Keep Calm and Paddle On (by David Koyrakh)

Hey! David Koyrakh here, for my Week 2 blog post.

Last weekend was this session's first weekend at Keeners, which means we got to go free paddling! Since we didn't have to take First Aid on Saturday some friends and I decided we'd run the main channel. After about an hour of bothering people Jahn and I formed our river squad: Jacob, Maddie, Jahn, and me.
One thing to note is that it was raining on and off for a few days prior, so the water level was rising.
...No, it was skyrocketing.
But we didn't realize that until we passed McCoy's, where all of the familiar rock islands were not so familiar anymore. Everything looked different, and then it hit us: the water level had gone up.
At first we were excited, more water means more fun!
But then we got to the lunch site and learned that the gauge was at 5.5, compared to 4.25 in the morning (which is a lot considering it was 0.5 all week beforehand). And it was still going up!
Someone in our group (not gonna name any names) started freaking out.
"We gotta turn back!", he cried.
"Lets get Devyn to pick us up!", he screamed.
"I need an adult!", he whined.
But the rest of the group wouldn't hear it. We managed to calm our buddy down after about 20 minutes, with our final compromise being that we would scout every rapid and portage if needed.
So on we went.
We Paddled.
And we Kept Calm.
And everything went smoothly until we got to Colosseum, which looked huge (at this point of our trip the river was at about 6). We scouted for a little while, and then Jacob, Maddie, and Jahn ran it with no problem. I decided that I`d paddle out to the far right side and avoid the juice, the flesh, the action, of Colosseum rapid, and all went well. The trip was a success. We had a blast.

Moral of the story, if you are already on the river and things take an unexpected turn, assess your situation.
If it is safe, what do you do?
Keep Calm, Paddle On.