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Pint Size Perspective: Self-Support Kayaking on the Rogue

a little boy wearing a helmet

In this edition of our Pint Size Perspective Series, 10 year-old Maya Musgrove chats about her first self-support kayak trip on the iconic Rogue River. Enjoy!

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My family, and our friend Laura went on a trip to the Rogue river on Labor Day weekend. We put in at Grave Creek on Saturday morning. It took a long time to put in because we had to pack all of our supplies into our kayaks.

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On the first day the rapids were quite hard, I thought they were about as hard as the gorge on the South Fork American where we live. On one rapid our friend Laura flipped over and my mum went down to help her, leaving us at the top of the rapid with my dad, I was really scared.

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We camped on the right side of the river that day, that still had sun, so we could dry out our stuff. We had Mountain House dried food for dinner.

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The second day had a few scary rapids, but it was mostly fine. When we got to Coffee Pot Canyon we found some rafters who were willing to put me and Hannah in their raft because my mum and dad didn’t want us to kayak this rapid. They didn’t want us to have a bad swim if we didn’t roll. After Coffee Pot was Blossom Bar which me and my sister walked around with the rafters.

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When we put back in after that there were lots of whirlpools and I got sucked towards a dory and I had to drop my paddle to attempt to push off it, but I got sucked under the boat anyway and then I did a handroll. When I rolled up, everyone cheered.

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On our way to our next campsite we stopped at Paradise lodge to get ice-cream. Unfortunately, it had just closed. We went inside anyway and the man that worked there was nice enough to let us buy ice creams.

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On the third and final day we saw a bear. I had gone ahead of the group so I did not see it, but my mum got a picture.

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There was a lot of flat water paddling that day, and not as many good rapids. But that meant we didn’t really have to worry about the river being scary.

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When we finally got off the river the unpacking wasn’t nearly as bad as the packing, we pretty much just threw our kayaks into the back of the truck and drove home.

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Author & Cali Collective Jr Ambassador, Maya Musgrove, is also an honor roll student, gymnast & skier. This fierce lil lady is staged to be a positive force in the world.

All words and images copyright California Women’s Watersport Collective 2019. All rights reserved.