Race day started with a rendezvous in the parking lot of the wave park at Golden, wth myself and Kevin meeting up wtih Levi Gallas, Danny Tebbenkamp, Chris Patrick, Zack Thompson, Rick Leitner and Darryl Brown of RMR. We'd discussed running below Rigormortis for the downriver race, since the higher sections on Clear Creek had been a bit intense. It would end just above a rebar-infested spillway, right around three and a half miles. Kevin, myself and Levi lined up for the official race with Rochelle in the lead position according to her Face Level series points, with Danny, Chris and Zach paddling along for the ride.
I held onto an early lead for the first few bends, with Kevin next and Levi close behind. Levi went for a pass around Kevin when Kevin got into a slower current in the fun class III rapids. But it didn't take him long to catch up. Head to head, they managed to pass up me on a faster left line around a drop, with Kevin in the lead. That didn't last too long as I found the faster line down the center. Levi got around Kevin one more time, but it turned out to be his last.
Meanwhile Kevin kept up the pressure on me through some flatter sections, narrowing the gap within a few yards. Kevin had the disadvantage of having left his knee pads drying on the deck, and had to make due with some small thigh pads and shin guards. I, for the record, did not intentionally lead him over any rocks, though when I looked back it appeared he was following my lines. Neither of us had ever run this section, and I was trying to avoid anything I could see, but still managd to hit a bunch.
Kevin and I swapped leads a few times, but after over 23 minutes of paddling, I crossed about ten seconds ahead.
The rest of the crew decided to get out early. There were some constant rapidis, drops and holes near the end of the run.
After a brief rest, we decided to run the boardercross as one heat with the three of us again, on the last section of the downriver called Screaming Quarter Mile. Maybe because your legs are screaming during a race... it is a fun section with mostly rapids.
Kevin passed me early, positioning himself in the best narrow line in the first rapid, leaving me closer to the first rock pour-over where I got slowed down a little by the hole. I was thinking this must be payback, but Kevin insists he wasn't trying to get me closer to that rock (sure, I believe you..) Levi also caught me soon after, but found himself weighted upon a rock and I recovered second position. The run was short and there was not enough time for me to close the gap, and Kevin won with a decent margin.
From there, after walking around the defunct dam with God knows what left underwater, we did a relatively mellow scenic float trip down to the whitewater park in Golden for the surf wave. Only by this time, after two races, we needed food and rest before more exertion. Levi hopped on the wave and pulled some great stunts, but left before Kevin and I were ready, so the standing wave comp fizzled. This meant that once again, Kevin and I were in a tie sitatuation for overall points. We decided to have the run-off on one surf wave each, with Danny judging.
Kevin used an RMR surf riverboard, and pulled his first ever laying-on-his-back position, looking ever so casual. Afterwards he tried to spin the board below him and got washed out. I managed to get to my knees hands-free and cruise the hole in this position for what felt like a pretty long time. When that felt like it was getting old, I tried to find the sweet spot to do a rollo I'd pulled off twice earlier. Although I tried the rollo, I didn't get the spot and washed through, but my time on the wave knee riding was longer and was thus awarded the winner.
I was pretty tired from catching the eddy after the surf hole and when some guy in a goofy baseball cap waved to me I didn't have the energy to wave back. When I got closer, I realized it was Josh! He had a layover from Costa Rica in Denver and had rented a car. Josh came back with us to Lafayette and we did another RMR factory hangout. We talked about sending mannequins down rapids and how in New Zealand you get a discount on bungee jumping if you do it without clothing, and how everything is funnier if you add "naked" to it.
One former resident of Wyoming chimed in. "Naked rodeo."
Sunday was a free day and Kevin and I explored our river options. It was between Cache Poudre near Ft. Collins, or the Arkansas, a regional classic, in the south part of the state. We decided on Poudre because of its proximity; the Ark would have been at least a 2.5 hour commute each way.
Up in a canyon past Ft. Collins the scenery became more rugged with jagged rocks pointing skyward above the green slopes, pine trees and river below. We finally got to see a little of Colorado's natural beauty, not that it wasn't pretty around Golden, it was just a little more barren there. The water was on the high side of a medium flow, and we were told that the Narrows section would be obvious when we saw it.
It was. The first rapid just below a bridge looked like a lot of fun, with some fun sized drops and holes and lots of froth. Along the road above, we used almost every pullout to study the slots and drops from all angles. The middle one we decided would be unrunnable, but the other two might be. We didn't have any local knowledge so we had to be particularly calculating about this. One run was a really narrow slot with a boulder drop/rooster tail just afterwards that looked makeable on the left; the slot wasn't bad -- it was what was after it; how much did that rock stick up and would the hole afterwards flush. It would be okay if you had safety set up around the hole and also downriver to make sure you could eddy out before hitting the unrunnable rapid below. With only two of us, we decided to pass on these upper rapids.
Back to the lower one, and we looked at it harder from a lower perspective. Dark spots appeared where we hadn't noticed before. Rocks. Right after a big drop with a very small amount of time to make any correction or directional change. These rocks aren't smooth. They'd shred your wetsuit at the minimum. Kevin decided he had nothing to prove and I rather like my legs, so we agreed to just do a fun run on the upper Mishawaka to the bar, which was a nice class II-III 3 miler.
While Kevin went to park the car downstream, I got to thinking what would make this more interesting. We could race, and the loser buys the first round! A stop in Ft. Collins was already on the agenda, following the advice of a good friend who had lived in that town for 17 years. Kevin agreed, and our fun run turned into a battle for bragging rights and a brew. Unfortunately I'd decided to fully pad up, wearing gear I would never race in: thigh pads, hard shell knee pads, and a second 3 mil farmer.
Before we started I was almost laughing to myself so hard about what we were doing I couldn't take it seriously, but once we were in the water the race was on! We traded leads more times than movie stars get divorced. Each time he passed me, something would happen to slow him down. He surfed the top of a rock for a few seconds; he took a diversion in the river that ended up being slow and shallow; took the slower side of the river and had to fight back to the current. But each time he recovered. At one point Kevin was a good 50-60 feet behind me and I thought I had him. I relaxed just a little; I was tired and burdened with all that padding and neoprene. But I relaxed a little too much. Somehow he found the leg power to catch up during a flat section and pass me about 150 yards before the finish. 'How did you do that!' I asked. He didn't answer but kept charging, and earned every ounce of his Fat Tire.
The restaurant we hit was called the Rio Grande in Fort Collins. One thing I will say about Colorado towns, they really like their festivals. The first day we tried to find the whitewater park in Golden, we were diverted not only by road closures due to construction, but we couldn't park at the park because of some music and laser show event that evening. When we left town that same day, hundreds of folks had lined the streets to watch our little white rental car cruise by... (I couldn't resist waving) or was it for a parade happening later.. that would probably explain why earlier that day we'd seen a group of people spray painted gold from head to toe, and heard music coming from random and indistinguishable places. It appeared something was going on in Fort Collins as well, and parking wasn't easy to find.
The Rio had awesome mango margaritas but no free wireless, so afterwards we looked for a coffee house. We eventually found one near the car called Mugs. I ordered decaf which I am pretty sure wasn't, but the score of the day was their free bumper stickers that were a take-off of the Starbucks logo, and in writing, "Friends don't let friends drink corporate coffee", with the mermaid/woman thing in the middle a squinting-eyed frowny face. I have two on my car already.
We got some internetting done then headed back to Lafayette to prepare for the 3:45 am departure to catch airplanes. Idaho was just a couple days away. My schedule is insane. As I write this (Tuesday), I still feel sleep deprived (sure that was decaf??) although I had three seats together on both flight legs, which allowed enough sleep to let me get through a partial day at work on Monday. I catch a plane tomorrow afternoon to Boise. I am currently four points behind 1st place in the FLRC after last weekend, and if everyone on my Eddy Flower team posts all their runs, I have a serious shot at this championship. We'll just have to see what happens this weekend in Idaho.
At the Mishawaka put-in. Taken with a go-pro hero wide angle.
I spent the last weekend in, and on the banks of, one of our local rivers. I was one of 12 people enrolled in a two-day Swiftwater Safety and Rescue course presented by Andrew Kellett (a well-known South African Kayaker) and you guessed it, I was the only Riverboarder… in the image below you can just see my Riverboard peaking out next to the furthermost kayak on the right.
Our Classroom.
Must say, I really learnt a bunch of stuff and it was sobering to face the responsibility one takes on when inviting Newbies along, and how I had often in the past done this without really giving them too much instruction and also not even having the correct safety equipment.
Forthwith all that will change though and I’ve already made plans with some of the guys who attended the course with me to get together soon and practice some of the rescue techniques we’ve learnt.
Learning the ropes...
The course dealt, amongst other stuff, with the following:
 Swiftwater Features & Hazards
 Reading the river and picking the best line
 Wading techniques
 Rope work and throw bagging
 Pulley systems – uses and setups
Rescue in strainers.
If you have not done so yet, I strongly recommend that you find an Accredited Operator (I’m sure Ice can recommend some in the States) and get yourself trained in Swiftwater Safety and Rescue. If you’re anywhere around South Africa, be sure to contact Andrew via http://www.gravity.co.za/
The simple premise is that your first priority is to be safe in the water and if you can do that you wont need to Rescue anyone…. but if the need arises for a rescue, then you need to have the right resources and skills to do the rescue.
Something else I learnt from our Instructor is the opportunity offered by each river you run, especially a river that might only be a class 2-3 and not challenging, and even more so at low-water (which is what we had… but ideal for the kind of rescue exercises we had to do in the water).
Me, going for a tight eddy.
At one point the Instructor said we should follow him eddy-hopping through rapids. Basically what he did was lead the way and try get into the most difficult eddy’s in difficult parts of the river and we’d have to follow him each in turn, snaking our way through the river. At this point our group had been split in 2 so there were 6 of us following him. Many of the eddy’s were so small that only one person could get in at a time, so you had to work together well to ensure that everyone kept moving and there was no overlap.
So, the reason I’m telling you all this…?
Firstly, I want to encourage you to also do some Whitewater Safety & Rescue Training, I waited really long until finally doing it which is actually pretty bad, it is really IMPORTANT.
Secondly, I learnt that you can still have lots of fun running a river, which you may usually not be that keen on running, if you work at finding lines and eddy’s you’d usually just pass by and in so doing you can hone your river-running skills, improve your technical ability in reading water and most of all have fun on a day that you may otherwise not even have bothered running a river.
NOTE:All Images taken by Andrew Kellett and the property of Gravity Adventure Group
My real name is Brad, but every who knows me calls me Baabaa (dodgy kiwi sheep farming background!!) I first went river boarding with Mad Dog back in 2000 as a client (that was were my love of river boarding began). The following year while on a forced break from another job, I worked for Serious Fun as I knew the owner at the time. During that season I trained as a guide, consequently working for them on and off in a driver/guide capacity until the opportunity arose in 2006 to purchase Mad Dog.
The Kawarau River, with the Roaring Meg power station outflow on the right, on a sunny summers day, at average flow. About 160 cumecs (approx 5750cfs). Just a bit of an idea of what we deal with for those from around the world that have never seen our commercial river section before.
During this time myself and many others have constantly worked on trying to creating minimum operating standards accross the industry here in NZ. As some of you will know there where 2 river boarding deaths in NZ last year. Due to circumstances I can not go into due to ongoing legal conostraints, the case involving my company was the first widely publicised world wide death in the industry. As we should all well know, it was by no means the first river boarding death, but non the less it was not publicity I ever wanted, for my company or the industry world wide.
I was not going to write this blog until after things have finished in court in a couple of months, but after see Charls post, and with it being in season in the USA, I'm going to put this idea forward now.
Over the past year things have moved a hell of a lot faster than they were prior to these 2 incidents.
In conjunction with MNZ (Maritime NZ, the government department charged with all things water) all operators have come together in a new found spirit of co-operation and developed what we believe to be some world firsts.
Firstly we created the NZWBA (NZ Whitewater Boarders Assoc. www.nzwba.org.nz) to which all operators have now become members.
We have developed minimum operational standards for all operators, current or new, which have now been ratified by MNZ. See 'regulations' 'Maritime NZ' on the NZWBA website.
Once these were finalised we created minimum training guidelines, in conjunction with NZQA (NZ Qualifications Authority - the government department charged with all things teaching). These are a 4 part training programme, the first 3 of which are identical to rafting, we just differentiate with each sector having its own 4th part which is directly the techniques needed for that specific activity. It is conceived that any commercial kayaking ventures in the future can also work from this framework. These are in the last stages of being signed off by the appropriate authorities, so as yet are not on the NZWBA website. (That and our web geek is on sabbatical for 18 months!!)
As it is now winter here, we are still writing the 4th part, the river boarding specific training, to be ready in September.
This will have a few parts, from initial training, to roles for trainee guides, guides, senior guides, trip leaders and assessors, or something along these lines.
There will be minimum standards to reach each level, from experience, to skills and also off water knowledge of operational procedures as well as a need for constantly upskilliing, attending rescue workshops at regular intervals etc.
We have already held what we believe to be the worlds first river boarding safety workshop. There will be a further 2 every year, one in each of the 2 main areas river boarding happens in NZ (Rotorua and Queenstown).
We have as a result of this been asked to help facilitate the NZRA (NZ Rafting Assoc) Safety Workshop from now on as well. Teaching them river swimming techniques etc.
What I am proposing is that with the increase in commercial operations around the world, that we all get together, well at least via the web anyway, and look at creating some international standards.
As I said above, people die river boarding, it is an unfortunate fact of life when dealing with Mother Nature. If we look at every other water sport I believe river boarding is still a very save activity, but also think that we must all work together to help it stay that way, and maintain the standards as high as we possibly can.
These standards do not have to reflect much about the NZ standards, as operational criteria will be different in every country. Instead they should hopefully be able to be used as guidelines, by which operators can set up and ensure that guides are doing what is needed, competitions are run safely etc.
I'm sure from the past 2 years of competitions of seen here on Facelevel, that you guys already have much of that in place as well.
But I feel we are in a unique situation of having a reletively unknown activity, with a great bunch of participants world wide, with a great deal of knowledge. Why not tap into some of this and make sure that as more and more people begin river boarding, they are able to do so in a safe and enjoyable manner.
I know the RIPH exists and they state they wished to create unified training criteria etc, unfortunately they seemed to leave NZ off there list, and I can't find anything other than them saying that is an intention of their organisation, I can't find any evidence of them having created anything.
For many years now we have all existed in isolation and this website has started to bring together river boarders from many areas around the world.
Although we operate in different ways, and focus on different things, and have developed different equipment, we all still have the same common goal.
To show people the thrill of river boarding, as well as advancing our own skills, and doing it in the safest and most enjoyable way possible!
This is just a thought I've had in my head for a while and I guess I'm just wanting to know if there are enough other people around the world who think this is a good idea and that it might be possible?
Who will be the world's fastest flying human in 2009?
This 5 day event will begin in Hellesylt, Norway as a 3 day competition July 9-11, and the Base Race finals will be taking place in Romsdalen, Norway August 13-15.
Thirty-two of the worlds best flying athletes, including Face Level's own CORE Team FLI athlete Neil Amonson, will be competing head to head, after jumping off Gridset skolten. There will be two jumpers per race, and six rounds to see who will be the first to cross the finish line 750m away.
Hans Holmefjord, a Norway native, reached a top speed of 234 Km/h after 16.6 seconds. That's 145 miles per hour! Will he get beaten out this year?
Stay tuned to Face Level and Team FLI for more information on this event, and to find out who the world's fastest flying human is!
