This River Life: NorthWest Creeking Comp

The Peanut gallery at the the starting line

This past Saturday marked the first NW Creeking Competition in its new incarnation. Past years have seen low turnouts and lower water levels for the Canyon Creek Extreme Race but the combination of new ‘management’ and a significantly earlier race date was a grand success.

Joe Stumpfel, I and 80 some-odd of our closest paddling friends, came out in force on April 12th 2008. As some of you may have heard from me before, Canyon Creek levels are measured against the ‘unit’ (he). Its runnable very low and very high but flows within 4 or 5 inches of the unit are pretty standard happy flows. Past years flows have been more like 12 inches under. This year lots of racers we caught by surprise with the higher flows and found themselves rodeo-ing when they should be racing.

Luke S, the guy who made it all happen

You may also notice the Ol’ Joseph was in a K1 instead of a C1… I don’t get it either.

I volunteered as a starter right between Prelude and Thrasher. Prelude is one of the sticker spots on the river and I and the other starters watched or rescued 10 or so swimmers all while watching from above as another smaller handful of paddles swam out of the first drop as well! I heard personally from about 5 people who swam on their morning practice runs!

Richard hitting the boof at Thrasher

Well we couldn’t have asked for a better day and the even turn out exceeded anyone’s expectations. A big thanks to Luke Spencer of Next Adventure for making the whole thing come alive, to Shannon Crosswhite for doing a great job as volunteer coordinator and to all the racers, volunteers and spectators who came out to hang and made the day what it was.

Results are posted at Paddler Magazine

Don’t read to much into my place! 1: it was my first race and I didn’t want to blow my wad 2: since I was a starter, I ended up coming down after the R2s which was well after they were expecting any kayakers SO, I think my time was a little bit made up. No worries though, it was just a good day on the river with friends, in the sun, with great water. Pretty ok in my book! I’ll take the whole thing next year.