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So I was really excited to get to go to the Wenatchee River Festival, for a myriad of reasons - it was near several awesome runs that I had wanted to scout, I was a sponsor, I was looking forward to meeting Art from River X Riverboards, who also runs rescue clinics, I was going to be meeting up with an avid boogie boarder / surfer who wanted to try riverboarding, and I had convinced my friend Cat (and yes, that's her name) to come with me and camp for the weekend, since I had not been camping for eons. Alas, there was no water, as the Wenatchee (like much of the Northwest) is experiencing record lows. (Speaking of record lows, we checked out the usually Class V Wind River recently and we could have walked down it - it was running at like 300 CFS!) After chatting with the people from American Whitewater, I met up with Rochelle and we decided to go look for a fun stretch of water. Art had not been able to make it, but I found one of his guys and he was kind enough to let me test out their board, since it was the only one I had yet to ride.
Neither Rochelle or I knew much about the area, so we ended up on what seemed to be a wild goose chase looking for a place to put in. Since the river was unbelievably low, and since the roadsigns were less than clear on which direction we were going, we ended up doing what typical rebellious extreme-sports people do - we hopped a gate that said "No River Access" (well, they made THAT sign clear at least) and jumped into the river, just above a rapid called "Granny's". I have no idea why it's called that. It is normally a great surfing hole, apparently, but it simply flushed us out each time, as illustrated in the pics below.
Leavenworth, Washington, which is a few miles from where the festival was being held, is a completely "Bavarian" style town. I'm not sure why, I don't know whose bright idea that was, but it's a touristy spot, so why not pretend that you're in Germany? Personally, I don't remember seeing a whole lot of Ford Expeditions when I visited Germany, but I'll suspend disbelief for a while. The town sits near the confluence of Tumwater Canyon and Icicle Creek which both pour into the Wenatchee river. The area is remarkably picturesque, and from the brochure we picked up apparently there are a plethora of festivals throughout the year, all of them involving some sort of heavy drinking. Yup, sounds Bavarian to me.
Rochelle and her friend Tucker were both into all sorts of various extreme sports, and both were avid boogie boarders and surfers, so they were very comfortable in the water. We ran the rapid and then the slow 1/2 mile down to the festival take-out several times, and weren't able to catch the wave any of them. I figured they would be able to do it, since they were a lot more experienced at boogie-surfing than me, but the wave was uncooperative and flushed everybody out. They had some great insight about the riverboards though, and it was fun to ride even a small stretch of water with people who were totally at home in it! *NEW VIDEO* (This has nothing to do with the Wenatchee, just Rochelle) Check out Rochelle river boogie-surfing on her boogie board at the Reno Whitewater park!
After the festival ended we had a night and a day to spend pretending to be Bavarian, so Cat went to Starbucks (huh?) and then we headed off to play putt-putt golf (huh?). I remember the Swiss Alps from my Europe travels; I don't remember any putt-putt courses serving liquid crack in recycled cups. There it was though, complete with several beautiful waterfalls, interesting landscaping, real grass greens which were shaped to mimic the way your ball would roll on a frozen class V rapid, and of course, the goats. Cat got a little too close to one of the billy goats and he tried to jump the fence, then hid behind the post when I went to snap the picture. Apparently he was scared of the paparrazi, but plenty brazen enough to try and steal her Grande Uberschnitzelfienddanke Latte!
Icicle creek would have to have a TON of water in it to make it riverboardable, and at that level it would be a solid stretch of nothing but Class V and V+ (at least the parts I could see). Kayakers do it quite often, though, so it must be doable. It was running pretty low when we drove up it, but it is certainly visually stunning. I was stopping and jumping out to look so much that it seemed to take an hour to drive the 10 miles to our campsite. But that's only about half the time it took me to get a campfire going...sheesh. Someone was rusty.
I'm looking forward to coming back here next year when there is actually water, as there are several great runs within 20 minutes of each other and the camping is plentiful, as is the hiking, putt-putt golf, and Saurkraut! ~IceMan~
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