Kayak Sodak: West River rivers really got something

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Originally uploaded by Iron Bieso

You can see the beauty of a self-supported multi-day trip in the video here.

That's Brian and Jim talking, and along with me, we did a three-day trip on the Belle Fourche and Cheyenne Rivers over the May 16 weekend.

Caleb Gilkerson and his first mate, Chris, served as our insert/extract team, plus pre-mission launch intel, and I send 85 percent of our success to all their hard work.

Within the first hour of our actual launch, we experienced:

Lost gear: Four PFDS, four paddle floats, gone.

A dead calf on the bank, stinking and shriveled.

Another one, stinking again, not five minutes later. They both appeared to have drowned in the recent high water.
All this in 59 degree temps with high winds.

With 90 miles to go.

The gravel loved my new trailer plate.

Oh, and I stepped in the mud.

Typical East River city slicker ... can't read his clay.

We put in on the Belle Fourche around noon at Enning Road bridge north of Elm Springs.

We knew the flow rates at both this spot and further down the Cheyenne because of the excellent information the USGS site provides. Props out to technology.

Caleb, who runs an outfitter business in Pierre, knew how to read the numbers, too, and advised us of options. We considered doing a 34 to Cherry Creek run, but then we went big.

My look here might show the apprehension. We really had little choice: Came all this way and here I go off on three days sans PFD. But it was 3 hours back to Pierre for replacements.

So off I went.
Felt a little naked and a bit like, f-word, what was I thinking? Note the little red bag, too.

The boys hit a shallow sieve-like stretch here.

I pulled a 180, went back up river, turned and came through a big set of rapids, got soaked, lost gear, found it, whew, we were on our way. Three days of this?

We fought wind until camp/unloading time. What do those clouds mean?