SolveYourProblem Article
Series: Extreme Sports
I Love The Adrenaline Rush Of Extreme Sports
Whitewater
Kayaking - What You Should Know
To say that whitewater kayaking is a sport
where you paddle a kayak up or down stream in a river would
be a dramatic oversimplification. Kayaking, especially in whitewater
situations, is challenging and can be dangerous.
The kayak itself is a long, thin shaped boat with a rounded
or V-shaped hull. It has a center seat for the pilot and a
waterproof skirt that fastens around the pilot's waist to stop
the water from entering the boat. Kayaks can be as short as
6-feet long or as long as more than twice that length. They
are usually constructed of a rugged plastic, which reduces
the damage done by sharp rocks in the river's rapids.
The paddle for a kayak is as unique as the kayak itself. It's
a double bladed paddle that, by nature of its design, dictates
that you paddle on one side of the kayak and then on the other
side -- back and forth -- unlike a rowboat where you paddle
with two oars simultaneously.
There are four basic kinds of whitewater kayaking: playboating,
slalom, riverrunning and creeking.
Playboating is a sport unto itself. It involves putting a
kayak through a series of 'gymnastic-like' moves with colorful
names like cartwheeling, looping, surfing and spinning. An
experienced playboater can practically stand a kayak on its
nose because the kayaks used for playboating are designed to
allow the bow and stern to be easily submerged. This facilitates
all the trick moves required in playboating. The sport of playboating
has its own competition built around it that is, appropriately
enough, called the “whitewater rodeo.”
Slalom
kayaking is precision kayak racing. The racecourse
for the slalom event is normally some designated section of
a river that has been set up with a series of gates that must
be navigated in a particular order. The gates are color-coded
(red and green) poles that are suspended vertically over the
water. The red poles serve as the gates for the race in one
direction and the green poles are the gates that must be navigated
while going in the opposite direction. The winner of the slalom
race will get from point A, through the correct gates, to point
B and back again, through the other gates, to Point A before
anyone else. The kayaks used for slalom racing must be a certain
size and will be made out of fiberglass and carbon fibers which
makes them sleeker and faster than other kayaks. Slalom kayaking,
in case you don't remember where you heard that name before,
is an event in the International Summer Olympic Games.
Riverrunning is a bit schizophrenic. It takes the kayak from
a leisurely row down one section of a river to a portion of
the river that is a frenetic obstacle course through fast rapids
and even over waterfalls. Not for the faint of heart, riverrunning
puts the kayak and its pilot through almost every possible
adrenaline-pumping maneuver. This category of whitewater kayaking
includes day-trips, multi-day trips with overnight camping
on shore and river races known as whitewater races.
Creeking is also known as extreme kayaking and if riverrunning
is a bit schizophrenic, creeking can only be called a bit psycho!
Extreme kayakers go looking for the wildest, most dangerous
stretches of the unfriendliest rivers and then challenge them.
The extreme kayaker's world of pure adrenaline consists of
billions of gallons of water powering its way through narrow
canyons, pouring down granite-lined chutes and cascading over
multiple waterfalls, some as high as 80 feet. However violent
and dangerous this sounds to the person who is not addicted
to the extreme, this scene of wet mayhem is only an interlude
in their search for the next Class VI rapid and the next 80-foot
waterfall.
Also called “steepcreeking” and “hairboating,” the sport was
born in the mid-1980s, when a small group of kayakers began
looking for something more than overcrowded rivers with weekend
warriors out in their kayaks and canoes. This group began a
concerted effort to find the places where the others would
not dare go and they went. Places like Triple Falls on the
Little River in North Carolina. Triple falls takes the dauntless
kayaker over three waterfalls that total a 125-foot descent.
The unwritten rule for “steepcreeking” is: a one-mile stretch
of the river must drop at least 250 feet to be a suitable venue. # # # # #
SolveYourProblem.com
: 2008
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