After 2 hours of class he was itching to get us out in the water, so off we went to the man made $24 million park.  We started by learning the water hydraulics, which was the most important thing you could of learned.  Seeing how the water moves and how to move in it was something you just can’t find in most creeks or rivers in our area unless you are in flooding conditions.
 

He took us in the water and showed us several ways to cross the river.  First it was by yourself and then in multiply groups.  This built confidence right off the bat because if you missed on our footing you would get caught in the rapids and floats several hundred feet down the river.  You then had to walk back up and do it again.  We all  worked hard in learning how to keep your footing.  He then took us and showed us when floating down the rapids how to get your body to get in the “eddy” , which we all found out is your most important friend in the water.    Many times doing this you could feel the water flow pulling you downstream unless you got rolled in the eddy edge to get you to safety.

He then taught us that you don’t always have to have your feet pointing down the rapids,  he showed us how to swim into the rapids at a 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock method.  After doing this several times we then went thru the rapids to few drop offs and continued out into the 14 million gallon pond on the end of the park.  We all felt our muscles doing things we haven’t pushed ourselves to do before.  The rapid areas were class 3 and 4 which moves at about 15 miles and hour.  This was  a change from practicing at home in class 1 and 2 which moves at about 3 to 5 miles a hour.

Once everyone was out of the water he had us come to the beginning of the park and in between the rafts and kayaks told us jump in and ride out the hole course.  We all looked at each other and thought maybe he was a little crazy, but we did it and it was as wild as anything we ever did.  The first drop felt like it was apx. 10 foot and off you went thru the rocks and rapids hoping to catch an “eddy”.  When you did you were able to catch your breath before moving on, which sometimes you did and sometimes you didn’t.  What seemed like and hour you finally got to the end and he had us walk back up to try the next thing in his crazy schedule.

It was time to do Go Rescues.  This was thing we were waiting for.  When he stood on a rock about 5 feet up out of the water and we saw him kinda of belly flop in we just looked at each other just shaking out head.  The most important thing he told us is timing because you only get one chance to get the victim.  We all found this out the hard way missing the victim time and time again. 

Everybody really dug down deep and kept going till all of a sudden it was working.  The neat part we didn’t notice was crowd of people watching and cheering for you as made the rescue.  Once we got done with this we thought we had a good day and a good supper would be waiting for us, we were wrong. 

 Walter had us move down stream and started showing us how to use our throw bags.  Again we felt this was a strong point of ours.  Yeah right, when the water is moving that fast you just had to get better timing.  We got caught on rocks, missed all together, or just didn’t get the rope there in the right location.  He gathered us together and told us to take a breath and dig in because he knew we could do this.  It was a basketball coach telling his kids the could make that free throw.  Well we did dig in and started getting it right.   After about 20 more throws it was working like he said it would. 

I noticed for how tired we were we didn’t quit, we did push each other and built more team unity.  When this exercise was over we were waiting for the next assignment, but Walter told us go eat a good supper and sleep good, tomorrow will be a killer.  As we left the park I looked back and there went Walter on his quad riding off in the sunset planning more things for the next day.  Hmmm…stay tune for day 2.

More Photos recently added here!