So I haven't really posted here much - I guess it's just too much work to post multiple places and myspace has been easier and more visible. We're revamping FaceLevel.com though so I'll probably blog here more again.
Check out my myspace page for all the latest.
~Ice~
This is like the longest photoblog you've ever seen. But since you weren't there, I figured I'd take you with me. Only...I have a lot of other stuff to do, so the pictures are up now and the descriptions will go up on Wednesday. So for one day only, you'll get to write your own captions! Fun! Whee! Whatever. =)
Ice contemplating legroom, the Upper Gauley, and mullets.
Wait, how did he get so much legroom? You gotta love the row where there is no window seat if you're seated directly behind it...
This wasn't supposed to look like a meditation session, although it's pretty good for that! Peter snapped the picture when Ice was in mid-something (we're still not sure what expressions this could possibly be a transition for!) and voila, this is the result. The building was on the campus of VMI, which neighbors Washington & Lee, where Peter went to law school.
Traffic? Nonesense. GauleyFest was completely empty, what are you talking about, traffic?
Some of these shapes are different from the others. Please mark only the shapes which do not belong. Wait - they ALL belong! =)
A new Canadian friend posing with Ice's NASCAR riverboard - this guy guided a raft down the river that ended up providing us with some quality entertainment below Sweets Falls (a pic lower down on the page).
Ice - Docta P - Sledger // Josh - Peter - Gary
The line of boats was endless on GualeyFest Saturday. I've never seen so many boats on one river, and these are just the kayaks, the hundreds of rafts had all put on earlier in the morning. If you like being on the river with hundreds of other people, GauleyFest is your party! (Just realize that many boaters are tentatively picking their way through the rapids and not always aware of their surroundings - Peter got nailed in the head by a stray paddle stroke, and nearly impaled by a kayak in Lost Paddle that was, let's just say not too comfortable being in that rapid, and Gary had an upside down kayaker on top of him one entire run through Pillow. Miraculously, Ice avoided any and all contact with them - other than the lady at the boater photo booth...)
The queen of the Gauley, Cynthia, who spent some time with us on the river Saturday
Docta P in some small stuff, showing off his company logo
Cynthia goes left, Peter goes right, and whoa! Is that really an unending line of boaters up there?
Just a cool shot of a focused Docta P flying his rocketship (if you saw the riverboarding movie photo gallery you know what I'm talking about)
Sledger bouncing through the waves on his New Zealand made sledge (note: It's NOT a ripboard!)
Another shot of happy Gary in the waves
Sledger seemed to be able to surf anything - you should have seen him in the muddy parking lot! Ok, not really, but he did catch a gazillion waves on the way down the river, and here you see him showing off for an audience of mesmerized boaters.
Docta P cooling off partway down the Gauley on the first day. I've never seen anybody OVERheat on the river before, but the combination of humid weather, warm water, and like 27mm (!!!) tends to do that to you. We didn't get much sleep the night before, but I think he had put on every bit of gear he owned, all at the same time. He said he doesn't really remember running Pillow Rock, which may be why he got intimate with Volkswagen Rock and the Terminator hole and didn't even seem phased by it. Next day, fewer layers, more fun and the biggest splat on Pillow Rock you've ever seen. See, gear does make a difference. I got it on helmet cam too, but unfortunately my helmet cam got wet partway down and died, taking the footage with it. GRRR!
Cool shot of Sledger in Shipwreck, a fun wave train that really does kinda feel like you're in the ocean.
Docta P heading into a rapid. It may be that this photo is out of sequence, but since we're not sure exactly where it should go in the sequence, this is a good spot for it. I'm glad you agree.
World famous Docta P and world famous Sweets Falls. We were told it's a 14 foot waterfall, but it's more like a 14 foot slide with about a 2 foot drop (unless you run right down the slide, then you can practically keep your head dry). It's quite fun though.
Docta P in the churny part of Sweets
Ice in Sweets Falls (photo by Gary Pera)
Ice waiting patiently for an endless line of boaters before another run over Sweets Falls
"Riverboarding's Lamka Brothers" (their movie characters) chilling on the side of the river (photo by Gary Pera)
Blisters suck. Especially in that dirty water...
Need I say anything about our Canadian rockstar / leprechaun man? They ran the narrow channel between the rocks after Sweets and dumped the raft. I thought his outfit was cool, but the lucky charms boxers...he wins the Gauley style contest.
You'll notice there's a Carlson riverboard in one of the boats - we came up on a raft in an eddy and a girl on a Carlson board and it was like three thirsty people in a desert coming up to an oasis - another riverboarder!! She said her name was Grace and she was from Tennessee, and she'd been out about 30 times this year. Awesome! We only got to run one rapid with her, but she handled her board like a pro even in the hydraulic that trapped her briefly (Ice was there to offer some assistance), so we were quite impressed. It was awesome to see another riverboarder, and a girl too (as Liz will tell you - the industry needs more females!).
Ice and the badass Gath Gedi Convertible helmet.
We're not sure what this signifies. Fun? Anticipation? Insanity? But yeah...this is Ice.
The French call riverboarding "hydrospeed", and it's a very popular sport over there. Despite what most Americans think of France, the French dudes that we know have gigantic cajones and hydrospeed big water in crazy parts of the world. However, often pictures of hydrospeed are similar to this video. On our way out of the Upper Gauley we found a little spout between a couple boulders that Ice dubbed "Frenchy Falls". It's meant as an innocent gesture, not as an insult. Although this video is a bit dorky. =) Hey, if you riverboard Class V whitewater you're entitled to screw around once in a while.
Water is cool. Water is fun. Water is beautiful.
Docta P resting by a cool waterfall on the Deliverance-esque trail - like half a mile of mud and rocks nearly straight up. It sucked. The waterfall was cool though, if we'd had our RMR boards we would have slid down it!
Gary resting at the take-out upper parking lot after the arduous hike.
Perfect timing! Gary managed to grab us a ride in the back of a truck, and I promised the guys I'd say thank you, so thanks a TON and a big shout out to you, Rodney! You're a lifesaver, man!
The jeeps go marching one by one hurrah, hurrah...
Need I say more?
So this is a fun story - we were standing around the boater photo booth, watching the TV's as they showed a slideshow of the previous day's activities at Pillow Rock and other rapids. When Sledger popped up on the screen, I moved in and snapped a picture. The girl standing guard FREAKED OUT. "You can't take a picture, those are copyrighted photos! blah blah blah". To which Peter, in his best "I'm a prick attourney" character, went off on her.
And he's totally right - it's unlawful for them to use the likeness of ANY of those people to sell photos without a model release. Granted everybody does it (Ice has plenty of photos being held hostage by raft companies who wanted him to pay them $35 for the pics - yet they'll show them on their slideshows. Illegal! Illegal! Especially since he's signed with a sports modeling agency...), but just because everybody does it...well, you know the rest.
Anyway, the altercation wasn't pretty but Ice kept the picture, and he's sending it to them with the FaceLevel.com stamped plainly across it. Turnabout's fair play, right? ;-) We understand you're just trying to make money. Fine. Go ahead. It's totally illegal, but go ahead. Just don't get pissed if I want to take a picture of your unlawful use of my likeness and misrepresentation of my likeness as an endorsement of your business. Because if you can photograph us and use us for gain, then we can photograph your photograph of us and use it simply for entertainment. Ha. =)
Gas in Portland: $3.05. Gas in West Virginia: $1.99. Um...do they know something we don't?
Peter and Josh on the campus of W&L, where Peter went to law school
Some crazy church in D.C. that took 99 years to build. Um, 99 years? Sounds like a contractor we've worked with recently. 99 freaking years? Can you imagine? I'd go insane.
I'm told somebody important lives there, but I still haven't been able to guess who it is.
One of my favorite buildings in D.C. - the inscription at the top of the building reads: Dedicated To Art.
Ice in the hand of the sculpture "The Awakening"
Wow. Sunset over the Mississippi river.
Sunset over Seattle
"Once upon a time, there was a big, warm, dirty river. That river was well loved by hundreds, no, thousands, maybe even millions of people. It had ginourmous rapids, it was said, rapids which were big enough to swallow a bus, not the short bus, but a full sized bus! The river was said to be one of the best in the whole entire universe..."
Docta P riverboarding over Sweets Falls
This weekend I went and checked out the Gauley River, and while it was a VERY FUN WEEKEND (I don't want anybody to get the wrong impression here), it's highly over-rated.
What?! Did I really just say that? Sacrilege, I know.
But seriously, people, it's a really really REALLY fun river - it's just not top 10 in the world, like every website claims. Sorry. I haven't riverboarded all the rivers on earth, but I highly doubt the Gauley is top 10 in America, let alone the world.
Now, top 10 in terms of how "popular" it is? Quite possibly. I've never seen so many kayaks and rafts on one stretch of river at one time. It was insane! So for the social aspect, and how popular the stretch of water is, yeah, it's probably one of the 10 busiest rivers in the world during Gauley season.
But let's be honest with ourselves - it's not that big, and the large rapids are spaced very far apart, meaning there's a lot of flatwater. Fun? Absolutely. Insignificant, Pillow Rock, Lost Paddle, Iron Ring, Sweets, all very fun.
Pillow especially was very high on the "fun rapids of the world" scale, although it's too short. Iron Ring caught us off guard the first day by how steep the slide was into the first wave, and Lost Paddle definitely was a nice long stretch of bouncy waves and funny water. All very fun.
But overall, probably due to the long stretches of flatwater, the Upper Gauley is not a run that I would want to camp out on and do repeatedly for weeks on end, because I'd get bored after about a week.
I feel like I'm being mean to the U.G., as I'm going to affectionately call it. I'm really not trying to be mean. I know rivers have feelings too, and I don't want to hurt its feelings, because it gave me lots of smiles. I had an awesome weekend, Docta P and Sledger (Gary Pera) and I had a lot of fun on and off the river, so overall it was a great trip.
Here's the honest truth though - I've been hearing about this river for the last decade, and in my mind it was the size of the Zambezi (without the hungry hungry hippos). I know I probably make rivers that really were intense for me seem big in my recollection to others too, but I think all the stories I've heard about the Gauley really made me build it up in my head into something that it really isn't. Not even close.
It's got some big water in it. But it's warm water, and it's friendly water - I don't think there was a nasty hydraulic on that river (the death slot in Initiation doesn't count, just don't go right). Which, to me, reduces all the Class V's to IV's. If nothing bad can happen to you, what justifies giving it a Class V rating? The lines weren't all that hard either.
Tunnel Falls in Gore Canyon (Colorado)? That's a V. Many a boater has been worked in the hydraulic, some for quite a while. Sweets Falls on the U.G.? Not a V. There's no hydraulic at all, really - it's more of just a big slide, and even if you run the drop left of dildo rock or off the right shelf, there's still not a hydraulic. I ran it backwards holding on with one hand and still managed to get halfway entertaining video of Docta P and Sledger coming down behind me. If it were Class V that wouldn't be possible (just more reason why we need to adopt and modify the Addison Scale to riverboarding).
Anyway, I'm not trying to piss anybody off, so if you adore the Gauley, hey, I understand why - it's a really fun, happy river (although the water quality is a smidge on the dirty side, lol!). I'm just not going to voice what seemingly every website pertaining to the Gauley says, that it's one of the biggest and baddest rivers in the world. Sorry. One of the most "fun", I'll agree with. Most extreme, no.
That said, though, GauleyFest will definitely be a date on my yearly calendar from now on. =) But where were you?! We missed all of you who we'd hoped to see on the Gauley this year! Make sure you come next year, because we had a lot of fun on the river, and if you're comfortable in Class IV water, don't fear the Gauley. Go with somebody who knows it for your first time, or just follow the rafts, and you'll have a lot of fun.
~Ice~
www.FaceLevel.com
I got to make a trip this past weekend to a very chilly Boise, Idaho and hang out with new riverboarding and FaceLevel.com friend Kevin Ryan and 3 of his buddies from school, Ben, Jordie, and Kristi. Kevin had been out on a board once before, during the summer when Liz had taken him out on the White Salmon, but this time we were going to hit his local kayaking run, the Main Payette.
There's a great little fish ladder known as The Gutter before you get to the stretch on the Payette with the rapids, it's a series of 4 drops with big eddy pools on both sides. Since most of the group had never been on a riverboard before, it was the perfect training ground, and everybody got the feel for their boards and learned how to surf.
Once they had the hang of that we went and bombed down it a couple times, which seemed to be a bit more popular than surfing the standing waves. They loved it! (And have I ever mentioned how much I love my waterproof digital camera? No zoom lens from shore for these pics, peeps, I'm right there in it! Ahh, technology...)
After a bit of group discussion about fatigue it was agreed to go run a several mile stretch of the Main Payette, so we ate some bananas and home-picked fruit and I chugged a Rockstar and off we went.
There's a bit of flatwater on the stretch, but it's moving fairly quickly, although you'd never be able to tell by how calm Kevin and Ben are in the picture above. Kevin woke up from his nap pretty quick though as Mike's Hole, a rapid with a decent sized "hydraulic jump" was approaching (it's amazing what you learn when you hit the river with engineering students!). Kevin liked it so much that he ran it twice!
The group a bit tired but happy after the Payette riverboarding experience (and the sun came back out, whoo hoo!). L-R: Ben, Jordie, Kevin, Kristi
So we weren't actually in Hollywood though, they came to us... ;-) Or rather, we all met someplace where there was good water!
Anyway we finally got a photo gallery up of the best pics from the movie shoot last week! Candid pics of Ice, Docta P, Gary and the "father of the sport", Bob Carlson, as well as Oscar winners, Emmy winners (that's so fun to say ;-) ) and a whole crew of great people!
Click The Pic!
Photo of Docta P by Michael Jones
Also, if you're not my myspace friend yet add me now! I did daily bulletins on there all throughout the filming, I've got to figure out a good way to be able to post here and there, but if you're a myspace user (and who isn't these days, wow!) then add me and you can stay updated quicker! It's all about speed baby! And Tunnel Chute is FAST! ;-) www.Myspace.com/icemanriverboarder
More couples should celebrate 15 years of marriage by going riverboarding together...
I met photojournalist Mike Bitton a couple years ago during a festival on the Clackamas river, so it was only fitting that we headed back to the Clack when he decided to celebrate his and his wife's 15 year anniversary by going riverboarding.
The water was really low and very shallow in a few spots, but we all had a great time anyway. Mike's sister-in-law caught on quickly and liked it so much she ran Carter Falls a couple times!
The Bitton's celebrating 15 years together. (Mike's brother, also a photojournalist, can be seen perfecting his craft in the background...)
David & Tomie
Mike in the midst of the splashy goodness
As only brothers can...
Tomie in Armstrong rapid
Cool shot of the day
Tomie heading into Carter
Jubilant Mikey B. after the run - happy anniversary, man. Congrats!
~Ice~
www.FaceLevel.com
Check out Mike's photography and blog at www.BittonPhoto.com
Had a chance to spend some time with some awesome friends the day following Gore Canyon, and their nephew, Ryan, wanted to get out on some whitewater. We decided rafting would be too boring, so riverboarding it was - and since he's 14, the same age I was when I started, I felt a little nostalgic taking him down the river...
I didn't have extra gear in his size (though his uncle Will managed to score an old kayaking helmet from somebody that we slapped an //FLR sticker on), so I let him wear my PFD and I broke the cardinal rule. Shhh, don't tell Art. ;-)
Still, slogging around in gear way too big didn't stop him from catching on to riverboarding faster than nearly anybody I've taken out on the river, and by the time we were done he was hitting his lines like he'd been doing it all his life.
Getting some last minute instructions from Ice
14 year old Ryan taking on the rapids like a champ
Ryan's guardians for the weekend who allowed him to go riverboarding. =) And what's with the halo, Mr. guy on the left? (I swear, this picture has NOT been photoshopped.)
The legendary IceMan (yuk yuk!) and new studmo riverboarder Ryan
Beautiful double rainbow later in the day - just had to share this. =)
~Ice~
www.FaceLevel.com
Gary Pera from Aspen Seals "sledging" (what they call riverboarding in parts of New Zealand) class V Tunnel Falls in Gore Canyon. Photo by Darryl Brown of Rocky Mountain Riverboards
Rick and Animal rafting Tunnel Falls. There are 4 miles of flatwater to get to the put-in, and these guys were cool enough to let me help them paddle in, saving me the arduous flatwater swim. Photo by Darryl Brown of Rocky Mountain Riverboards
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Suffice it to say that I'm not infallible when it comes to pride.
I went out to Gore Canyon looking forward to running it and taking it all in - it's supposed to be one of the most epic stretches of whitewater in North America. It did not disappoint.
However, I ran into a little problem, that of someone's ego. Maybe it was mine, maybe it was someone else's, but whoever gets the blame for it, ultimately I made the bad decision.
Because, you see, I was exhausted from driving all the way over - and coming off a very hectic week, at that - and just kind of wanted to chill. I like to chill. Especially on the river.
I also like to scout. I mean, sure...I memorized the rapids according to the description on AmericanWhitewater.org, but there's nothing like taking 3 or 4 minutes to get out on the rocks and actually look at the rapid - or in this case, many large, tumultuous, very chaotic rapids - before rippin' into them on a riverboard.
But I got talked into racing. Not me and a whole big group of people, just me and one other guy (the, um, Boardercross thing didn't really take off this year, so FaceLevel.com wasn't running this event - perhaps next year). One other guy who has been running this river several times a year for the past, oh, 8 years straight. I'd never even SEEN this Class IV / V gem of a river.
Not to mention, the prize for winning the race was...nothing. Yeah, seriously. You only get something if you "break [the] record." That in itself kind of explains why this guy hasn't been able to get anybody else to race. HELLLLLLOO!
So that's pretty dumb right there on my part. Combine that with me being exhausted and not thinking about the fact that the river is at about 9,000 feet elevation, and you've got a recipe for me having an epiphany.
But hey, I'm competitive, and I didn't have a good reason NOT to race, mano-a-mano, so why not. Ha! Isn't the fact that I don't WANT to do something reason enough? Or that I do WANT to do SOMETHING ELSE? It should have been - but I screwed up when presented with an obvious 'challenge'. I'm the IceMan, what can I say. I understand the territory.
Anyway, basically I just bought a very expensive t-shirt.
About a mile into the thing I was cursing myself for being an idiot, puking small clouds of moondust (high elevation, I told you that), and realizing there was no way I was going to keep up with the dude at this rate of heavy breathing, so I made the decision to do what I should have just done in the first place - have fun, take my time, and enjoy a whitewater canyon that I can only describe with one word:
SPECTACULAR.
So he got what he wanted, and I got what I wanted, and everybody's happy. Right.
Gore Canyon is certainly deserving of its reputation, both of beauty and of challenge. I've got my water legs right now, having been riverboarding a ton this year, so the water wasn't a problem at all - it's big, no doubt. But it's actually quite soft (1,100cfs) and forgiving. So the river wasn't a problem. And gear definitely wasn't a problem. What was a problem was me sucking wind like a fat man waddling to the fridge for more bon-bons. (One more reason to move someplace other than "low-elevation-gloomy-weather-all-the-time-Portland".)
I'll admit I was out of elevation racing shape. Sue me. But that's just the thing - I knew that going in, which is why I just wanted to slip-n-slide my way down that great river and drink it all in: the beauty, rush, the chaos all around. And ultimately, that's exactly what I did, taking my time and eddy-hopping down amongst the last few boaters of the day. My only regret is that I wasn't able to get out a day earlier to be able to run it more than once and GET SOME DAMN PICTURES! Grrr...
Anyway, I learned my lesson about giving in to ego, and really, that's all I need to say. That, and this, because it's needed to be said for a while now:
F*ck you if you have an ego that potentially puts people's lives in danger. If you ever berate people into running stuff beyond their ability or mental fortitude. If you think scouting is for pussies. If you scare people off the river because you think you're tough stuff.
This isn't about ME - I'll run anything you will, without blinking, if you wanna go THERE. At the same time though, I have no qualms about walking despite the insults you may hurl at me, if I decide that running something isn't for me at that moment.
No, this is just about arrogance having no place on the river in general, and I guess because I almost didn't get what I wanted to get out of the trip - because I gave in to it - I kind of got pissed at myself and analyzed why it happened. And why it won't happen to me again, and why it doesn't ever need to happen in a whitewater locale, which is a naturally dangerous place for errors in judgement.
I've run into both ends of the spectrum this year - the people who are so arrogant they take juvenille glee in scaring others off the river, and the people who are so arrogant they scare others INTO the river over their heads. Peeps, there's a happy medium here, and you ain't finding it!
Look, it's just an observation, and I honestly don't care what your opinion of me is - I'm going to say it because it needs to be said. I think it's dreadfully immature when people take their egos to the river. Those kind of people don't belong. Go away.
If you're the Tao Berman of riverboarding, EVERYONE WILL KNOW IT without you running your mouth. Heck, the riverboarders I respect the most (and I've met the majority of them, one way or another) I would wager nearly nobody even IN the industry knows about. Yet if I had to hand-pick a team, they'd be the first people on it.
This weekend just got me thinking about it, because I made a decision to do something on the river I didn't want to do (bomb down the river without having ever seen it), instead of doing what I DID want to do (take my time and enjoy it - the adrenaline and the overwhelming scenic beauty), because I was persuaded - no, goaded - by ego. Maybe mine, maybe someone else's. And if *I'll* make a dumb decision like that...
See, the issue is that as the sport grows and more and more people start riverboarding down rivers at face level, arrogance of this magnitude is eventually going to get someone killed. So far no one has, and that's great. And tragedy is also a part of life, I understand that - not so great.
But someone getting hurt or killed because of their personal - and calculated - choice to push the limits of what is humanly possible, vs. someone getting hurt or killed because of a battle of wills or a personal vendetta, that's just asinine, and as long as I am a prominent person in this industry I will fight to weed people like that out. It's me or Darwin, take your pick.
Bottom line, keep your arrogant attitudes out of the river. It's NOT going to make the sport grow. It's not going to win anybody friends. And really, outside of your own head, nobody gives a damn about whatever it is that you're so freaking arrogant about.
Just a little rant I needed to get off my chest. Maybe it's directed at me. Maybe it's directed at you. Maybe it's just the Rockstar Energy Drink talking at 3AM. Who knows. =)
~Ice~
Ah, my life is full of great entertainment...I just had to share a bit of sunshine with y'all.
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And just bcoz it's a sick shot of da IceMan courtesy of Sam Drevo at eNRGkayaking.com...
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