{"id":27796,"date":"2022-09-30T10:00:36","date_gmt":"2022-09-30T17:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/community.nrs.com\/?p=27796"},"modified":"2022-09-28T14:40:20","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T21:40:20","slug":"how-to-choose-a-rowing-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.nrs.com\/duct-tape\/2022\/09\/30\/how-to-choose-a-rowing-school\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Choose a Rowing School"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hood River wasn\u2019t how I had pictured rowing school. Neither was hundreds of yards of portaging. Or the seemingly mile-long raft rail slide at the White Salmon River put in, followed by another belay. But when in Rome, right?<\/p>\n

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Photo: Northwest Rafting Co.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All that aside, the most unexpected moment in rowing school was when I was placed in a 16-foot gear boat with another student and no instructor. We were on the Wild and Scenic Rogue River headed into Mule Creek Canyon. If you know anything about this rapid, you know it’s an oar eater\u2014a bottomless pit that mows down oars for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert, never catching its fill. The deal in the rowing school was, whoever was going to row Blossom Bar (the heart and crux of this stretch of river), the other student in the boat would row Mule Creek Canyon. It was either o(a)r. Mule Creek Canyon was up first, shortly followed by Blossom Bar.<\/p>\n

While at first glance this seemed fair and reasonable, there were some butterflies in my tummy knowing my counterpart had only rowed once before in her life on what sounded like class II rapids. Unbeknownst to me, a huge part of rowing school is getting comfortable being uncomfortable and embracing the fact that you\u2019re the most experienced person in the boat.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Northwest Rafting Co.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mule Creek Canyon is almost a mile long. At the entrance, my boat mate blew an oar. Looking upriver, I watched as the oar stood upright in the water (with just the upper few feet exposed) and chased our raft, just out of grasp. Meanwhile, the boat roared toward a downstream wall on river left. While the other oars woman hurriedly unstrapped the spare, I jumped onto the commissary box next to her, grabbed the right oar with both hands and double-fisted it in a pull to shed momentum.<\/p>\n

We narrowly slid past the wall in slow motion, just as she slotted the spare into place. I passed off the right oar and jumped on the stern hoping the trailing oar would catch up to us for retrieval. It did not. I was left at the Blossom Bar scout contemplating the mismatched oars I would row through one of the most difficult rapids I had navigated in my short rafting career.<\/p>\n

Welcome to rowing school!<\/p>\n