Below Pipe Cr. to Granite camp-4 miles
The night's wind did not last, and did not seem to have blown anything away, though a few things got moved around. We got off the beach in pretty good time, even after adding a little orientation and safety briefing for the new arrivals. All the new arrivals are still pretty sore from their walk down. It took us only about 20 minutes to reach Horn Creek rapid.
Horn Creek rests up at the top of the list of most feared rapids in the canyon along with Lava Falls, and Crystal, and for very good reason. In every other rapid the rock obstructions are called rocks. The rocks at the top of Horn Creek are called the horns, lending the whole thing an ominous air of diabolical doom. They are, in fact, sharp and create some unique hydraulics that are just the beginning of the ride. The Belknap and Stevens guidebooks simply say about Horn: "not recommended between 4,000 and 10,000cfs". Fine for the vast majority of times recently, when the dam releases vary the water level daily, by about 5,000cfs, mostly in a range between 8,000 and 20,000. But we have a steady 8000+ for the foreseeable future.
The horizon line, where the river disappears into the drop is particularly dramatic here at Horn, and the canyon is a black slot through near vertical schist. This caused the kayak probes and the rafts to pull in too high for the scout, so some time was wasted communicating that the lower spot really was OK to pull in and scout from. It is unnervingly close to the top of the drop, but the eddy is fine and there is virtually no current. The scout is also unnerving, the rapid is really tough at this level and "the move" is a make-or-break thing. A great wide hole covers much of the river right side about halfway down, just above a cheese-grater vertical block of limestone that all the current slams into near the bottom right.
The commercial guides at Boaters Beach said stay right of the right horn but pull hard for the left while doing so...but it'll take being right on top of that rock with some good momentum to break into the eddy below the horn. Erin portaged her kayak, and returned to passenger in Dan's raft, WW, Martie, and Brad walked around, and Max led off. He is neither high enough or moving fast enough to break the eddyline, and when he hits the left edge of the hole, he loses his right oar, and instantly gets surfed laterally about 30 feet to the right and comes out headed for the big rock at the bottom right. He never even gets control of the lost oar before the raft gets plastered vertically onto the rock. Max climbs out onto the rock in a heartbeat and urges David to "pile out", but David in the front of the raft can't get a grip on anything to climb out of the vertical or possibly overhanging raft. He has to bail out into the turbulent current not knowing what awaits him around the the rock. Wendy is watching all of this happen from her perch on the rock right above them but can't do anything to help them.
Meantime, I'm at the top of the drop scrambling into my kayak, and Dan S. is watching and calls out, "they're high siding!", then, "they're over!". Michael is in his boat and peels out. I pull the skirt into place and go screaming off 10 seconds later down the rapid, only to discover much later I left my helmet and PFD on the beach. By the time I get down to the raft (30 sec.?) Michael and Tim have caught up with the it. Jim has pulled David out, since David entered the water not 20 feet above the eddy Jim was waiting in, and though Jim could not see any of the action, he was right on David as soon as he appeared around the rock. We managed to get the raft to an eddy on the left. Michael secured it to the rocks there, and I went over to the river right eddy to check on everything there and make sure Max and David are OK, and Jim asked about my missing helmet and PFD. I had not yet noticed the lack of gear, and was horrified to think about what a swim might have been like sans PFD!I borrowed a helmet and PFD from David and went back to watch the rest of the rafts make their runs. Dan S. runs between the horns, actually rolls off the left side of the right horn, and has a pretty good line from there. Sam follows, goes way left and actually rolls left off the left horn, and bounces down the left side unscathed. After all that probing, Larry splits the horns perfectly and has a great run. So 3 out of 4 is not too bad considering. And, last time we take advice from the pros, I think.
It took quite a bit of hollering and arm-waving, but we managed to get the flipped raft across the river to a small but calm eddy and beach, where we got it flipped by pulling directly on 2 lines secured to the frame, no mechanical advantage required, to my surprise. Max was pretty amped to get his raft back over, and we got in too much of a hurry to really have our wits about us, both individually, or collectively, so Tim's tow line got cut loose prematurely, from both ends, and lost in the water, and the shoreside oar was still in the oarlock, perpendicular to the boat and underwater when we flipped the boat over, and we snapped the blade on it. The shaft of the l. side spare got crushed when the raft rolled off the rock, so we are down by 2 oars from the incident! But no one injured and no gear except a water bottle lost. Small change, really.To get the sound of Horn out of our ears we proceeded to Trinity Creek camp for lunch, and a debriefing on the morning's thrills and spills. In retrospect: 1. We should do our own scouting and choose our own lines, and not rely on advice from anyone but ourselves, and 2. I could and should have stepped in and told everyone to relax and slow down and think through the whole process of righting the raft, and we all would have felt better about that, I think. One case where more forceful leadership was needed.
After lunch we reached Monument Creek and Granite Rapid, and I decide we need to call it a day, everyone is still kind of jangled from Horn, and Granite looks pretty hard. We do a pre-run in kayaks, which turns out to be pretty fun, and settle in on the big beach at the Monument campsite. I also decided to declare a layover day to recuperate a bit from the past week plus. I know the campsite is a good one, and the hiking options here are too.
