L&M Small Craft Coastal Explorations: Au Sable River Run 2013: Verlen Kruger Memorial Event

AuSable River Run 2013

The Challenge

Start at the Old AuSable Fly Shop in downtown Grayling on August 30 at 4pm.

Paddle and portage down the AuSable River 116 miles and 561 vertical feet. Portage over 6 hydro-electric dams and across 6 open water dam impoundments to the town of Oscoda.

Background

The Au Sable River Canoe Marathon is the most demanding of the three major canoe marathons in North America. Professional paddlers race through the night and into the next day down the Au Sable River, competing for prize money in front of thousands of cheering fans. We saw the start of the race in July. It was like an alternate universe where canoeing is a major spectator sport. After seeing the excitement of the start, we were possessed with an overwhelming desire to "Hup all night".

Maybe some day we will get a racing canoe, line up a crew of "feeders", and enter the actual event. Fortunately for us, the Verlen Kruger Memorial association holds an annual, informal run of the race course. The rules are standard for Kruger events; self-supported, use whatever paddling boat you want, start at the designated time if you can make it, you're on your own.

The start

Grayling, August 30, 4 PM

Seven boats lined up at the Old Au Sable Fly Shop. Wendy, Lori, and Dave were planning to camp and make a normal canoe trip of it. However, Dave was planning to paddle back upriver to Grayling, which is not totally normal. Jack, Mark, and Ben were planning to go nonstop to Grayling; as were we.

Our Downriver Kayaker friends Jerry and Linda, and Mike and Lisa, stopped by on their way north to see us off. Some severe thunderstorms had passed over and dumped a lot of rain, but the rain was tapering off as we prepared to start.

Go!

We started out chasing Ben. He was focused on getting a good time; just paddle, paddle, paddle. We had never paddled more than 24 hours before. We wondered if we were starting too fast and would pay for it later, especially because we were ahead of Jack "The Hammer" and Mark Przedwojewski of Kruger Canoes, both known for their endurance in the small world of Kruger canoeing. However, we were excited to "Hup all night" like the marathon racers, so we just went with it.

The water was shallow and fast. Often, it was too shallow to get a full paddle blade in the water, but we rarely scraped bottom.

Jerry waved to us from Stephan Bridge, and took pictures. We made it there in just over 2 hours, which is the cutoff time for the marathon at that point.

Before long, Jack picked it up and passed us. He caught a cut that we missed and went ahead to chat with Ben. Shortly after, though, Jack pulled off to the side to bail out his boat and wait for Mark. There was a leak in his boat, and it was slowly filling with water. We offered some Gorilla tape, but he did not know where the leak was. He was in for a long night! I felt a little bad for leaving a friend behind with a leaking boat, but he did not seem too concerned. We knew that he and Mark would work something out, or at last out-bail the rising water, and would soon be passing us.

We passed people sipping wine on the porches of the riverside homes. The evening was warm and humid.

As the sun was setting, we helped Dave look for a good campsite, and wished him well on his trip down the river, and back up.

As the evening progressed, the cooler temperatures were welcome. Ben was the only paddler still in sight. Jack and Mark were somewhere behind us. We hoped that Jack's boat was still afloat.

There is a strange four-way intersection where the North Branch joins at around mile 28. After a moment of confusion, we picked the correct path, and passed under the covered bridge. It was nearly dark.

Night overtook us. They say a picture is worth a thousand words.....

We turned on the headlight mounted to our canoe and continued on. After a while, Ben coasted to let us catch up, and asked Lauren to push the button on his Maglight mounted to the bow. It is a little too far to reach on a Sea Wind.

The sky had cleared and the stars were bright. We could see the milky way, framed by the dark trees on either side of the river. Insects swarmed over the water, and bats swooped in and out of our headlight beam to catch them. Every now and then, we caught a glimpse of the shadow of a fish below us. One nearly jumped into Lauren's lap! We watched Ben's light up ahead to show us the bends in the river, comforted by the thought of a fellow traveler nearby on the river.

Mio was the first impoundment, around midnight. Ben had pulled ahead, so we only saw his light on occasion in the distance. As we approached the dam, I looked back over the open water and saw two bright lights approaching. It looked like a car driving down the lake toward us. I expected to see Mark and Jack overtaking us at some point, but the lights seemed too bright to be on a canoe.

There are portages built for the marathon, but they use racing shells that can be easily lifted out of the water. When we pulled up to the concrete steps, we were not sure at first how we would get the Cruiser up. We started pulling and pushing and soon had it up the stairs.

Mark and Jack pulled up as we were ready to roll away on our portage wheels. We tried to warn Mark to close his eyes for the photo, so hopefully he wasn't blinded...

As we paddled away from the dam, we heard a strange sound: zzzZZZzzzzZZZzzzzZZZZ. What is that sound? It's the sound of Kevlar canoes sliding down a steep gravel road. Mark and Jack portaged just after us.

The portage woke us up, and we paddled fast away from the dam. We would traverse the reach of river between Mio Dam and Alcona Dam (miles 49-77) in the hours between midnight and dawn. Clouds had moved in and obscured the stars. A cool breeze was blowing, which was refreshing, and prevented fog from developing. Owls hooted in the woods, and strange noises came from the night that might have been coyotes or people who had had too much to drink.

We expected to see Mark and Jack overtake us quickly, but it was not until around 2 AM that they caught us. Their lights were so bright that ours was barely visible. As they pulled ahead I heard them say that they could see Ben. We had not seen him for hours. We picked up the pace so that we could all be together. For a few minutes, after 60 miles of river, we all paddled together in the wee hours of the morning. With all the lights, it was easy to see where we were going. It did not last long, though. As Jack and Mark pulled away into the night, I could hear them quoting a Johnny Cash song, presumably inspired by the leak in Jack's canoe:

Jack: "How high's the water Mama?"

Mark: "Three feet high and risin'..."

We let the others pull away. I did not expect to see them again. It was well past my bedtime, and I was getting very drowsy. Ben appeared ahead from time to time during the night. Ben's light became dimmer and dimmer as the night went on until it was just a faint glow. We could only make out his pale form against the dark trees when he was close. There is a recurring scene in Moby Dick in which the crew of the Pequod spots a phantom whale spout in the distance. They follow it as it fades away, luring them onward toward their fate. This is what I thought of as we followed Ben's faint form turn after turn.

Lauren and I made a deal; one of us would paddle while the other took a 15 minute nap. I moved my orange box forward to support my butt, laid back on my padded seat, and rested my head on the coaming. I could get into a pretty deep sleep within 15 minutes. Lauren slumped forward with her arms folded over the foredeck and her forehead resting on the coaming. This did not look comfortable to me, but she said it felt good to stretch her back. It must have been reasonably comfortable because she was snoring as we came to a sea of marsh grass at the slackwater of the Alcona impoundment. The 15 minute timer wet off, but I let her sleep in for another minute or two because she was snoring away so happily.

The marsh grass was rather confusing; it was all marked as open water on my GPS map. I came to a dead end, and started back-paddling against the current that was sweeping us into the grass. Lauren awoke with a start, surprised to be surrounded by grass and moving backward. Somewhere out in the grass was a light searching around, presumably one of our colleagues. I recalled that I had plotted a GPS route when we were thinking of doing the Michigan Challenge Shore to Shore route, and found a lead in the grass to take us to that route. After a while we came into the open water of the Alcona reservoir. As it was late in the summer, I think it was more overgrown than in the Google Maps picture.

The long-awaited first gray light of dawn appeared as we approached Alcona Dam.

As we paddled away from the dam, we were surprised to see Ben waving at us from the top of the boat slide. We had not seen him for hours, and thought he was well ahead of us. He told us later that he had made a wrong turn in the marsh grass while half asleep.

We took turns paddling while we ate our thermos meal of macaroni and cheese with beans, and drank a thermos of instant coffee and hot chocolate.

I hoped that the arrival of the sun would bring me new energy and erase the fact that I had paddled all night rather than sleeping. This did not happen; I was still falling asleep while paddling. We paddled in 15 minute intervals, then allowed ourselves a short break to eat or drink while the other paddled. I bent the rules by requesting a 5-minute nap. Lauren humored me on this. I drifted off quickly into blissful sleep.

I was startled awake by loud splashing next to me. Ben had paddled hard to catch up, and was coasting while pointing his camera at me. "This is great material", he said, " I can't wait to show this to my wife".

photo credit: Ben

We continued to pass back and forth with Ben as we approached Loud Dam at mile 93. The river below Alcona Dam was two to three feet deep, crystal clear, and swiftly flowing across across a gravel and cobble bottom. Loud, Five Channels, Cooke, and Foote ponds represent 25 miles of flatwater paddling and portages, with another ten miles to go beyond Foote dam. The funny thing about this trip is that I felt like we were in the home stretch when we had only 30 miles to go because we had already come 90 miles.

When we reached Loud dam, we were still on pace for a 24 hour finish.

24!

Five Channels dam had a long, steep wooden boat slide. This was a bit scary with the cruiser. I had to be careful not to let it get going too fast, or there would be no stopping it. There was a deep divot at the bottom of the slide where boats had crashed into the ground.

Cooke pond was next. We paddled past the island where we camp with friends every October. We had watched the marathon racers paddle across Cooke pond from the high vantage point of Paddler's Memorial. Now WE were racing across Cooke pond.

We made a line across the open water of Cooke pond into the building headwind. I heard splashing behind me and turned to see Ben clearing some weeds off our rudder with his paddle. Headwinds again. He had the same problem last year on Cooke and Foote ponds.

Finally, the dam appeared after two hours of paddling.

After Cooke Dam, the river was in a very deep and winding channel. Far below in the crystal clear depths, long water plants swayed and waved in the current. Schools of minnows darted about. With a sharp eye, we could occasionally see large fish hidden among the swaying weeds.

Foote pond was the last impoundment, but also the longest at 11 miles. It was well into afternoon on Labor Day weekend, and the pond was crowded with jet skis, pontoon boats, motor boats, cigarette boats, and those go-fast boats with the V8 engines and giant chrome exhaust pipes. They all wanted to take the same line as we did, cutting the tangents on the curves of the river channel.

With three miles to go on Foote pond, we saw two kayakers in the midst of the speeding boat traffic. As we got closer, we saw that one had a wooden Greenland paddle, which is usually a sign that we know them. Jerry and Linda had come to see us.

They boosted our spirits and got us through the last few miles to Foote Dam. Again, we dragged the cruiser up over the concrete sea wall and strapped on the portage wheels.

photo credit: Jerry

With only ten miles to go, and the current in our favor again, we really were in the home stretch. However, it would still take a few hours of paddling. The water was very deep and clear here. We watched big fish, piles of logs, and swaying forests of weeds slip past below. The river was crowded with floaters in rental canoes and rafts of twenty or more inflatables.

Once the river straightened out and turned south, we knew we were in the final stretch. Excited to finish, and to finally stop paddling, we picked up the pace. Jerry and Linda were on the bridge at the finish, and got pictures of everyone coming in.