The Paddler Autumn/Fall issue 2017

Very nervous
Grades are hard for paddlers to agree on, but
think mostly G3/4, with a G5 section (TNT) and
some big, technical but relatively consequencefree
G4 (Minus One and Champions). It was big
enough to make most there to feel very nervous
but went nowhere near some of the deranged
things we’d read about it and we were seeing it
at one of the highest levels the Sickline has been
run on. At peak snow melt in summer, the
glacier-fed run must be monstrous.
We watched as the world’s best paddlers did
laps, and the nervous, those who’d come to this
arena and found themselves wanting, wandered
pale-faced, palms sweating, bile rising in the
throat. We saw one woman take Minus One on
the right, to find herself with her boat snatched
away from underneath her as though sucked to
the centre of the earth. It reappeared a full five
seconds later. It was hardly confidence-inspiring,
but most seemed to be getting through it alive.
As a mediocre playboater and occasional riverrunner
I found the qualification course (Minus
One, Champions Exit Slot and a couple of
hundred metres of the G3 slalom course
below), a good, fun challenge, failing every time
to hit a great line and flipping in half my runs, but
not taking any beatings.
After seeing more than a few paddlers swim
from their boats while safely out of the feature
and even one slapper (one who slaps the
surface with the blade before rolling up –
beginners’ stuff), I have a new theory about
whitewater paddlers in general, and it is this:
slalom paddlers and river runners/creekers don’t
always capsize enough to have bulletproof rolls.
The former category are busy perfecting their
speed and turns on easier water, while the latter,
in very challenging water, must avoid situations
that will make them swim.
Plan ‘A’ and Plan ‘B’ paddlers
Of course, the good paddlers in any discipline will
have their roll well sorted, but at an amateur level,
slalomists and creekers are ‘Plan A’ paddlers, who
read the river well and take a good line but are
simply too unaccustomed to being upside down
to be comfortable rolling in all conditions, every
time. Playboaters and surf kayakers, even
mediocre ones, spend half their time on the water
upside down, and their rolls become developed
beyond the level of the rest of their paddling.
These paddlers might be less adept at getting
down a river or seeing the best line, but they are
great ‘Plan B’ people; when the shit hits the fan, the
playboater will roll up, somehow.
The drill for the qualies is to line your boats up
in bib order, then to take them down some
steep steps to the launching platform, the feeling
of nerves quite palpable as you wait for your
turn. You hear a race coordinator say into his
mic, “40 on the course, 41 in the eddy” then he
says, “you’re good” and it’s on.
It’s an easy ferry to river left, then almost
immediately Minus One, a short, turbulent
stopper where you fight to stay left so you don’t
get pushed into the rocks just under the surface
on right, where many paddlers took a submerged
thumping before rolling up or swimming, then into
Champions’, where you hope you boof properly,
or you can get endered out vertically (most
likely), back looped or worked in the hole. One
thing to bear in mind, when you watch Sickline on
YouTube is that the boof on Champions is harder
than it looks! The paddlers keeping their boats
perfectly flat are likely the best paddlers in the
world, and even they occasionally got it wrong.
Having said that, we didn’t see anyone take a real
beating in there. After that it’s left through the
awkward, boily, narrow exit slot (again, trickier
than it looks) then 200m or so of read-and-run
G3 to the takeout.
ThePADDLER 127