July 1st Tribute

Last night I participated in an Annual Event for Mark Klein, my friend and boss Bob Klein's brother, who passed away shortly after flipping his boat while running Pine View, the largest rapid on the Poudre River. There were a large number of fellow and current Wanderlust guides (around 20 of us) who hopped into some rafts, duckies, and kayaks and ran the rapid in his memory. At the bottom we pulled into a spot that is not commonly visited by boaters and held a moment of silence below a stone plaque with Mark's name, the word "Adventurer", and his timeline engraved into it.

Bob thanked us all for coming and after that we, well, played around in the water. People took turns jumping off of the top of Flip Rock, some doing aerials, front and back flips, or whatever suited them (I just did a whirly bird and then a jackknife). A couple of guides took a boat back up the river a bit and intentionally flipped it on Flip Rock (Bob jumped on top of it in order to steer it through Pine Box..which was quite a show with a couple guides riding it upside down), while the remainder of us took the other raft down upright. A couple of the guides in the second boat tried to stand up through the rapid the whole time (Robin, Joe, and Brian I beleive, fairly successfully I might at). Afterwards we all went to Bob and Paula's house and had some beer, braghts and burgers and commenced to talk about the river, our upcoming baby, and various other life-moments. It rained a bit around 10 and people started to scatter, but the good vibes continue to ressonate.

Mark, we hope you enjoyed the show.