Tri-Lingual Day on The Crooked

To get to the Crooked put in one must endure a two mile mud-pit-post-holing-root slipping-back-breaking-bush-whacking-hell-storm that takes most over two hours to do.Red Flag. But nevertheless that is what I signed up for one afternoon. Amy using her quirky feminine foresight stayed behind and well...it is days like this one that make me see why women live longer then men. Red Flag.

This day I met up with two young Germans Phil and Ben and a Japanese man, none of us had ever met till this day. Ben had very little English, Phil had quite good English, and our Japanese man knew maybe 5 words. Red Flag.

on the way to the put in the car racks completely came off the car along with all four boats. Red Flag. Here we are fixing them with a pop-rivet gun and some Kiwi craftsmanship.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger... maybe


Can you find the trail?


Mr. Japanese man going for a nature walk

after 2hr and 15mins we made it.

now remember we have three different languages, four different people, and five miles of creek left to do and it was already 4 pm. Red Flag. So we get to the first rapid and it is pretty boxed in, Ben grabs a last chance eddy and preceded to yell out the line to the rest of us... in German. Once Ben is done I look to Phil and he attempts to translate for me. I then look to the Japanese man and try to give hand signals about the line. By the time I'm done with the Japanese man (we will call him Jo from now on) Ben is already dropping in and Phil is right behind him. I quickly peel out and follow Phil. God knows how Jo's line went but we all ended up in the next eddy in one piece.


This is the process that we went through for every drop that we had to boat scout which was most of them. Red Flag.

Ben starting the game of telephone



Ben enjoying one of the few rapids we could get out at look at.


Ben lost in a sea of rocks


After a bit we came in to a short but amazing little canyon.


Phil dropping into what proved to be the last real rapid.

All in all I think all that i lost was a lot of money from my karma account. Amy was glad to see us return and enjoyed the story of the day.