here is Morgan Freeman being interviewed and his recitation - by memory - of that powerful touchstone of a poem.
Also, today is Don Henley’s 73rd birthday! No, I am not keeping track of famous singers birthdays. I just happened to notice and, along with it, I was reminded of a quote from one of his songs that I loved to belt out in the privacy of my moving vehicle - Boys of Summer.
Out on the road today, I saw a DEADHEAD sticker on a Cadillac
A little voice inside my head said, "Don't look back. You can never look back"