The Reno Flow – Fueled by Reno Mountain Sports

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?

Well, we rolled into Salida to start training for FIBARK late last night after driving through one of the highest towns in the United States, Leadville, CO, at about 10,100 feet. You have to love mountain towns. There is such a strange mix of good ol’ boy ranchers and outdoor granola types all living together in their do-as-you-will, quirky town. Salida is the same way. Historical buildings are all along downtown, where the whitewater park is, and you can’t swing a cat without hitting a brewery in any of these mountain towns.  A couple of miles outside of town on highway 50 is  a giant BLM lot along the river. Very Reno-like, just throw your tent down in the middle of the sage brush and the camping is free. No amenities here however.

But before I get you caught up on how things are looking for the competition here, let’s take a brief detour through another great CO, town, Glenwood. Glenwood Springs is right along the Colorado river on highway 70 and has the sickest, giant standing wave on the west end of town just off exit 114. This is a must stop for any kayaker. The park is just off the freeway from exit 114. Most of the cheap motels are down there also. I had to get one after 4 straight days of rain, just to dry out. I cranked my heater up to full and spread my soaking wet clothes, tent, sleeping bag, pillow and other things all over the room. There was hardly room to walk, but it worked. Here is a quick look at the Glenwood wave. Super smooth surfing, if only I was nearly as super smooth.

Now back to Salida. The optimum flow for the competition feature here is around 600-900 cfs. We are currently running about 2400 and the hole is gone, just turned into a giant wave. I have been in twice today trying to learn how to score a few points, but the fact is, coming from Reno, I can count the times I have been on a decent wave on my fingers. A lot of the midwest and east coast paddlers are killing it in there with air screws and helix’s and wave mcnasties but I still don’t know what I am going to do if the water stays this high.  Fortunately there is a lot of other stuff to do here. The creeks are stomping, the mountain biking is amazing. Buena Vista whitewater park is 20 miles away, and the numbers, a great big-water playboating run is just a few miles upstream of that. So as much as I want some redemption for Lyons, I may just settle with enjoying myself and competing in the open this time.

Don’t forget, Tues and Thursday are $10 playboat demo days at Reno Mountain Sports.

I rolled into Lyons today around 11am and found Pete already here. After talking with the campground host and picking a spot to pitch my tent for the next few days through the competition this weekend, I got a chance to get into the water. Colorado is having record high water. The boatercross event in Vail had to be canceled because of too much water. It looks like they may have to move the competition here because the main features in the center of town are washed out. Fortunately, in Colorado, when they build a whitewater park, they build a whitewater park. With 10 or more features to choose from, it turns out one about 300 ft. from my tent is just perfect at this level and may end up being the competition site. Another feature good enough for looping and cartwheels is right outside the door of my tent. That’s right, walk outside, get in boat and loop. Check out the beginning of the video if you don’t believe me. It is about a 30 second float from the competition site to my tent, and even though I am camped along the river, I have free wifi from my picnic table. Did I mention Colorado rules?

Have a quick look at the video to see the venue. It starts off with a view of the action from my tent, and then has a few seconds of Billy and Dane showing what is possible in this small feature. Enjoy!

On my way out, I took I-80 through Green River, Wyoming, and I have to say, this was about the strangest thing I had ever seen. Picture a town, maybe the size and appearance of Sun Valley, not Idaho, I’m talking just outside of Reno. They actually have a small island where the water splits around it, sort of like in Reno, and they have built pour-over features, also similar to Reno. However, their newly completed final feature, which was just finished last year, has a river wide constricting ledge which is open in the middle where all the water funnels through. This area is controlled by hydraulic metal plates which allow the hole’s shape, retentiveness and shoulders to be customized. The park is fed from Fontenellis dam just upstream and unfortunately, when I hit it, they had not yet begun spilling out of the dam. Even so, I was able to hit loops, Mcnasties and cartwheels in the relatively warm water.  Beware though, Wyoming is also fighting the Zebra muscles just like Lake Tahoe is, only their solution is apparently to charge everyone $5 to get a sticker for their kayak to put on waterways anywhere in the state.
The park ranger caught up to me as I was about to get in the water, and after a brief conversation where it became painfully obvious that I knew more about Zebra muscles than he did, he allowed me to get in the water without paying after I assured him that my little playboat had not gone anywhere near the nasty critters.
I would not recommend Green River as a destination, but it can be made in one LONG day from Reno, (which I failed to do and slept in a cow pasture outside of Wells the first night,) and it does have camping, but it has very little else.
I’m looking forward to Lyons and then heading straight down to Glenwood where the famous Glenwood wave on the Colorado river is currently running a whopping 30,000 cfs!

Despite being about the size of a gnat and not sporting either a coffee shop or a market, Green River spent a ton of dough on this hydraulically controllable play feature

At least they have their priorities straight. Can we get one of these in Reno so I don't have to keep dodging fishooks cast from the bridge overhead?

After the Reno Riverfestival at the beginning of May, where two 40+ guys landed on the top spots in the open event, beating out about 30 young guns, I got the idea for doing a post about getting started with kayaking in your middle years. Whitewater kayaking is a great aerobic sport, but its main advantage to us oldish farts is that it is a sport that relies more on precision and technique than on brute strength and speed. It keeps us in shape, keeps us flexible and presents a great new challenge for our bodies. In short, it really beats the hell out of golf for the adventuresome over-30 crowd, and with a forgiving whitewater park in the center of town, living in Reno and not kayaking is akin to living in Santa Cruz and not surfing, you could do it, but why?

American Whitewater beat me to it however. Their May/June 2010 issue is dedicated to Boating Beyond Youth and has a range of articles from proper stretching and conditioning to entering the sport and choosing gear. So rather than re-invent the wheel, click on the link above to download a pdf file of the issue and read all about it.

On our local boating front, the much talked about and hard to get Jackson Villain creek boats are now in at Reno Mountain Sports. They just got a shipment in this week of both sizes of this hard to find creeker. They also have the popular Astral Green jackets in, great comfort and rescue compatible, and are expecting a new shipment of Jackson Star series playboats next week, making now a perfect time to get yourself outfitted for what is sure to be a stellar runoff season. The whitewater park is already pushing 1200 cfs and should only climb in the next week, Whohoo!!!!

Reno Mountain Sports is offering demos on their Jackson playboats, (call to see if this applies to any other brands,) on Tuesdays and Thursdays after 3pm for only $10.

The way this works is you can come in and pick up your boat after 3pm on any Tuesday or Thursday, ride it the rest of the day, and then have it back in the shop the next morning. With the sun setting after 8pm, that allows plenty of time to demo the amazing Jackson playboats and see for yourself what all the fuss is about. The 2010 Star and Fun series have been re-designed to perform better and handle the beating we give them in the whitewater park better than other boats.

RMS will also be bringing boats down to the Hometown Throwdowns at the Reno whitewater park for folks to demo. The next throwdown is Wednesday, May 19. They are every other Wednesday. Plans are also in the works for them to bring Bar-b-que fixings during one of our upcoming throwdowns, so stay tuned for that. If you have any other questions, feel free to call the store and get the details.

IF you pick up a playboat and are interested in some basic freestyle or outfitting tips, feel free to email me at scottsady@tahoelight.com and I can try to make it down to the park.

Yours truly looking to finish up a McNasty in competition at the Reno River Festival in my 2010 Jackson Allstar.

Current Junior World Champion Jason Craig on his way to an overall second against the big boys in his Jackson Allstar at the Reno River Festival.