Surf's up!

This Fall, NOC is teaming up with two of the nation’s top kayak surfers to offer a first of its kind instructional program - The NOC Outer Banks Kayak Surfing Class. Two-time National Surf Kayak Champion, Spencer Cooke, and Two-time US Surf Kayak Team qualifier, Philip Aschliman, will be teaching beginner-advanced kayak surfing skills at Cape Hatteras North Carolina on October 19-21. North Carolina’s Outer Banks are known for their favorable surfing conditions and have been the site of multiple surf kayak national championships.

Basic skills such as how to paddle out through the surf zone and catching a wave will be part of the curriculum. Intermediate and advanced skills will include using the power pocket, cutbacks, bottom turns, top turns, floaters and aerials. Any paddler is welcome so come join us for a fun weekend at the coast and hopefully some good surfing conditions.

Requirements:

Participants are required to have a competent whitewater kayak roll. We welcome any skill level from novice to expert to join the class. Basic whitewater skills are a good start for surf kayaking though you will learn surf specific skills that are not encountered in a river environment. Paddling in the surf is great fun and will make you a better overall paddler .

Boats:

Any whitewater boat is possible to surf in though some are better than others. For starters, bring a boat that you are comfortable in. If you have multiple boats bring your fastest boat with carving rail. If you have one lying around, older play boat models may excel as surfing kayaks. Some examples are: Riot Glide or Booster, Necky Switch, Zip, Jive or Rip, Perception Shock or Amp, Liquidlogic Session+, etc… If you are a competent paddler on difficult whitewater or a high intermediate to advanced play boater you may consider renting or buying a surf specific kayak. A great starter surf kayak is a Riot Boogie, affordable and an excellent performer. Contact Spencer at johnspencercooke@earthlink.net for more information about boats.

*The class will be capped at twelve students so sign up now to secure your spot.

Dates: Oct 19-21

Cost: $600

Includes: Lodging, Lunch, Transportation to local venue

More details here.

The next step in your paddling career…add breadth as well as depth

Sheena enters Nantahala Falls

As our students leave a clinic or a day of private instruction we are often asked, “How do I keep improving?” This is an obvious and appropriate question and I suspect that most of our instructors answer in much the same way. We say something about “Paddle as often as you can.” This is the obvious and appropriate answer. I would like to add a little more detail to that response.

I believe the competitive urge and the natural upward progression implied by the class 1 through class 6 scale of difficulty leads most people to seek to move onto more and more difficult rivers. I call this progression “seeking depth.” The new paddler believes that experience with more difficult rapids will translate directly into developing greater skill. While there is truth to this expectation I don’t think this is the only path to greater skill.

Lines up for the drop

If you want to increase your paddling skills consider seeking “breadth.” There is value in paddling many different rivers of similar difficulty. For example, many of you have run both Big Pillow on the French Broad and Nantahala Falls. These are both class 3 rapids but they teach very different lessons. Big Pillow offers the paddler a line that is pretty open but filled with very fast current and large waves. The line demands balance and comfort moving around in big waves. The class 3 portion of Nantahala Falls is really a quick precise move between two ledges that demands exact control and acceleration across the flat between the ledges. Two rapids of the same difficulty teach two very different lessons.

Takes a stroke through the hole

Yes, moving ever upward in difficulty will teach many of these same lessons but the learning occurs in an environment with an ever smaller margin for error. Consider the value of paddling many very different rapids, all within your comfort zone. You will cope with different eddy lines, different sizes and types of waves, and different maneuvering demands. Each run can be a lesson broadening your skill set.

Success!

If you live in a place with few paddling options then look forward to paddling your home river at many different levels. Remember, though the higher levels appeal to our “Yeehaw” instincts, those runs when the river is a bit low can teach lessons too.

Windy Gordon

Nantahala Cascades

From Nantahala Cas...

Rain finally arrived here in the Nantahala Gorge and the Cascades ran with a great water level. Being that I could not join the fun, I figured I would do the next best thing and take pictures of the action instead. Here are some pictures for those who, like me, need to satisfy their paddling blues vicariously at the moment.

On Fear Management

Let me start out by saying that Laura hates this picture and I thank her for letting me use it in this post. The one thing this picture illustrates really well is that special blend of fear and euphoria that comes with whitewater paddling. Mitigating fear is a skill, and like any other skill it can be learned and managed. No matter your skill level, there are practical tools that will help increase your enjoyment and success in the sport of whitewater kayaking.

Novice paddlers are aided tremendously by exposure to the basics of kayaking in very controlled environments. The skills that usually generate the most anxiety for beginners are flipping and swimming. Once they are practiced in the lake and river they become a lot less anxious about them. Novice kayakers can also address some of their imagined fears about kayaking with a basic understanding of the principals of paddling and knowledge of river hazards and features. Beginners learn quickly that the reality is often a lot less scary then what they once believed.

For Intermediate paddlers one way to reduce fear is by building on small successes. One example of this is to challenge your skills by finding the hardest or most complex route through a rapid that you are already comfortable in. The Falls on the Nantahala are a great example: being able to catch eight eddies through the Falls takes a lot more skill than just paddling through them. This practice of catching eddies through rapids not only builds self confidence but also teaches a critical river running strategy that helps alleviate the stress of running unfamiliar rapids. Breaking down rapids this way and taking it "one move at a time" is one of the best ways to control anxiety while paddling a rapid.

Advanced paddlers often develop personal routines that help them manage anxiety before running difficult drops. My personal mantra is PREP, short for Posture, Rotation, Vision and Positive Mental attitude. This simple acronym is my way of reminding myself of the very basics of paddling and revving the engine so to speak. Reciting my mantra takes just a second but it is key in helping me focus on the here and now and creates a positive mental environment that allows for optimum performance. In the upper levels of paddling, deciding whether or not to run a rapid is less about fear management and more about risk assessment than anything else. Underlying that risk assessment takes experience and knowledge about whitewater factored with the personal skills and limitations of the individual paddler. One more important aspect regarding fear is its affect within a group. It is important to realize that within the confines of a group, fear is contagious. If several members of your paddling group are nervous about a rapid that you are thinking about running, there seems to be a tendency for your personal tension to increase. It also can work the other way around with the group being very confident and the individual paddler feeling pressure to run a rapid he or she would otherwise walk.

Ultimately it takes courage to kayak, but courage is not defined as the absence of fear - it is defined as the ability to act in spite of fear. Acting in spite of fear is an integral part of kayaking and whatever skills you use to deal with it, being able to focus that energy in a positive, productive and fun direction is liberating.

All photos courtesy of Jon Clark

Here is a link to another great article about fear written by Chris Joose, click here.

Cartwheel Pointers and Progression

Learning to cartwheel is like learning to ride a bike. Both are learnable skills, but not necessarily teachable ones. Think about it - no one taught you how to ride a bike, you finally just did it, although you probably crashed numerous times before reaching that “I got it” moment. Cartwheeling is the same – there are some pointers we can give you, but ultimately it is something you must just “feel” for yourself by building muscle-memory through repetition – lots of repetition. And, like riding a bike you will of course crash many times along the way.

The good news is that you don’t need to learn any new strokes to cartwheel– the forward and reverse sweeps are the only strokes you’ll need, and I’m sure you already have those in your paddler’s toolbox. Even the magical “double-pump” is nothing more than a forward and reverse sweep linked together while on edge.

Before we get to the strokes though, let’s focus on vision and rotation. When running a rapid, vision is of paramount importance. The same is true for cartwheeling – lead the move with your eyes. Your eyes should be looking at the next “point” before your paddle blade gets there. I cannot stress the importance of vision enough. Good vision serves a two-fold purpose – it aids in the all-important edging and also facilitates the body rotation required to generate enough strength to get the ends down. Yes, cartwheeling requires some strength. If you’re only using your arms (with those puny bicep muscles) to execute a sweep stroke it will be very difficult to get the ends down. Engage the larger muscle groups like your pecs, abs, and obliques. The easy way to engage these muscles is to rotate through your sweep strokes.

Here’s a cartwheeling progression we often use with our novice playboaters, and something that is best done on flatwater. Pick a side to practice your cartwheels on – we’ll choose the right side for this example.

Stare at the front right portion of your bow while at the same time edging towards that “quadrant” as well. While maintaing that edge, do a reverse sweep on the right, trying to get water to wash over the front-right portion of your bow. It’s ok if you can’t get a lot of water over the bow right now. (See picture on right)

Now, look over your right shoulder towards the back-left portion of your stern. This will help you weight this back-left edge. Now do a forward sweep on the left, (while edging and looking in that direction), trying to get water to wash over the back-left portion of your stern. This stern point is much easier to sink under water than the bow. (See picture on left)

Once the stern goes under, switch your edge back to the right, weighting and staring at the front-right portion of your bow, while doing a reverse sweep on the right.(See picture on right – look at the rotation and vision) Can you see that you’re back to the starting position? Congratulations, you have just done a low-angle cartwheel, or “pinwheel” as we call them. Practice this progression very slowly, concentrating on your vision, edges, and rotating through the strokes. Once you have this muscle-memory down you can speed it up. Don’t worry if you don’t get the bow down right away – concentrate on getting the stern down.

Best Days: First trip to the Green Narrows, Aug. 2005

My first river experience was on the Lower Green when I was ten years old. I remember sitting at the put-in with my purple Dancer XS and watching the water release from the section above. I didn’t know anything about the section above except that that’s where the water came from. Fifteen years later I found myself standing at the same spot and staring upstream once again waiting for the water, only this time we called the area where I was standing the takeout, and not the put-in. I remember thinking that my kayaking was coming full-circle.

I was paddling with three of my best friends that day – Mark, Eric, and Israel. It was Israel’s second time on the Green but Mark and Eric were Green regulars, and even comfortable enough on that section to run it in a Topo-duo later that summer. (As an aside, their run through Gorilla was priceless. As they drove through the Notch, Mark, in the front and weighing about 140lbs, tried to catch the eddy. Eric, in the back and weighing 200lbs, wanted to go direct. The bigger boy won out and they went direct. The bigger boy also rolled them up at the bottom.) But I digress…

The first rapid we scouted that day was Frankenstein. Mark explained the line to me as Eric made it look easy. Israel went next, blew the line, and got hull-pinned over the ledge on river left. Mark and I scrambled down to his boat to try and free him. Israel was calm and had his head above water, but after many attempts, Mark and I could not budge his boat. It was at this moment that I looked downstream and saw Eric wading up the rapid like an aquatic Hercules with muscles bulging and a determined look in his eye. He bent over and picked both Israel and the boat up, and threw it over his shoulder using some sort of modified dead lift. (It should be mentioned that Eric lifted weights twice a day, and was built like a brick out-house) Both he and Israel swam the last part of the rapid. It was a pretty exiting start to our trip. We had only made it through two rapids before someone got pinned (usually it takes us about five rapids before that happens).

Anyways, we paddled the remaining rapids without incident until Chief at which point Eric in one of his dyslexic moments described the line completely backwards to me. I couldn’t see his whole line, but I could see enough to realize that he was doing the exact opposite of what he had described to me. I was forced to remember the picture on American Whitewater that showed a boater running the left line at Chief. Whoever that boater in the picture is, I am forever in your debt because I took your line (or what I assumed was your line) and it worked wonderfully.

Of course this brings us to Gorilla. Mark went first and ran it direct, and Eric and I eddied out after the Notch. I’m rather fond of that eddy, and I would have liked to have stayed there a bit longer. In fact, I’m willing to label that my favorite eddy on any river. Eric, who had been in that eddy 100 times before, did not want to chit-chat though and pealed out and over the drop. It was at this point that I realized I should have taken a look at the actual waterfall, and not just the Notch when we were scouting. Nonetheless, I had a great line, although I did get held up in Speedtrap for a bit. After finally making it out I paddled over to Eric in the river-left eddy. After some congratulatory words I turned to look back up at Gorilla when I felt myself getting pulled back into Speedtrap. (As it came out in the car ride home, Eric had actually pushed me back into Speedtrap). I surfed some more and did a few of those weird rolls where you’re pinned on your backdeck on dry rock. After escaping the hole for the second time I was too tired to reach the eddy again. I would be running the next two slides blind, which I felt comfortable doing at that point. The first slide was fun, and I went deep into the hole at the bottom of the second slide. I remember thinking that I was under water for a long time. I rolled up, cleared my eyes, and much to my astonishment found myself staring at a naked women on the rock in front of me. The first thought that popped into my head was, “Am I dead?” I quickly realized that she was not indeed an angel and I needed to catch an eddy to regroup, which I did.

I honestly don’t remember any of the other rapids that day, although I do remember having a great time on all of them. Occasionally I make it back to the Green, although not often. My returning trips have all had memorable moments, although none as memorable as that first time.

For me, kayaking has never been about what I’m paddling, but who I’m paddling with. I can have an equally fun time on the Lower Green, the Upper Green, or the Narrows if I’m with good people. The good people from that first trip down the Narrows have all moved on to other things in life – Israel is going to law school, Mark is in nursing school, and Eric is a helicopter pilot in the Army. I don’t get to see them very often anymore, but I think of them every time I visit the Green - and those memories make me smile.

Instructors on the Green

Following Herms report of his first day on the Green, here is a short video of some Instructors paddling Zwicks Backender, Chief's and Groove Tube. I did not film very much this day so there is only footage of those couple of rapids. The highlights are Wayne's run at Zwicks and Anne's seal launch that never really gets off the ground. This was just a great day of creeking with good friends and fun times, this is what paddling is all about.

A Day on the Green River Narrows from Christopher Port on Vimeo.