Overdue Slave post: Outrageous!
That's right, it is an outrage. How long overdue is this post? A month? Two months? Outrageous, I say, outrageous! Natalie, Dave Schmitt, Will Parham, and I just returned (a month ago) from the Slave river in the Northwest Territories. (Will left early due to labral stresses, but that's another story.) This trip was the lowest water that I have ever seen there, and is probably about the lowest that river has been paddled by playboaters. The flow was 92,000 cfs, give or take a little day to day variation. We kept hoping that rains down south would bring up the flows so that the ultra low water feature called Rockem Sockem would come in, but it was too low. We needed about 110,000 cfs for that. No love. Despite the unbelievably low flows, we were able to find a handful of waves. My favorite was Monster Schiesser, on Rapids of the Drowned, but that wave happens to be out in the center of the river (i.e. about 1/4 to 1/2 mile from the nearest island) and favors moves fa...