A Few Memories of My Friend Joel Hathhorne

My friend Joel met an untimely death this last weekend. It is my great sorrow that I never knew him as well as I might have. He was a fellow that I kayaked with. While there are a lot of people that I have kayaked with, Joel stands out from the crowd in a number of ways. He was certainly one of the best, most athletic, strongest, most daring, and most acrobatic paddlers I have ever shared a river with. Even after years of knowing him and paddling with him, he would make some way cool move in some tricky spot that would just make me say, "Wow!" His athleticism is hardly my best memory of him. He was a fun, funny, caring person whose company was a pleasure. He had a wicked, sarcastic sense of humor and he rarely deferred from directing it at me or at any other deserving party. Behind that brash exterior he had a heart. He helped me out of more than one tough spot on the river and taught me a thing or two about how to use my own boat. As I said before, I never knew Joel extremely well. He was a paddling buddy and most of our shared experiences were on the river. I think I will tell a couple of river stories. Anyway, he would just have mocked the sentimental tone of this paragraph. To avoid his tongue, I would have to launch into the river stories...

Joel was unlike most of the crazy-ass, hair boaters that I have met. While he certainly was always on the lookout for the next insane creek, the next rush of adrenaline, the next stretch of water that he had never done before, he also had a deep love for rivers. One day he was in town for a visit and, since it was a weekday, could find no one to go run a river with. Our mutual friend Ed called me up, explaining that Joel was in town and was looking for someone to paddle with. Joel and I agreed to go run the Skykomish. The Sky is sort of the default river for Seattle boaters. It is runnable even in the summer when everything else is too low. Consequently, any boater who has lived in Seattle has run the Sky dozens if not hundreds of times. At the time I was a pretty green boater and the Sky was still enough of a challenge for me. Of course, it was a cake walk for Joel. We paddled our way down to the first big wave train after the confluence with the North Fork of the Sky. Joel decided I needed to work on my surfing skills. We were at that wave train for a long time. Joel was carving back and forth on the faces of the waves. I was getting blown off and tuckering myself out paddling back to the top. At the end of our stay at that wave train, I was a better surfer (Thanks Joel!). As we were paddling away, he explained to me that none of his class 5 paddling buddies like paddling the sky as it is a fairly easy river and since they had all been on it countless times before. "I like the Sky," he told me, "it's fun."

Among my paddling buddies there is a joke that you should never follow Joel. The truth is that he was a great person to follow on the river -- providing he knew that you were following him. He knew I was following him down the canyon of the Nahatlach one day. At the time, the Nahatlach canyon was the hardest river I had run. As we set off downstream, my throat was dry and entire swarms of butterflies were doing their thing in my belly. The Nahatlach canyon is a pool-drop run, meaning that there is usually some flat water after each drop in which the nervous boater (that's me in this story!) can gather his wits and calm his nerves. Joel provided me beautiful lines down each of these tricky rapids. I was paddling well that day. Eventually we made our way to the hardest and most dangerous rapid on the stretch -- an ugly, hole-choked mess called Final Exam.

Joel hit an eddy near the top and I pulled in behind him. He pointed out some of the features of the rapid and sketch out a line that he intended us to take. The first move was a ski-jump over a rock lined ledge. The ledge was tall enough that we couldn't see the water for several yards downstream. Joel went first. As he approached the ledge, he put in a sudden sweep on his right, pushed his boat up onto a pillow on one of the rocks defining the ledge, and boofed over the rock. I thought, "Fuck you, Joel, you're supposed to be following our line. Fine! Be a hot shot! I'm following the line we talked about." I paddled up the lip of the ledge and saw, as had Joel, that the bottom of the ledge was a big rocky hole. No fun there! I made a clumsy attempt to repeat his move over the pillow and only succeeded in stopping my boat and drifting backwards through a different, very narrow slot in the ledge. I hit the bottom of the ledge and, of course, flipped. I rolled up in ugly water, but somehow made my way back to the line that Joel had followed. I punched a big hole and got trashed by the tiny one on the other side. As I rolled up for the second time, Joel paddled up beside me and pointed to a beach on the left bank.

We paddled over to the left bank. Joel suggested that I get out of my boat and look at the next bit, because the hard part of the rapid was coming up. I think I just burst out laughing, demanding to know what it was that I had just paddled through. So I looked at the next part of the rapid. This time I found my line early and stayed on it, making it past the two huge, munchy holes.

I have a photograph of the top of Joel's goldenrod colored helmet sticking up out of some hole on some river. His face is not visible in the picture, but he is twirling his paddle over his head while hand surfing. I think I'll keep that picture in my head and pull it out whenever Joel comes to mind.

Bruce Ravel
14 May, 1997