Team SKB - Keepers of the Pigeon

With our Wilson Creek days (2) already used and nothing much else running, we had to come up with a plan to try to maximize our score over the last two days. This wasn't so easy because our team captain is out of commission and only pairs of the remaining quartet were going to be able to paddle on Friday and Saturday. With a plan to try and rack up a big day on Wilson Creek Saturday, we needed to run some other river on Friday and score enough gradient to replace the 875 WC day from earlier in the month.

Enter the Dirty Bird. It had the basic ingredients we were looking for: water and gradient (not much of either, but beggars can't be choosers). At 163 feet per lap from the power plant to Hartford, we figured six pigeon laps would replace the Wilson Creek day with a few extra feet to boot.

Josh and Stuart headed out from the Tri-cities just before dawn and slid into the waters of the mighty Pigeon for lap one at 9 am. The ~1500 cfs flow was fantastic and in less than 90 minutes they had finished the lap, set their own shuttle, and were sliding in for lap two. That's when they noticed the dark bands on the rocks and the river bank... the power plant had quit generating and the level was dropping. Laps two and three were completed before a quick lunch break. Four, five and six knocked out by 6pm. As the flow dropped from 1500 cfs to 250 cfs, the lap times increased from 90 minutes to 120 minutes. Some of this increase was due in part to the fact that our heroes began goofing off more and more as the day progressed and enjoying every minute of it (maybe not every minutes they were paddling through the elongated flatwater sections...but all the rest for sure).

By the end of the day, they'd dropped 978 feet (ON THE PIGEON), paddled 28 miles, and driven 96 miles (both cars combined) of self shuttle from the power plant to Hartford or vice versa.

It wasn't hairboating, but it was a day we owe entirely to TVF - no way it would have happened otherwise!

Go SKB!