“When Fun is Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Fun.”  John Jaycox

 

 

It’s true that Sven started kayaking. I heard that one of the Banditos (The famous Harley riding climbers from Flagstaff AZ) was responsible, but splashing down class V rivers was more fun than struggling up sandstone spires, and gravity always wins in the end.

Sven heard from some of his new friends about a river in Jellystone Park that was supposedly one of the best class V’s in the country, but kayakers were not allowed there. This was the same park that allowed snowmobiles, but the superintendent was afraid that the kayaks might scare the animals.

Sven was a firm believer that if fun is outlawed only outlaws will have fun, and his new found friends felt the same way, so they packed their cars and headed north.

Some of the people on the trip had been busted before, but they still felt that it was worth the risk to run this great river again, and they had learned a lot from their first experience and had a plan.  They started at 4 AM, with the hope of getting past the first pedestrian bridge before dawn, and the kayak racks were removed from their vehicles, so they would look like fishermen.

Sven had never paddled in the dark before and had a bit of trouble on the first rapid, but the cold swim woke him up and the group made it past the first bridge before daylight.

Then they were home free, because the rest of the run was very remote, and all they had to deal with was the whitewater.

It was a challenging wilderness run with a great group of people, and an awesome adventure. They carefully scouted and paddled down the pristine, medium volume river, with numerous short Class V drops and one short canyon that they chose to walk around.

Sven was having somewhat of a mental dilemma. He was really having fun, but he couldn’t understand why what he was doing was against the law. He had waited patiently in line to cross the high passes while hundreds of gas-guzzling Winnebagos stopped to feed the bears, and he had paid the same admission price that everyone else had.

Now he was on this great river, and he almost felt like Lewis and Clark or Teddy Roosevelt, but his nation considered him to be an outlaw. One hundred years before, he might have been a hero, but times had changed, and now he was a bandit, forced to sneak around like a common burglar. This made Sven sad, but he didn’t let it ruin his day.

The group enjoyed a very casual lunch and took a long siesta in the Indian summer sun. It was late afternoon when they finally started paddling again, and they continued down the remarkable river, away from the drudgery of the paved roads packed full of polluting engines. There was some more whitewater, but nothing that was death-defying, and Sven remembers stopping at a small cave a few miles above Gardiner, Montana. From there, the river was only Class III, and the group felt confident that they could do it in the blackness of night. So they waited, told stories of other rivers, and ate the last of their chocolates.

They finally reached Gardiner in the dead of night and took out at the in-ramp for the legal trips below the park. A few of them scouted ahead and found a large pile of barrels and other equipment, which they decided was a good place to hide the boats. So they dragged most of the equipment up and stashed it behind the barrels. Some of the group headed over to get the cars, and the rest stayed to guard the gear and tell more stories.

Soon after the group had left, a ranger with bright flashing lights showed up on the scene.

“Where are your canoes?” the ranger yelled accusingly, as he shined a very bright flashlight in their eyes.

“What canoes? We are just looking for a place to camp,” the quick-witted Pablo responded.

The ranger seemed a bit skeptical, and he told them that they could not camp there. But he was nice enough to tell them where they could camp. A few minutes later, the rest of the group arrived with the takeout vehicles, and they decided that it would not be wise to load up the kayaks at this time. So they drove over to the nearest tavern-restaurant and celebrated their victory with cheeseburgers and beer.

The camping spot that the ranger recommended was great, but they did not sleep very well because they knew that they would have to return to the scene of the crime in the morning to retrieve their gear.

The group was up at the crack of dawn and drove two vehicles into what turned out to be the logistical headquarters of the national park. But no one was awake, and the kayaks were still there. They quickly loaded the gear and drove off to a very relaxed breakfast, then headed back into the park to soak at a great hot spring and laugh about their luck and the great river that they had just completed.

Some people were not so lucky. One of Sven’s buddies was busted a few years ago, and a fat ranger on a horse forced him to march out carrying his kayak, then threw him in jail. The current park service is adamant about enforcing this rule, and the rangers love to play catch the kayaker. I don’t think Teddy Roosevelt would be very happy with the current policy.

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