Game On

I looked down from the highway bridge into the churning brown mass of water below and realised I didn't recognise most of the Willow Canyon from the end of last season. It looked enticing, exciting and at the same time unnerving.

My first glimpse of proper whitewater had been the same Willow Canyon on the second day of my kayak course last year, at that time it had seemed really intimidating and I'd been surprised to find out it was only graded III (intermediate) when the river was pretty high. Like now. Strangely the water levels then would have been lower than now. I guess perspectives change as you progress in a sport.

We'd decided to take one vehicle so there would be no shuttle run, we'd walk up the canyon from the main road, put in at the top, and run back down. Which was a nice idea until I stepped off the road into snow over my knees. The whole trail was still buried except for the odd patch of Moose poop. By the time we made the put in about half an hour later the five of us were sweating in our dry gear, thermals, hoods etc. At least I wouldn't feel like chickening out of paddling... the walk back was too hard.

For some reason a burst of overconfidence had made me decide to take the little Jackson All Star I got at the end of last season with me, instead of my bigger Dagger RX. It proved to be a wise decision though as the kayak seemed to have no issues at all in the early rapids, and once we started messing about on waves it came into it's own. Sadly I am just not able to keep up with it, yet :)

We headed slowly down to Diamond Wave, which at the current levels - about a plus 1 on the river gauge - is a prime surf wave. It has a nice eddy too, last season the wave was pretty naff at low levels and the eddy made it super difficult to get on. The five of us sat in the eddy and took turns at trying to surf, with varying degrees of success. Matt and Al, the two experienced kayakers in the group, made the whole thing look easy and they were front surfing, back surfing, and spinning. Ty is a pretty experienced boater but was paddling a boat much too long for surfing. Devin and I got into kayaking last year, Dev is a pretty confident surfer whereas about the only thing I managed to surf on last year was a small bump. Despite that with my second attempt I tried to be a little more confident paddling out and was rewarded with a nice, established front surf. The boat bounced around a little and started to turn sideways but I braced on the foam pile and was pretty surprised at how the boat seemed to want to stay on the wave. It actually took me a short while to realise I'd have to surf off the wave as I wasn't going to flush out.

After a bit of whooping and general over-the-top celebration, it was back to normal and I'd either miss the wave completely, or (more usually) pansy about on the eddyline and capsize. But it was nice to finally get to surf a decent wave! Ty had my camera and videoed a few attempts, so I blame the attendant press for my poor overall performance.

We spent a short while at Surf City after that but the wave was much harder to get on, and Devin had a capsize, couldn't roll, and had to swim. We were all a little concerned as missing the next eddy would mean he'd end up swimming over Freak My Beak, but he more or less rescued himself, just leaving Matt to grab his kayak.

After Dev sorted himself it was time to run the Beak and the section under the highway bridge. I felt a bit of a buzz start and tried to prepare myself, but I was definitely pretty nervous. Added to that I was slightly dazed from having cold water rammed into my ears... note to self, try not to flip over in what is essentially freshly melted snow. Matt gave a little safety talk and then Al went down, followed by Matt. Devin and I followed Matt and Ty brought up the rear. Oddly I found that the section right before the drop was hardest - very boily, with strange eddies making the boat very unstable. I tried to lean forward as much as possible, and I managed to stay upright and dropped over the Beak. The fast moving water pushed me straight past the eddy I wanted to pull into, I turned in too late, got pushed into a rock at the end and flipped over.

I rolled back up and turned to see House Rock, right in the centre of the river, looming over me. There was a big 'cushion' of water pushing up against it, the easy route around was left but I wouldn't make it. So I paddled hard right, caught the current around the rock and was swept out down the right channel. I came out the other side laughing and saw the look of relief on the faces of the other guys. I'm fairly sure they were surprised I was still in the boat :)

From there it was easy stuff to the take out, Devin and I tried a few simple tricks whilst the others got out. The slog through the snow back to the truck was hard going... not as hard as the walk in but I was tired from the paddling. Al had volunteered to host a barbeque at his place so after a shower and change I found myself standing around a decent fire in 160 acres of countryside watching a beautiful sunset through the trees. Al is a doctor, a job that evidently pays fairly well if his backyard is anything to go by. At the end of the evening Aurora Borealis performed it's shimmering, ethereal dance for us against the dark northern sky.

Not a bad day, all in all :)

Frase.

Some video of Diamond Wave HERE. I am the one generally seen NOT surfing ;)