I love wood, but not in the rivers I paddle

My family and I have moved north from the Jackson Hole area to Yellowstone National Park.  Our motel in West Yellowstone has a hot tub, and it's motivated me to get back into a little rehab work on my back.  My back has continued to cause me discomfort during this trip, and I'm starting to think about seeking more serious medical help for it when I get back home.  For now I'm soaking and doing some stretching exercises that target that area.

So far I haven't paddled any since Thursday, but we've seen lots of rivers and lakes and the thought is never far from my mind.  On Friday we ate lunch next to Cottonwood Creek in Grand Teton National Park, and the creek brought back memories of things that spooked me when I paddled a lot of Rocky Mountain whitewater in the 1990s.  The creek had a healthy flow (the snowpack in the Rockies was pretty big this year), and even though the whitewater was no bigger than Class II, it was moving fast, there were practically no eddies, and downstream of our picnic spot I could see piles of logs here and there in the creek bed.

In the eastern U.S., mountain rivers tend to have pools between the drops, so that a paddler scouting from his boat can pause and look downriver for hazards without being swept into them.  Furthermore, eastern rivers are fed mainly by rain and can be paddled at any time of year when there's been enough precipitation.  If there's been a concentration of rain in, say, the Cumberland Plateau region, paddlers from all over the Southeast will converge there, and word will quickly get out if a river is blocked by a tree or a logjam.

Rivers and creeks in the much younger Rocky Mountain chain tend to be much more continuous, cutting fast courses into the slopes with few eddies or pools.  And in a typical year, the peak snowmelt season lasts for only three or four weeks from late May through early July.  A group of paddlers that ventures to one of the more obscure, remote creeks might be the only party to run that creek that year, and they will have no information on what wood might have become lodged in the creek bed.

For several summers in the 90s I traveled to the Rockies and ran with a group of aggressive boaters who sought out some of these hidden gems.  I saw some of the most beautiful places I've ever seen and honed my whitewater skills to a fine polish.  But I also remember a few days where I was frightened for the entire duration of a run and gave thanks to the heavens when I arrived at the takeout unharmed.

Now, with my ten-year-old niece and twelve-year-old nephew in tow, I'll be sticking to the easy stuff in whatever paddling I do.  And here in Yellowstone National Park, boating on moving water is illegal anyway (some backstory on that here).  But it's interesting to gaze at the Rocky Mountain whitewater, reliving past experiences and perhaps pondering future ones.