If you think you don’t need a drysuit

When I first moved to the Pacific northwest I already had a drysuit that I had purchased for teaching rescue in the frigid Nantahala River in western North Carolina. I had paddled a season in Colorado and one in California on top of many years boating in the east. I thought I knew a thing or two about cold water, but I was green. Every new place that I paddle teaches me something important, and paddling in the PNW taught me about cold water.

You can say that you will only paddle when it's warm. You can try to find rivers where it is safe to go out with just a wetsuit. If you're really tough, you might last a whole season using the same gear you used to use somewhere else.

I lasted about a season. I didn't know anything about the rivers here, and it was a late fall day when I paddled the Hood River, Dee to Tucker, with a bunch of folks in the club. I didn't check the gauge. I didn't check the weather. I just packed up my gear and went, trusting. It turns out, I shouldn't have.

First of all, the water was rising. I didn't know that. Second of all, there was a bitter cold front blowing in behind the rain that brought the river up. I didn't know that, either. I had a drytop and neoprene shorts, and pogies. I already knew about pogies and boyo I was glad that I did. (Pogies are hand-covers that attach to your paddle.)

the Hood River on a warmer day and we’re all in drysuits

But back to this bitter cold day on the Hood River with rising water and me dressed in a drytop and neoprene shorts. It snowed. I froze. I was borderline hypothermic all day. We had swimmers, delays, and the water was rising. I was urgent to get the whole group downriver and it was going sooo slowly. Maybe someone who runs hot like Dave Johnson would have been OK in a wetsuit but I was not OK.

Then the guy with muscular dystrophy took a swim. The crew got him to shore on river left (away from the road) and his boat went downstream. Foolish me, I chased the boat. Nobody came with me. I had never seen the river before. I tried to shove the runaway boat into eddies or pin spots with little success. Every time I took my hands out of the pogies they immediately stiffened with cold. (It turns out, for rescue situations, neoprene gloves are better than pogies.) Eventually I got scared and gave up on the boat, catching an eddy and watching it continue downstream.

Much later, after getting the swimmer across the river toward the road, the group came down and we continued downriver. We found the boat pinned in the very last rapid before the Tucker Bridge takeout. Nobody even tried to get the boat; we were all too cold. We went straight into the pie shop and circled around the woodstove, dripping on the old wooden floor.

I didn't know it then, but that whole day could have been much more pleasant. I could have worn a drysuit. Just to be warm and dry from head to toe makes a giant difference in my enjoyment, and my safety margins.

Drysuits are indeed expensive. They cost approximately 3 times what I paid for my first car. And you want one that bad; you will pay for it. If you want to paddle rivers in the Pacific Northwest a drysuit is your ticket. Without a drysuit your season is short and uncomfortable. I'm sorry, it's just true. With a drysuit you can paddle year round and you add a tremendous buffer to your safety margin, because one of the largest challenges of our region is the ice cold water.

Members replacing gaskets in their drysuits

Tips for drysuit newbies:

1. Get one with a pee zipper. For women who don't want to use a funnel there are butt zippers.

2. If you paddle a decked boat, get one with a "tunnel" that seals water out of the sprayskirt.

3. Learn to maintain and replace the gaskets, it just isn't that hard. Zippers too.

4. Keep your suit clean and store it carefully; it will extend its life.

5. Send your suit in for repairs/patches as often as it needs (annually with hard use).