Underhill Update Blog

It amazes me how quickly time flies by.  I was looking at my blog today and realized that it has been well over a month since I last wrote.  To catch you up… in the beginning of May, Andrea and I went up to Canada for the first time as a married couple.  While this might seem insignificant, it was actually a huge deal for us.  It signaled the end of a 14 month process of paperwork, money, and more paperwork as we moved towards obtaining status for Andrea as a permanent resident of the USA.  The whole process went very smoothly all in all and we are praising God for his provision in this matter.  We had a great time up North visiting family and enjoying some Alberta rain!  We recently acquired some bikes and we brought those up and had a good time biking some trails around Andrea’s parent’s place. 

We came back on May 7 and got running with things at camp again right away.  Currently we are working on finishing up the static ropes course that the Explore college students have been working on the last couple years.  We are installing a 330ft. zip line for the dismount from the course and hope to have things all operational for campers by the start of the summer.  We are also in the process of changing over some of our equipment.  We just ordered 16 new Jackson Fun kayaks.  I am really excited about this new fleet of boats that will allow us to outfit anyone from 60lbs up to 320lbs comfortably.  These boats are designed very well and should aid in the learning curve!  We also have some new ropes, harnesses, and helmets for our rock climbing and challenge course. 

and…. this just in!  I finally got a solid taste of class IV boating on Wednesday in the form of a Bighorn staff trip to the Lochsa river.  Thirteen of us were blessed with beautiful weather, a solid flow (7500 cfs), and almost no one else on the river besides us.  Six of us kayaked, while the other seven took a raft down.  This is definately the biggest water I have every boated in, big but fun! 

Some of the highlight rapids for me were Grim Reaper (I led the line for this one… it was a technical right, left right move that if messed up could have some very unpleasant results, needless to say I was stoked after nailing it), House Wave, Bloody Mary, Pipleline, and the beast Lochsa Falls.  The falls packed a punch that pummeled myself and Jordan Stoner like ragdolls (we came out all right on the other side). 

(A cataraft in Lochsa Falls to give you an idea of the size)

I was fortunate enough to get two solid surfs in on the Pipeline (known in the Montana Boaters guide as the surf til’ you puke wave) with the wave being very picky as to who it would hold and who it would flush.  We ended the day with some ribs and fries at Famous Dave’s and I slept solid that night.  It has been a while since I have had butterflies like I did on Wednesday, what a day!!!

(Few pics of me surfing the Pipe!)

We have an open house at camp this weekend to give people not to familiar with Bighorn an idea of who we are and what we do.  So far it is going well.  I hope your week was good.  Enjoy the holiday weekend!  God Bless….