With a change in venue to Northern California's Montara Beach, this year's 14th annual Tsunami Rangers Extreme Conditions Sea Kayak Race easily lived up to its boat-crushing billing as the world's most treacherous sea kayak race. Consider the fact that the shore break at the start threw race organizer Eric Soares and partner Misha Dynnikov head-over-heels nine different times before letting them pass through to open water. Then consider that seven boats were so heavily damaged that they never made it off the beach, and that race veteran John Weed saw his racing boat crushed when a Futura surf ski came flying back from the surf and landed on it. "It was definitely a brutal event," says long-time competitor Michael Powers, one of the few fortunate contestants to make it through the surf on the first try. "There was a lot of crunched Kevlar and snapped rudders." Once the remaining 16 kayaks made it through the pounding shore break, six miles of open water racing delivered competitors to the finish line at the Miramar Beach Kayak Club. In the end, it was Ken Howell and John Dye taking first with a time of 1:08:10.
—edb
Gates of Lodore Goes Big Hell's Half Mile and Disaster Falls lived up to their names this spring as the highest flow in 16 years pulsed down the Green River through Colorado's Gates of Lodore. A June 12-21 release of 10,500 cfs through Flaming Gorge Dam more than doubled the typical spring peak, giving those fortunate enough to be there a taste of what the whitewater was like in rapid-namer Major John Wesley Powell's day.
Only in 1983, when the flow peaked at 12,500, has the river been higher since Flaming Gorge Reservoir began filling in 1962. The release was driven by snowpack 150 percent of average in the Upper Green River Basin, which fed high runoff into a reservoir already more full than usual. "Some water had to go," says Bureau of Reclamation (BuRec) hydraulic engineer Tom Ryan. The BuRec decided to let it go when it could serve a second purpose: Flush the river and rebuild spawning areas for three endangered fish species--the razorback sucker, Colorado squawfish and humpback chub. A "biological opinion" issued in 1992 for the benefit of the fish calls for such peak spring flows, Ryan adds. But typically they are capped at 4,600—the capacity of Flaming Gorge's hydropower plant.
Boaters wishing for another high adrenaline year will have to pray for snow. They could also cheer on the National Park Service, which is negotiating for spring flows as high as possible in Dinosaur National Monument. High peak flows not only help fish and thrill boaters but rebuild islands and sandbars—a benefit already reported at Wild Mountain Campground a couple of miles downstream from Hell's Half Mile.
—Bob Findlay
With a change in venue to Northern California's Montara Beach, this year's 14th annual Tsunami Rangers Extreme Conditions Sea Kayak Race easily lived up to its boat-crushing billing as the world's most treacherous sea kayak race. Consider the fact that the shore break at the start threw race organizer Eric Soares and partner Misha Dynnikov head-over-heels nine different times before letting them pass through to open water. Then consider that seven boats were so heavily damaged that they never made it off the beach, and that race veteran John Weed saw his racing boat crushed when a Futura surf ski came flying back from the surf and landed on it. "It was definitely a brutal event," says long-time competitor Michael Powers, one of the few fortunate contestants to make it through the surf on the first try. "There was a lot of crunched Kevlar and snapped rudders." Once the remaining 16 kayaks made it through the pounding shore break, six miles of open water racing delivered competitors to the finish line at the Miramar Beach Kayak Club. In the end, it was Ken Howell and John Dye taking first with a time of 1:08:10.
Hell's Half Mile and Disaster Falls lived up to their names this spring as the highest flow in 16 years pulsed down the Green River through Colorado's Gates of Lodore. A June 12-21 release of 10,500 cfs through Flaming Gorge Dam more than doubled the typical spring peak, giving those fortunate enough to be there a taste of what the whitewater was like in rapid-namer Major John Wesley Powell's day.