<strong>The</strong>PADDLER 124 Google 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! <strong>The</strong> 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. <strong>The</strong>y 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. <strong>The</strong> free meals were very good, heavy on meat and satisfying after a cold day on the river.
centimetre short of the level where they cancel the race (193), this was not going to be a pool-drop year on the well-known Wellerbrucke section. <strong>The</strong>PADDLER 125
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