A New Kayaker Goes Pro: Surprise Carnage and Sketchy Sam's Stunt

Carnage: n. Anyone getting forced out of his or her boat due to an error in judgment and/or the sheer power of the water.

This was my first day on the shorter Upper New section. (The 14-mile section, Prince to Thurmond, is used when the water is high. We switch to the Thurmond to Cunard section, a mere 5 miles, when the water drops below about 4500 CFS.) I got to paddle with Sam, learn a whole new set of rapids, shoot my first Jump rock segment, and carry my boat up a lot of steps.

Paddling with Sam was not intentional. We were going to do the Prince to Thurmond section, but the river manager vetoed that decision. That left us putting in at Thurmond, where the overnight Sam was working also needed to put in -- and their departure time was only 5 minutes after ours. We spent the whole day rushing ahead of them and having them catch up when we slowed down, sort of like an inchworm with inflatable kayaks for feet. It was a bit confusing, but our customers knew who their guides were and thus managed to keep themselves with the right group.

Sam and I met up at Thurmond Ripple, and again at lunch and Jump Rock. It was fun actually having another kayaker to talk to, especially since we were both video boating.

Jump Rock was disappointing, because we only had 4 or 5 people jump. Everyone else was too scared, despite the fact that it's lower than a high dive, it has a very safe landing area, and you don't go in very deep because you are wearing a life jacket. I'm gonna have to get myself that rubber chicken to taunt the scaredy cats with . . .

After Jump Rock, the next significant rapid is Surprise. It's the biggest one on the section, a III+ whose plus comes from the serious hydraulic known as Surprise Hole. It's also not a classic big-water III; the right bank is a maze of rocks and ledges more like what I'd expect on a lower-volume river. There's a very nice eddy in the middle of the right side, and that's where video boaters hop out to shoot. There's also a projecting rock that's perfectly level with Surprise Hole and therefore the best shooting rock I've seen yet.

Of course, this eddy and rock do you no good if you can't get there, and I almost didn't. I followed Sam down, but the route he took wasn't the best for me, thanks to the fact that he was in a playboat and I was in a longer, faster creeker (in addition to not being as strong a paddler as he is).

The end result was that instead of hitting the eddy high like you're supposed to or in the middle like Sam did, I turned late, couldn't cross the eddy line fast enough, and got sucked backward down the edge of the eddy almost to the point where it poured over a ledge. Fortunately, I caught a one-boat eddy behind a small rock and ferried from there into the bottom of the main eddy. Sam said, "Nice ferry!" I replied, "The Ferry of Sheer Terror: Stronger than the usual ferry!"

After that, we waited a bit for my group -- shooting intros, chatting, figuring out the best place on the rock to shoot from, stuff like that. I knew my group would be coming down the left lane (a current wide enough for rafts that misses the action entirely), but I had to hope that some of them would edge a little to the right . . . because just a little to the right is Surprise Hole itself.

Sure enough, about a quarter of the group hit the hole. I was amazed to see a couple of duckies go through it upright . . . but then one went over. And another. And then a girl dropped into the hole at a weird angle and got seriously surfed.

It looked about like this: She went in with her boat turned slightly to the right, perhaps as a result of catching the corner of the hole and getting turned by the current as she dropped. The hydraulic grabbed her ducky and held it upright in the trough of the hole. I could see her, paddle gone, braced against the sides of the boat, staring at me in absolute terror. This lasted maybe two or three seconds before the hydraulic grabbed the side of the boat and dumped her out.

She flushed out quickly (as more duckies flipped around her; I think there were at least 4 or 5 swimmers), but her boat stayed in the hole. It sat there, bouncing and turning on the curl of the wave, for at least 30 seconds before it lined up with the downstream current and slid far enough down the wave for the wash to grab it and pull it off.

I have video of the whole thing, but I don't think I can post it online because of copyright stuff. Oh well. I'm burning myself a copy of that one . . .

Compared to that, my exit from Surprise (down a chute between boulders that was just wide enough for my boat) wasn't anything big. Sam's group did worse (or better, from our viewpoint); he said they had more people out of boats than in them by the time everyone went through. He had also shot video of my group, because carnage is fun to watch no matter who it happens to.

Baloney, our final shooting rapid, wasn't all that exciting. Nobody ran the hole because the water is shallow and anyone who flips will get banged up and may risk foot entrapment. Apparently that rapid is notorious for catching feet, because it's so shallow that you can stand up and people are dumb enough to try it. They don't seem to understand that it's the easiest way to get killed in a whitewater river.

Anyway, we got to the takeout without trouble and had lots of fun carrying gear up steps and trying to not get boats covered in sand when the whole takeout is a beach (meaning you have to pick them up in the water and then wade ashore, or face getting yelled at and made to go back and rinse the thing off).

Sam's group showed up not long after us, ready to exchange their duckies for the rafts they'll use tomorrow on the gorge run. While they brought duckies up and launched rafts, Sam carried his boat to the top of another flight of steps and called me over.

I grabbed his camera and stood at the top of the steps as he got into his boat and picked up his paddle. Then he scooted forward and shot off down the stairs, riding them like a waterslide. At the bottom, his boat kept sliding -- across the beach and into the river. He almost caught an edge, sending up an arc of spray that looked intentional. People cheered. Sam may be totally insane*, but he's also pretty awesome.

*He's known around work as "Sketchy Sam", a good nickname for someone who likes to run a rock formation called the Meatgrinder and once went off a 15-foot waterfall upside down.

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