Ducky Madness - An Adventure Down Pine Creek

A ducky is perhaps the most absurd of whitewater crafts. Elitists might call it an inflatable kayak, but I find it more akin to a high-buoyancy bathtub. It combines the best qualities of a raft and the best qualities of a kayak to make something incredibly mediocre. In a raft, the most uncomfortable part is wedging your feet under the rubber thwarts and letting them marinate in cold water all day. In a ducky, it’s your whole body wedged into a couple of miniature thwarts that serve as the hull. In a kayak, you ideally never have to swim or get wet below the waist. In a ducky, you’re prone to fall out of the thing entirely, and even if you don’t, you’re likely soaked head to toe anyway and constantly submerged up to the waist even in flatwater.

Duckying a Steep Colorado Creek

I think what drew me to a ducky wasn’t that I saw it as a highly efficient way to get down a river, because it isn’t. I didn’t pursue the sport because I was seeking adulation, because no one was going to be very impressed. I started hopping into a ducky more than any other craft because I found it to be somewhat of a joke. If I was in a ducky, everyone could rest assured I was never taking myself seriously. I didn’t have the swagger for kayaking, a swim being highly frowned upon. In a ducky, falling out with your legs flailing was absolutely expected. Thus, in lieu of paddling directly into strainers or underneath a raft, there’s no such thing as a mistake in an inflatable kayak.

My roommate and I - he is a photographer, I am a river guide - had become avid duckiers on the Arkansas River which we lived near, paddling the Class III section through Brown’s Canyon National Monument frequently. Both of us had separately paddled the Class IV Numbers section, but at extremely low water where scraping your rearside on rocks was as much of a hazard as the whitewater. While nothing to scoff at, these experiences gave us no right to even flirt with the idea of taking a ducky down Pine Creek, one of the only Class V sections that is commercially run in Colorado.

Yet there we found ourselves, entirely clad in neoprene, hand-pumping a double ducky on the side of the road near the put-in for Pine Creek in the San Isabel National Forest. My roommate, Ethan, had gotten an invite from his boss’s son, a cocky 16-year-old kayaker, who had the kind of skills only those who grow up on a river have.

I had been having a most peaceful morning, nursing a cup of coffee and preparing to enjoy a coveted day off during the busiest rafting season in our company’s history. My phone rang: It was Ethan.

“Yo, what are you doing? Actually, I don’t care. Grab your gear and meet me in town. You’re hopping in the double duck with me and we’re doing Pine Creek.”

I laughed. Surely he wasn’t serious.

“Pine Creek? Absolutely not. Plus I need a day off the water.”

“Listen, water levels are perfect. Soon it will be too high, so now or never.”

“Now or never” has never failed to get me to do something I don’t really want to do. If you told me it’s my last and only chance to join a traveling circus of felons, I’d probably do it. I sighed.

“Ok, let’s go scout it and then decide,” I answered.

I had yet to buck up the cash to buy myself a drysuit, preferring to paddle as fast as I could and enter early stages of cyanosis while duckying rather than empty my bank account. So I grabbed all the damp neoprene and soggy wool layers I owned, along with my faded purple PFD and scratched blue helmet, and drove to town to meet Ethan, my stomach already in knots. We hopped in the 16-year-old’s dilapidated red Subaru, him clearing seemingly six people’s worth of river gear out of the backseat to make room for me. It didn’t occur to me to ask if he had a driver’s license.

He talked about whitewater without the sense of anxiety and doubt that I constantly feel. In fact, this would be his second lap down Pine Creek that day. We would be meeting a couple of his other friends and their parents.

We arrived at the put-in to “scout it and decide.” If Ethan and I determined we didn’t want to attempt the rapid in the ducky, we’d just help run the shuttle. But I knew deep down that the decision had already been made. No matter how raging Pine Creek looked, it was now or never.

The 16-year-old’s friends were already at the put-in. They were garbed in brand new drysuits, shiny helmets, their top-of-the-line colorful kayaks over their shoulders as they picked their way down the rocky trail from the road to the river. Wordlessly, Ethan and I began pumping up the ducky. The fact that these expert boaters were waiting for two neoprene-clad strangers to inflate their questionable craft made me squirm. We donned our battered helmets and sun-faded PFDs. Lifting the ducky above our heads, we trotted down the path.

Ethan and I had scouted the rapid cursorily. Pine Creek is notorious for a series of churning, recirculating hydraulics, one of which, Pine Creek Hole, has claimed lives at higher water levels. Ideally, we would dodge these holes in our whitewater tub. Ethan took the stern. In the front, I was essentially the motor, he the rudder. The children and their parents bobbed in an eddy a little way downstream, smiling as they watched us take our seats.

“Ready?” Ethan asked.

I exhaled slowly.

“Let’s just do this thing.”

We peeled out of the eddy and immediately took on much more speed than I was anticipating.

“We’re headed downstream!” I screamed manically to the multi-colored blur in the eddy.

“Paddle hard! Paddle hard!” Ethan yelled.

“I’m trying!”

It soon became quite clear that the double ducky had its own course in mind and there was no reasoning with it. We missed our first crucial move to the right to dodge the first hole. My eyes closed, I paddled so hard it must’ve looked like my paddle blade was a windmill. Somehow, the hole spat us out and we continued downstream.

The whitewater was big enough, at least in comparison to our craft, that I couldn’t see anything and swallowed water by the pint if my mouth was open. Eyes closed, mouth pursed, I paddled like I never had before. I couldn’t hear anything except for Ethan, whose sole vocabulary at that point consisted of “paddle” and “hard.”

I knew, even with my eyes squinting, that we were approaching Pine Creek Hole. I tried to ignore the screaming in my arms and core as I continued to paddle full-throttle. We took on a wave so violent I was laid out flat. Spitting water, I sat up and tried to continue paddling.

“I’m swimming! I’m swimming!”

Ethan was out of the ducky.

“Oh God!” was my only response.

There was no way I could fight against the current and paddle the double-ducky into an eddy on my own. And there was too much momentum to even try to slow the thing down.

“Just keep paddling!”

Ethan was at least holding onto the ducky. In a brief moment between waves, he pulled himself back on.

“Paddle hard, paddle hard!”

I didn’t need telling twice.

Slowly, the sounds of birds became audible again, I could hear the kayakers hooting upstream.

We’d made it through Pine Creek.

I looked back at Ethan, who was a tiny bit pale, but beaming.

I relaxed. Ethan was ok. We’d made it. He’d swam the worst of the holes; I’d been little help except for adding hysteria into the mix. Soon I smiled, then started chuckling, then joined Ethan in laughing so hard that our howling echoed throughout the canyon.

Our journey wasn’t yet done. We had to make it through the Class IV Numbers, which was at a considerably higher level than when we had individually braved it before. Ethan still at the stern, we flipped the ducky and swam Number Five, the trickiest of that section and also the rockiest. I emerged from underwater after the flip, cursing as I felt a huge bruise beginning to blossom on my rearside. Yet this only brought more laughs, more absurdity in the story we would tell our friends later.

I partake in a lot of questionable and arguably dangerous activities, but taking the biggest joke of a whitewater craft through Pine Creek is, without question, the scariest thing I’ve ever done in the outdoors. Yet it’s also the hardest I’ve ever laughed. Maybe this silly little craft isn’t a joke at all. Maybe it’s simply the best way down a river. I guess it’s time I get a drysuit.