Western Road Trip Photos, August/September, 1998

Well, after a long hard summer, Kev and I went to blow off some steam in the fabulous American West. We climbed into my truck around mid day on Thursday, August 20th and arrived at the putin for Gore Canyon around mid day on the 21st, and put on. We ended up spending 3 days on Gore, and enjoying the Party that went on surrounding the race. Other photos which we got at Gore are:

The next phase of operations for us was trying to get to Montana in order for Kev to check out a grad school in Missoula. On the way we went through yellowstone. We got pictures of some falls, which are off limits to paddling, and of The Yellowstone Canyon, which it is, of course, illegal to paddle. Great scenery in Yellowstone, though....just leave your boat at home.

Then we went to Montana. Through the car window, Montana looks a lot like this. It looks like that for a really long way, but it doesn't take long because there is no speed limit out there. While in Montana we paddled the Alberton Gorge of the Clark Fork, which was essentially a pretty paddle with three big surfing waves. We also got on the Flathead, which had awesome scenery too.

After Montana, we went to Jackson to play in the Tetons. Do you know what that word means? It's not posted anywhere in the visitor's center, so I asked the gentleman at the information desk. He leaned over the counter and told me in a conspiratory whisper that, "it means BREASTS in french." This means that by direct translation we were exploring "big boob national park." Here is a picture of The Big Boob, standing 13700 or so feet tall. When presented with the sight of a mountain such as this one, the only thing I can think to do is to start walking up it, which we did.

We camped for the night on a big pile of glacially deposited rocks called a Morraine. Here's what it looks like from far above in the saddle between the Grand and Middle Teton, which is a mere 12800 feet tall. Here is an enlargement of the area in the square in the last picture. Our tent is behind the rock that the red arrow is pointing to. Although very beautiful, piles of rocks such as this one are not very good for sleeping on.

Above the Saddle, we continued up the Grand and got some shots at about 12000 feet of me and Kev with Middle Teton in the background. If we look a little weird, it's 'cause people from 2000ft don't function well when walking in places with no air. After that I continued 1700 steep and very scary feet to the top of the Grand without the camera. Oh well, it was worth it for the head rush even if I got no pictures.

After the Tetons, we headed down to Colorado for some more boating. We shot video mostly, but we did get a few photos on the Poudre Narrows. Here's Kev entering the first drop. Please remember that this is very low water for this run. Next is me finishing the drop with our friend Warren looking on from the eddy above. Finally, there's a shot of me doing a very difficult attainment on the next rapid down.

That's it for our trip photos from our west. Hope you liked 'em!