So here we are in the South. It is wicked Humid, and Hot. I guess that is to be expected as we are closer to the equator, and this is one of the greenest places I have ever been. Now to the Course, it is large. flat out, I think the figure is that it drops something in the area of 30ish feet(talk to Joel McCune with arguements) in the distance of 400 feet for the Comp channel, and the other channels are about 700 to 800 feet long. It literally feels like I am paddling in a Ski resort, there are warm up pools at the top, and the bottom, there are different runs a Green Circle (Wilderness), a Blue Square (Big Water), and a Black Diamond (Competition), ooooh. They aren't too difficult, merely a new pattern. The eddies are fun, and fast, and a few of them are deep providing about 4 areas for fully vertical pivots with out fearing the snapping of a stern. The Competition channel where we spend most of the time (because we are hard core) is a mixture of flowing intricate currents with fast, and slow eddies. The interesting thing about the course is simply how diverse the features are, the top of the Competition Channel is a fast little chute into a wall, and there is a really fun left eddy after a 8 foot tall board, but it is hard to exit that eddy with speed for a ferry to the up right. The next section of the course is a series of triangulated waves that all throw left into the wall, I have flipped here a few times being a righty C1... and then into the first of the two larger drops, this one is fun, it is an 8 foot slide into a huge pool with fairly fast eddies, and weird little hole things in the middle of the pond. the next section is really fun and flowy with fast crisp eddies on both sides, the problem is that they aren't staggered, they are merely one left one right, and just a series of steps. but they are fun regardless. after this comes the "Room Of Death" or something of that nature, it's a sketchy up right that is about as wide as a 2 liter Coke bottle. and surges so sometimes it's there, and sometimes it's not, and all of the current feeds away from it. then it is the Big Drop... OOOOH. it is a 8 foot slide into a large hole, the left eddy is awesome, the right eddy is scary, but it's all good, because you go down, more than likely get flipped by something that came from way out of your periphery, and smalled into the wall. After you get up, there is a huge current differential that is really boily, and doesn't really have any real line that you have to try to break out of, and not get slammed into the other rocks at the end of the eddy... then you get to paddle down the remaining 3 foot droppy-slide thing into the bottom pool. all the while being bombarded by rafts, I got stuck between a ballard, and a raft for about 2 seconds where I was trying to figure out what to do, because I was unable to roll up, and unable to move until they were off of my boat. for the most part, the rafts are like big potatoes floating down the course with no control, and going where-ever they feel like. I hope all is well out West, where the flowers reign free, and the air isn't battling with smog or water molecules, and there are mountains...
cheers
-isaac |
