The Colorado Kayak Chronicle aka CKS Squad Blog: A place for CKS’s Staff and Team Paddlers to share trip reports, gear reviews, photo postings and insights into anything and everything paddling. The goal of this blog is to bring you a variety of perspectives and interests from around the world, to share inspiring photos, videos and stories and most importantly, to help you get excited for your next day on the river!
From May 15th - June 15th, the Gueras de CKS are competing in the Eddyflower Vertical Challenge. Foremost, the Vertical Challenge is a fundraiser for First Descents, which is a kayaking camp for young adults with cancer. During 32 days the event encourages teams of 5 to log the most vertical feet on the river while trying to raise money for First Descents.
I encourage you to check out more at http://eddyflower.com/EventDetail.aspx?EventId=54.
If you have a spare dollar or so, you should donate. If you have a spare $20, you should donate even more. We might be lagging in vertical feet at the moment, but the Gueras de CKS and First Descents would love your support!
Starting on the first day of the competition, some friends and I put-in on a 3-day overnighter on the Middle Feather in California. Never hearing much of this run, but not feeling like waiting for other rivers to drop in to acceptable level, we decided to pack up the boats and go camping. Covering 30 miles, 3 canyons, and over 100 rapids, the Middle Feather ended up being well worth it. With beautiful scenery and quality whitewater, I would recommend this run to anyone and in the first 3 days of this competition I posted 1/4 of my total vertical feet.
Beautiful California scenery on the first day.
Dave Fusilli running the 1st of 100 significant rapids.
Counting each rapid to gauge our progression on the river, we realized that our idea of rapids we slightly different than someone else's because already on day #2 we were on rapid 117.
Dave paddling towards the sieve... right on line
Our first camp spot
Second day scenery - the river is starting to run through one of the three gorges
Jared Seiler avoiding a stout hole
Dave
Scouting the stout rapid of sieves, holes, caves, and other bad spots that we all portaged.
J Dog near the end of Devil's Canyon
Anna charging yet another stout hole.
We thought we were out of the canyon and the river was over. But, apparently not.
Now I am back in Colorado, which is awesome, except lots of playboating does not really help increase vertical feet. So, after an afternoon of looping and windowshading in the Salida hole, I convinced Jared and Dave to run my shuttle, so I could speeder and atleast acquire a couple of feet for the day.
I woke up early, knowing that I was going to run some big stuff. The anticipation of the day is enough to make one not sleep. While still laying in bed, I called Nic to make sure that he and Rush were coming. I then called Anson, who owns motion forge, a production company out of the valley. Check some of their other videos out here-Motion Forge He wanted to come film with his super fancy red camera. I met up with Anson, and scouted. It was a medium-high level, great for ball check and wall check. However, not the ideal level for Oriental Massage. Oriental was it's usual self, although all the water at the bottom was pushing into the ledge just to the left of the last drop. This not only made getting pushed into the ledge an issue, but also formed a very strong eddy on river left just below oriental. Despite this It still goes you just have to be on it. Nic, Rush, Brian, Sam, Bradley, and Jacob rolled in fashionably late in true kayaker style. They Scouted, and decided it looked good to go. We geared up, and hiked to the put-in.
As Sam pointed out on our hike up in true kiwi fashion "fuck mate its crazy we feel so good doing this shit when we could just sit at home and drink beer". Which in my mind translates to the fact that we feel so alive when we are dropping into something that could end our lives. This feeling that we feel when we are about to drop in is one of the best feelings in the world. That feeling when you are uncertain about what will happen. This is what drives me. I search for this feeling. It is certainly one of the reasons I kayak, I have never felt it as strongly in any other sport.
We dropped into the upper drops. At this level, the upper drops have some very sticky holes, so be forewarned, hit your boof.
Gearing up.
Rush checkin out Wall Check.
We decided we needed to space out due to the fact that there are very few eddies in the upper section. Brian and I dropped in quite a bit later than the rest. On one of the first rapids, I did a half-ass boof, and got surfed in a small hole, however was able to get out easily. Little did I Know that just down stream, shit had hit the fan. New Zealander Sam Sutton out there gettin er done on one of the upper drops. Rush Sturges on a fun upper slide.
Jacob on one of the upper drops.
Then it went down. Nic missed his boof and got very beatdown in a gnarly hole in a double drop. It was a serious swim, a lot of body recirculation, and not much time to get air. Just after he pulled his skirt. After being body circed for a while... he grabbed the railroad rail in the drop. Rush utilizing his excellent rope skills, getting nic out before a bouncy slide that would have hurt. A very telling facial expression of the experience. When Brian and I rolled through Nic was safe on the bank, and we proceeded to chase his boat down. We were unable to rescue it before it ran the first couple big drops, wall check, but it pinned just above oriental massage, and was only a little bit dented.
We then arrived at the big drops.
Sam Sutton ran first, this guy is not afraid to run anything first. Rush on ball check.(we all ran the far right line) Rush entering wall check. Another crazy kiwi, Bradley entering wall check. Bradley hitting the wall, creating what made a cool photo, lots of froth. The far right line is really good, it set me up perfectly for wall check. Entering wall Check. I had a really fun line, getting the classic wall ride. Brian Kirk entering wall check. We then got to the Big boy. We scouted, and as always it looked out of control, but good.
Here is a perspective of it that shows just how long and tall this beast really is.
Sam gave er first as usual, this guy is crazy. Immersed in speed and frothy white brine. Sam on the last drop cleaning it up. Rush entering Oriental. Rush got pushed onto the rock shelf at the bottom of oriental, where I would later have some carnage.
Here is Bradley about to run the last drop, if you look closely, you can see rush running it backwards down river left channel.
Jacob had a sick line, cleaning it up nicely, i guess that is what they do in czech.
Brian "brine" Kirk entering the huge frothing stout. Brian had a similar line to rush, drying out on the rocks, then getting pushed down backwards.
I entered in a good place, and had a great line down oriental.
I landed a bit on my edge.. and was rolling up until i was pushed into the same ledge that rush and brian had dried out on. It flipped me, and...
I went off the last drop upside down.
But I pulled a roll out of my ass mid-waterfall.
I hit the big flake upright, and stoked to be upright, because it would have been bad had i not been. I landed flat off the waterfall, and was stoked to be upright and not injured.
Me, Rush, Brian and Bradley discussing exactly what just went down.
I was thankful to the river gods to let me pass safely on another day of shit running.
We paddled down.
At the takeout.
Here is a little helmet cam footage. sorry about the bad quality, I exported it wrong.
Since I moved to Steamboat I always wondered what Cross Mountain would be like at high water.This year I went to find out and the answer is awesome!
The Put-in.Photo Dan Piano
Mike Geary taking a look at the Oesterizer.Photo: Adam Mayo
After paddling in on a huge lake of water we came to the massive horizon line above the Oesterizer. We all portaged. There looks to a possible line down the center left but it’s a total crap shoot. Legend has it that Jared Johnson ran it in a play boat at 7gs.
