This weekend I noticed something several times with guys dropping waterfalls, and wanted to address a safety / technique issue.

Is there a "right" way to drop a waterfall on a riverboard? Definitely. Some boards dive better than others (Ripboards, hydrospeeds) but even with the flat boards like the RMR, Kern, or Carlson, you can still land with a 45 degree angle and do ok. Those boards make it tougher to stay ON the board and come up still on it, especially the bigger the hydraulic is, but it's possible.

But what I noticed is that occasionaly people will try and dive the falls too soon, which leads to some deep, dark, sometimes nasty pummeling on the bottom of the river. Check out the graphic below of our unnamed boarder who is just at the point of shoving his board down deep into that little V wave at the lip of the falls.

What happens is all that current UNDER the V wave goes straight to the bottom, and comes up way way way downstream. So if there's a really super nasty pillow at the bottom of a falls, and you want to go under it and come up further downstream, this would be the best way to do that.

But, as I saw two different people do this weekend, one on the fairly benign Husum Falls (pictured) and one on "Thrasher" (Canyon Creek), going deep can lead to unnecessary beatings at the bottom of the river. Long beatings. AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER.

The danger, besides being deep and having to fight to come up some 20 yards downstream, is that most of the time it's really impossible to know what kind of boulders or rock sieves etc are down there. And as we've seen time and time again at Husum, those rocks can cause pain and injury, so it's best to dive at an angle that is going to resurface you quickly with downstream momentum.

SOLUTION
The best way to riverboard a waterfall is to ride the line of most force up and over, then dive your entry into the water at the last second. If there's a boof rock you can also use that, although it takes some practice to get the timing down with using your board to boof rather than your thighs! =)

As more riverboarders are tackling steeper drops though there are certainly nuances and little skills that will enable the successful ones to make it look easy. One of those subtleties is knowing when to go under and when to go over...