Currents
RIVER FAUX
Can you imagine what it would cost to build a river? This ques- tion was floated by environmentalist Mark Hume when I inter- viewed him for Rapid magazine over 10 years ago. A river con- servationist and writer, Hume used this question to argue that rivers are precious, valuable and perhaps completely impossible to replicate. I agree, but that hasn’t kept people from trying. Man has been messing with rivers since the beginning of
time—damming, channelizing and diverting. Whitewater pad- dling plays its part here, too. Early slalom courses modified natural streams, then the Augs-
burg Olympic course in 1972 was the first to be completely manu- factured from concrete. Many more slalom courses and playspots have been built or modified over the years, but all of this pales in comparison to Walt Disney World. Walt Disney doesn’t do anything halfway. In the mid ‘90s,
Disney approached Intamin, a major Swiss amusement ride man- ufacturer that had been making water rides since 1979, with a challenge: Make us a river. This was not to be another bumper- boat-type ride. Disney wanted to simulate an Asian rainforest whitewater river and provide the closest experience to whitewater rafting short of actually going rafting. The resulting feature is impressive. Aboard a 12-person, round and guideless raft, you descend 30 feet in five minutes, bouncing
28 CURRENTS ||Annual 2014
EVEN WALT DISNEY CAN’T BEAT MOTHER NATURE AT HER OWN GAME
through continuous class II and III, ending with one major drop. The ride also has Disney’s typically immaculate attention to detail in the surroundings. As I’m waiting in the long line (which is also typically Disney)
for my turn on the ride, I think of all of the manufactured rivers I’ve paddled. Except for small, modified play features, any concrete river has
felt pretty foreign—the water does not behave as it does in natural rivers. As we board the solid raft and secure our seatbelts—no PFDs in sight—we are assured by the grinning loading attendant that we are going to get wet. We gain elevation up a long rollercoaster-style escalator ramp
and, at the top, are dumped into the water. It looks like a real river. It sounds like a real river. If it wasn’t for the little boy across from me with mouse ears, it’d feel like a real river. We pick up speed with the current and round a bend into man-
ufactured mist, the roar of rapids ahead. It reminds me of October mornings on the Jacques Cartier River in Quebec. The river twists and turns with complex rapids—holes and off-
set waves—this would be really fun to paddle. Our boat occasion- ally bumps the side of the 25-foot wide channel, but mostly stays in the middle. We sweep around a bend to see an unmistakable horizon line. I’m genuinely surprised to feel the familiar butter-
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