R I V E R A L C H E M Y BayLee 1 The Ultimate River Runner— NEW! from Feathercraft
➔ Two Air Chambers ➔ Lightweight and Compact for Packrafting ➔ 3 kg (6.5lb) 60 x 25 x 20cm (24 x 10 x 8") ➔ Made in Canada
www.feathercraft.com 888.681.8437
Baylee_1-4pg_ad-approvedRapid.indd 1
28/01/10 12:58 PM
THE AMAZING RACE DOWNRIVER’S 50-YEAR COMEBACK STORY
FOR THE PAST COUPLE OF YEARS I’ve told anyone who will listen—and many who won’t—that racing is the next big thing in whitewater. There’s some irony in this. In a coming-full-circle kind of way, racing is where whitewater paddling started. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about the Kevlar, gates and Lycra shorts
of the World Cup slalom genre. I’m talking about recreational racing, river run- ning. Jump in whatever you paddle, start at the top and get to the bottom as fast as you can. In North America, this has been going on since the 1940s. In The River Chasers (Sigel Press, 2001), Susan Taft chronicles the history of whitewater paddling and the development of river running. The earliest North American river running focused on exploration. The 1930s saw descents of most of the great rivers, including the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Follow- ing these conquests, attention quickly turned from exploration to competition. For the next 50 years, from the Appalachian Mountain Club’s first downriver race in 1940 right up to the whitewater kayaking boom of the 1990s, racing was the epoxy that held the sport together. The granddad of these competitions is Salida, Colorado’s FIBArk downriver
race on the Arkansas, run continuously since 1949. In the 1950s, light-years advanced European racers were paid $300 each by race organizers to come to Salida and kick butt. They brought boats, river running skill and fitness as yet unseen. Roger Paris, Walter Kirschbaum and Erich Seidel—all European champi- ons—upped North American paddling to a whole new level. Legends such as Milo Duffek made extended stays and taught clinics. Paddlers from across
22 Rapid summer/fall 2010
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48