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| | | Verde River Needle Rock Night Tubing, AZ | | | |
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Verde River Needle Rock Night Tubing, AZ
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| Canoeing | 3.50 Miles |
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| | Canoeing | 3.50 Miles | | | |
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| no partners | | Just a random triplog to document for fun's sake. Or a record for the news to use later.
My sister just moved to night nurse so I knew my brother-in-law would be bored Friday and that he also lacks a stupid filter like me. He didn't let me even completely unveil my "plan" before committing, so quickly I had to come up with one.
I called a couple other guys, just asking in a moviephone type voice when the line opened up, "Who's up for adventure?", but both gave responses involving what I heard as "Kids ruin your life." I called Jon back, told him was just us and asked if he still had his $4 Walamerto's tube from Tonto and asked if he wanted to midnight tube the Verde. We then looked at a couple sections that looked promising involving something under Bartlett.
I've tubed from Horseshoe to Indian Springs (in a "real tube") twice before and it was just easy going and long. Bartlett to Needle seemed long at 5mi with no roads to bail too if things got bad, so I looked at starting at Needle and outing at either 1+ or 2+ miles since the main road lay just .5 off for just in case purposes. The current flow rate boasted 909cfm from the gauge under the dam instead of the usual 450.
As we walked across the beach just before midnight, I said, "So we're really doing this?" which freaked him because he thought I had it all sorted out.
We blew up our tubes and put into the surprisingly cold water, headlamps on head and LED mag in hand. The headlamps actually made it worse since they only projected 4ft and also killed some of your vision in the process, so we mostly just stuck to our handhelds.
The first set of rapids came quick. If the noise of them wasn't enough to scare you, there was the realization that you were picking up speed quickly. It wasn't the shallow rapids that got you, it was the long deeper wave pool-like sections that did it (although fun fact: when anything reaches out and tweaks your butt underwater in the dark through your tube hole, you scream even if it's just rocks). It was up to you and the few feet of partial vision you had in front of you to figure out if you should tuck your butt up or lower your center of gravity to prevent a spill for your dance with the woopdee-doos. The first set freaked us right the frik out which kept our heart rate controlling our flashlights in the calmer section scanning the banks for boogers. We did manage to spot a ringtail in one of the clearings.
We kept on going like that, flashlights in hand for when we heard any noise, water or brushy (one bull frog in particular had Jon yelp pretty good).
We passed our 1+ mile first out because we were still finding fun through the fear. After a bend, we came quite rapidly to a very narrow section that was flowing faster. First in line, I got swept towards a tree hanging all the way in the water. I thought I could simply push and spin out, but as soon as my feet touched the branches, I was ejected backwards and under the water and brush. My fear came to fruition when I realized I could not touch at all and all my flashlight was illuminating was bubbley water. I managed to not get caught for long as the water shoved me closer to shore where I was finally able to roll up on. My watery shouts scared Jonathan off his tube but he took his own tumbles as he tried to rescue my getaway one downstream. We were able to meet up on shore and take some drier breaths regrouping. We were starting to decide to teach the river a lesson and get back in, but I realized it had taken my Garmin as a souvenir so we had to re-evaluate. My safety waypoints now beaconing from the bottom of the riverbed, we thought it best to find the road and hike back from here. We hiked back through the brush and found a trail back towards pavement. It took about 2 miles to get back to the truck after our 1.5mi dark wave adventuring. We were sad to have to have given in but also that we were the only ones to have gotten to experience, so another trip may be in order later 
We saw no one else out there even at the camp spots and the temps, once you got wet, were great. I wish I had my tracks for the trip. I looked repeatedly at our progress at the GPS clipped on my belt (won't make that mistake again, even though I still have the clip  ) and and found us at 4 to 6.5MPH in the water but the fastest said 12.2. Surely that was a misprint from reception degradation (I mean it could have been like 40MPH for all you know:)
Btw, I'm in the market for a used Garmin 60cx no clip or anything extra needed  |
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May he guide you through the wilderness : protect you through the storm;
May he bring you home rejoicing : at the wonders he has shown you;
Armchair Crisis Design |
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