Ninety-four million gallons of water recirculate through the concrete channels with up to a quarter of an inch of depth lost to evaporation each day.
The PLAY PARK MIRAGE
While Nouria Newman was making rounds of the Wadi’s three whitewater runs, Ciarán Heurteau, a seasoned slalom kayaker, was taking a break from the scene. Heurteau made the trip to Dubai
with two teammates and a coach as part of the first group of kayakers to pass between the slalom gates after Wadi’s grand opening in 2012. He left feeling unsettled and uneager to return. It’s no secret that the UAE was built
on an oil regime and hosts some of the wealthiest business tycoons in the Middle East. Al Ain itself was home to the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan, the first president of the UAE. The nearby Rub’ al-Khali, a desert roughly the size of France, is home to the world’s largest oilfield, the Al-Ghawār. When Heurteau’s not paddling, he
lives in a small village in Northern Ireland where he avoids using plastic bags and is conscious of the compost that comes from his morning breakfast. For him, this artificial river was too far from the green lifestyle he leads. “The amount of money that’s just
wasted, it blows you away,” he says. “It’s easy to go there to train and just not look at the whole other side of it.” The crystal blue waters of Wadi’s 1,100 meters of faux river are sourced from municipal lines that pump and desalinate water from the coast in Abu Dhabi, about 100 miles west of Al Ain.
38 | RAPID Ninety-four million gallons of
water recirculate through the concrete channels with up to a quarter of an inch of depth lost to evaporation each day. Five vertical pumps run for about 12 hours at a time to keep the water flowing, says Coffey, and two conveyer belts transport paddlers from the bottom of each course to the pond at the top. For Heurteau, the illusion of
a pristine desert oasis was more unsettling than magical, more manufactured fantasy than reality. “I reckon more and more this is where people will head for training. There are no more races on natural rivers any more so it makes sense to train in places like this.” The line goes quiet for a few seconds. “It’s a very different feeling paddling
on artificial courses,” he says. “You can see the shift in people’s thinking.”
The BLISSFUL DESERT VOID
Under the black desert sky with the course floodlights turned off and only the sound of running water ringing in his ears, Vávra Hradilek finally found the desert space he’d been seeking. In the pitch black of the night with
only a photographer following him from land on an otherwise empty river, the Czech paddler got in his kayak and began running the course. “I could only hear the water without any vision, so from memory I just went through the strokes,” he says. “It was amazing.”
For Hradilek it was a moment
of pure kayak bliss. During the day, intervals of 25 paddlers at a time would take turns running the slalom course, watching in front and behind them to avoid a collision. Along with other European paddlers, he and his 34 Czech teammates stayed in a massive block of chalets beside the river and fired up the barbecues to cook their meals together. Hradilek was even more crowded than most with a film crew following him around for a week tracking his training and off time for a short film. “I think summer camp is the right
word. It’s all the paddlers in Europe in one place hanging out,” he says. “I’ve been in the circuit for a long time so I know most of the paddlers who come out on race days but here there were so many new people.” The course offered night sessions
to anyone interested in taking on the whitewater away from the beaming sun. For the slalom vet these spacious hours were the highlight of his month- long intensive, his escape from the claustrophobia of a packed whitewater course. Surrounded by the vast sprawling sands of the Rub’ al-Khali—a desert dubbed the Empty Quarter—all it took was for the lights to go out for him to experience bliss in the desert void. • Katrina Pyne is a freelance journalist whose mind is constantly drifting from her desk job to quiet untouched rivers and chaotic whitewater parks. At heart, she’s still a wilderness guide.
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