The Paddler Autumn/Fall issue 2017

ThePADDLER 124
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Meanwhile, your nearest and dearest will have a
Google of what you’re going to be up to for a
week in October. Technically difficult – and
DANGEROUS! Every little mistake has
CONSEQUENCES! The Eiger North Wall of
kayaking! Grade SIX! It’s the sort of hyperbole
that’s pretty much required by a major event
these days, but you try explaining this and she
(statistically it will be a ‘she’) won’t believe you.
Of course, any event is going to make a strong
case for itself, particularly to the non-paddling
public (the Sickline gets considerable air time on
TV around the world), so it’s understandable.
And, as Olaf Obsommer, event founder, points
out, grade 5-6 is the guidebook description for
this section, and it wouldn’t be much fun if the
organisers claimed five and the insurers found
mention of six.
Gross exaggeration
I heard paddlers refer to it rather differently:
“two boofs and a load of flat” and “grade 4+ at
most.” Seeing a group of paddlers tackle it in
playboats on YouTube and watching the 2016
low-water videos, along with the fact that
paddlers are prone to gross exaggeration, was
enough to satisfy me that the truth would lie
somewhere between the two extremes, and
four of us (Mike, Tom, me, with Rob coming
along for the ride – all playboaters) decided to
find out what it was all about.
My ambitions were not high: running the qualies
and enjoying a week in Austria were as far as it
went. My training for the event even consisted of
a single session in my brand-new creek boat,
Pyranha’s forgiving Machno, on the Lee Valley
Olympic Course. It is clearly a great boat; loads
of rocker and volume to keep you on top of
things, comfortable with straightforward,
effective outfitting, and just enough rail on the
chine to break in and out. You can pretty much
drift down the Olympic course in it if you like –
it’s that forgiving. Best of all, it weighs in at under
22kg, as I found out at the Sickline boat-weighing
station, which resembles a sex swing for kayaks.
Mike, sponsored by Jackson, had one go in a
borrowed Jackson Nirvana, pronounced it a
good’un and got straight back in his playboat.
Tom didn’t try out his (26kg!) Dagger Mamba,
borrowed from his dad, at all.
As the four of us – Mike, Tom, Rob and me – drove
through France, Belgium, Luxembourg and
Germany en route to our final destination, the
Tyrolean village of Oetz in the Austrian Alps, the
texts started pinging in from those already there.
They spoke of heaving levels and multiple swims.
With the gauge reading between 185 and 192, just
a centimetre short of the level where they cancel
the race (193), this was not going to be a pooldrop
year on the well-known Wellerbrucke section.
With the gauge reading between 185 and 192, just a
I wasn’t alone, when first having a look from the
crowded bank, to feel a little queasy at the
thought of running it. A 20ft-high ramp leads into
an easy section called Mandatory Left, which is
followed by a flat pool before the course’s crux –
the TNT Cataract. This leads into the two bestknown
features on the course: Champions’ Killer
Minus One, a surging, bouncy hole, and
Champions’ Killer, a 10ft-high angled drop into flat
water, quickly followed by a narrow, boily passage
between the left wall of the gorge and a huge
mid-river boulder, known as Exit Slot. After that
it’s a sprint to the finish line down a rock-strewn
section that marks the start of the slalom course.
The free meals were very
good, heavy on meat and
satisfying after a cold day
on the river.