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| Surfing Tandem Kayak |
The past two weekends have been full of pretty good weather and pretty good whitewater (for early autumn). Sept 21-22 was the final recreational release at the Wausau Whitewater course a few hours north of Madison. Wausau has over a dozen features (i.e. play waves, holes, etc) that were constructed in a diversion channel just off the Wisconsin River. It was designed with slalom in mind, and while they do host plenty of slalom training and a few races every year, the recreational releases have to attract the largest number of kayakers (who want to playboat) out of all of their events. There were hundreds of boaters at Wausau for the final release and that was even after GauleyFest had pulled a bunch of the regulars away. Who woulda thunk so many whitewater boaters exist in the upper midwest?
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| Surfing (Pic stolen from a fellow Hoofer) |
I've been hoping to get over to Wausau for a few years now, and since my roll is finally where I want it to be, I decided I was ready. (The main problem with a place like Wausau is that if you swim, you tend to swim the entire course. While it's a really safe place to swim - lots of fellow boaters, super-clean drops, easy road access - it's not very fun knocking 15 people off of their waves on the way down. Anyhow, after a few warm-up rolls, I pulled into the current, and spent the next several hours failing to get into waves very well. When I shied away, the waves pushed me downstream, and when I went charging in, I got pushed out by the hole in short order. Not that it's much of a surprise, but I am a really shoddy surfer. I hope to work on that next season.
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| Big Drop |
Though the morning was brisk, the sun came out around lunch time, and everybody got much more comfy. We ran a few laps down the length of the course, and while that was spectacularly fun, I got dehydrated and tired pretty quickly. Next time I'm up there, I'm definitely going to play the eddies around Big Drop (super, super fun) and Little Drop (super, super good for loops and flipping people) more.
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| Misicot Falls |
This past weekend, Ali and I went up with the Hoofers to Piers Gorge on the Menominee River and the Red River near Gresham, WI. There were enough people (25!), that we ended up splitting into two groups. The beginner boaters checked out Quiver Falls on the Menominee the first day and the Red on the second. Advanced boaters got their pick between Piers Gorge on one day or Wolf IV on the other.
I went up to Piers Gorge last year; it's another park-and-huck section with three rapids within a half mile of river: Misicot Falls, the Two Sisters, and Terminal Surfer. In the past, I've avoided Misicot. The 6-10' drop itself is rowdy-looking, but not really that tough. Just downstream of the drop, the current pushes straight into a nasty, undercut boulder named Volkswagon. If you flip at the hole in the bottom of the falls, you have one chance to roll and then you're going to slam into the rock. If you're too slow getting into an eddy, you're going to slam into the rock. This trip up, I was determined that I would not slam into the rock.
We put on pretty late, thanks to some typical hoofer logistics, and I followed one of the better paddlers down to the lip of the rapid. The notch we had to hit was pretty easy to find, but I was so focused on avoiding the rock downstream, I let myself get spun around before hitting the big hole below the drop. I paddled into it pointy-end first (and backwards), surfed out of it, got my bearings, and eddied out on river right before the rock. Though the ideal line was to catch the eddy on river left, I was still pretty pleased with my run.
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| Monastery on the Red (Pic from another Hoofer) |
Unfortunately, I had zero focus just past Volkswagon and got to practice my roll. From there, the meaty line of the Two Sisters was great, and Terminal Surfer was easily avoided.
We ran the "gorge" two more times. I skipped Misicot the remaining few times to save on the hike, and I had a prime seat for a bit of not-as-bad-as-it-could-have-been Volkswagon carnage. The water levels were rising for (I assume) peak electricity production as the afternoon progressed toward evening. Volkswagon got padded out, but the Second Sister (which I was having a blast charging through) certainly got stickier.
A bunch of rain moved in just as we headed back to camp, and though we got back at dusk, the other group was MIA, and they had the bulk of our food. We chopped some stuff and boiled some water, and an hour later, the other group arrived. We all gorged ourselves on tons of pasta, birthday cake, and anything else lying around unclaimed, and right when dinner was done, the rain tapered off. We hung out by the fire for a few hours, and a couple of brave souls shuffled the boats and gear for the next day.
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| Didn't have to do too much of this. (Pic from another Hoofer) |
Sunday, we got on the river late (again), but we divided into groups of 4-5 to speed things up on the river. Turns out, that's an awesome way to get downstream. The people who wanted to play got a bit of play, and the people who don't like surfing didn't have to sit in an eddy for hours. This set-up also helped us get people (like me) leading. Ali and I were in safety-boating/leading for our group, and it was a ton of fun.
Though the dam started releasing more water right when we pulled up, flow was still on the low side. That did make the rapids more approachable for our novice boaters, but somebody with a chainsaw needs to get out and clean up some of the strainers. First drop was simple, if sticky for surfing. Second drop was practically non-existant; and Double drop became a really forgiving surf. The two big rapids of the day, Monastery and Ziemers, were pretty friendly too.
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| Ali on Monastery (Pic from another Hoofer) |
Ali got to go down the entirety of Monastery for the first time, and she even got some surfs and (intentional) combat roll practice at the bottom. Up to this point, nobody in our group had swum, and the one person who flipped got righted from an eskimo rescue in no time. Ziemers always has a few swimmers though, and this trip was no different. The last beginner of my group to head downstream broached on a rock and leaned the wrong way early in the rapid. We got her safely into an eddy just before the last chute, even if the rescue was a little overzealous on my part. There was one more swim for us downstream, complements of a narrow chute and an overhanging branch. Even with those swims, everybody had a safe, fun, and quick end to the weekend.
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