The party’s over Global Posts

The party’s over

scott sady wrote 697 days ago:

Well, the longest running whitewater festival in the world had come and gone. 62 years FIBARK has been going, starting out as an annual downriver race, and growing into one of Colorado’s largest whitewater spectacles. With tens of thousands lining the bank for the hooligan race, and most staying around for the pro freestyle finals all the while Hot Buttered Rum playing across the street and a full-on carnival taking place on the main roads, the crowds blew away what we saw at the Reno River Festival each day. Not that that is necessarily a good thing. This town has some characters. There is a strong hillbilly undercurrent to the area and the next morning when I headed back to the river early to get one last playboat session in, the destruction was obvious. Vomit and condoms in the alley ways and porta-potties. Trash everywhere, though I must admit, by 7am the Salida public works folks were on the ball starting the massive cleanup job.

On to the results. The Reno crew had a good showing. Jason was holding first place and Stephen second going into finals, but local Dustin Urban laid town two scorching runs to take the first and second highest scoring rides. Fortunately he can only win one spot, so he took first, Stephen Wright second and Jason 4th in pro men’s. Ruth won pro women’s, and Sage absolutely dominated the cadets, scoring about 3x as many points as the next highest cadet boy. Sage also won her slalom event.

I had a mediocre ride, but this feature is hard for me, and I ended up 19 out of 29 pros. To give you an idea of how strong the field was, EJ took 10th, and Nick didn’t make the finals. But I don’t mind, I have learned a lot about how to do moves on different types of features, including a lot of wave moves, that I couldn’t do when I left Reno. The competitors are all great people and fun to hang out with. Stephen was particularly helpful, coming down to the river bank and giving me advice about how to set up quicker and make it to the top of the pile, not easy here.

More hooligan destruction. Basically contestants drink a lot build something that barely floats and try to make it through town in one piece.

This one was pretty cool. Unfortunately the bridge hight above water this daywas about 5 feet, and the thing got destroyed!

The barely seaworthy hooligan race runs through town

Surfing the wave at Buena Vista with Pete's van in the background. Pete couldn't oblige me by staying on the wave long enough for me to get a good picture of him with his van, so this dude will have to do.

Leif showing how to hit a wave mcnasty on the Buena Vista wave. They also have two rocking hole features upstream and a brewery across the way. Worth a stop.

The Buena Vista park is just 30 minutes from Salida and we spent a lot of time there. That place rocks. The whitewater park has two great hole features and a fast thrashy wave to play on. On top of that, it is set apart from the town, in it’s own nice little park with grass and a climbing wall and the only building within a few blocks is the Eddyline Brewery, right across the street. How cool is that?

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