Raging Waters

Markleeville Creek begins up high at Burnside Lake, then flows down steep, granite cliffs, making its way into Hotsprings Valley. Down in the valley, I've always looked at the creek, wondering what it would be like to ride a kayak or raft downstream.
Usually, it's a quiet and shallow creek, probaly too narrow and not quite deep enough to take a long boat trip on. After this year's heavy snows and rains, the creek is really flowing. I knew that if I were to ever find out what a trip down this creek is like, now would be the time. During Lalima's visit, Dan answered my call for a co-pilot on our new raft. Embarking 4 miles upstream from Markleeville town, we were off! Moments later, the rapids crumpled our boat like a piece of tissue paper against a fallen tree. We were in the water, desperately holding onto the crushed raft. My beautiful pink hat, sunglasses and flip flops were carried away by the current.
Bobbing up and down, trying to recover our raft, Dan and I were faced with a decision: would we continue or quit just a dozen feet into our excursion? We're men. We continued. The trip that we estimated would take just a quarter hour ended up taking 3 hours. During the adventure, we were capsized a handful of times, we crashed into boulders, flew over cascades, and were thrown around in white waters.
It was not exactly the river trip we had expected but an unforgettable odyssey nevertheless -- one I would gladly repeat minus the first 1.5 miles of the trip. Rai, however, made it clear that he's not quite ready to be tossed into frigid, raging waters quite yet. He'll stick to reading in the boat as it dries on our deck.