This New Year's Eve, the night's low clouds prevent even the stars from illuminating the creek, but the lack of natural light doesn't seem to bother anybody here. Kids with headlamps, flashlights and neon-hued glowsticks clamber around boulders and kayaks on the shore. Spectators laugh and talk in the multicolored glow of kayak gates bedecked in generator-powered Christmas lights. Dogs chase children and one another underfoot. But at 7 pm, the creek's still at the same low level.
Folks mill around, still waiting, asking questions.
I just practice with my eyes closed,' one inventive paddler replies. I guess we'll run it as it is,' Patrick Phinney answers with a shrug. And as the night bears on and the water remains at the same low level, Phinney is one of the first to head down the creek. We hear him in the darkness as his boat crackles through surface ice and scrapes loudly along the rocky bottom of the chute. Clearly, the level's still too low.