Grin and bear it
The next day we paddled up a river which is normally teaming with black bears this time of year while the salmon are spawning. Immediately noticed the fishy smell and the seemingly countless dead salmon that littered the river bottom. The further upstream we paddled, the more dead fish there were. It was like something out of a horror movie, with the water so clear that it looked as though you were paddling on air above a graveyard of dead fish. There were several bears sitting along the grassy bank of the river eating the endless supply of salmon that use their last dying energy to swim back to their birthplace and reproduce. This was like an all you can eat buffet for the bears. The weather forecast was calling for a pretty good storm to head in that night, so we decided to call the exploration and slowly make way to Homer. We arrived in the early evening, although even in September it does not get dark until around 10:00. The next morning we drove the several hour journey back to the tidal bore.
Riding the bore wave on an sup was really cool, and really discouraging at the same time. We walked out across the sand bank to the river and paddled a ways downstream towards where the wave would come from. When it arrived it was really fun to ride, but the problem is that after a while you get bored and start trying to do harder and harder turns, cross overs with each other etc…and inevitably at some point you lose momentum and lose the wave. You can ride the smaller wave on the back of the main tidal wave for a bit, but eventually you have to awkwardly paddle over to either side sand bank. The wave in the middle is traveling much slower than the sides (because it is in the deeper water that is flowing towards the ocean) so if you paddle to the sand bank you can eventually catch back up to the wave with the fast flowing tidal bore, get in front of it, work your way back towards the middle and continue riding it! It’s tiring, but pretty amazing that you can catch back up to the wave. I got cocky and lost the wave twice. So much of my long anticipated experience on the tidal bore wave was spent paddling my ass off behind the wave trying to catch back up to it! That being the case, it was still a hell of an experience, and something that Kai and Kevin and I will surely remember and talk about for a long time to come. We rode it for 23 minutes. It is no Pipeline, but the novelty of riding a wave for so long is worth the experience for sure.
