THE RESTLESS MAN: Riverboarding the American River
by Christopher McDougall | Aug 01 '04
THIS MONTH: Riverboarding
WHERE: An hour from Sacramento
DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: Can you swim well? Don't mind being a human pinball?
COST OF WEEKEND: $430 (plus travel)
DEGREE OF FUN: Think world's largest water slide
Balls are shrinking fast, and the water ain't that cold. Ten of us have just
flutter-kicked across the American River with swim fins and modified bodyboards,
but even though we look as badass as a Navy SEAL assault team, the guy next to
me, a first-time riverboarder like me, is taking a good look at the white water
downstream and shaking his head in a big nuh-uh .
We're clinging to rocks, catching our wind while watching kayakers get flipped
on their heads and whipped out of sight. At least they've got boats to cling to;
all we have is a chunk of foam. The plan is to surf on our bellies down nearly
six miles of Class III river, swerving around rocks and whirlpools and shooting
through rapids labeled with warned-you-dickhead nicknames like Meatgrinder,
Triple Threat, and Troublemaker. Tomorrow, we'll tackle the bottom stretch,
another six-mile run.
"What's the worst that can happen?" bellows Bob Carlson, the hard-partying,
walrus-looking fifty-four-year-old math geek who created the boards we're
surfing on. The fact that he has to shout to be heard above the river roar isn't
real reassuring; even less so, his logic: "We're already dumped in the water!"
"You'll love it!" hollers Marse. "It's like motocross on your belly!"
Marse should just shut the hell up. He's the one who gave us our first taste of
riverboarder's remorse with that horror story about getting "Maytagged." "Last
time, I got sucked head-first under a wave that turned out to be a whirlpool,"
Marse said. "The other guys were looking for me, and all they saw was one
flipper sticking up, spinning around and around."
"Where was that?" I ask, scanning the churn right below us.
"Don't worry," Marse says. "You'll know it when you see it."
WE HAD GATHERED earlier at a launch spot called Chili Bar, on the river's South
Fork, just above the old Sutter's Mill prospecting camp and an hour east of
Sacramento. Riverboarding isn't a sport, technically, since no one much does it
except Bob and his buddies and a few dozen other white-water junkies who've
converted from riding atop the water to riding in it. "You have to accept
getting thrown around a little by a superior force," Bob said while dumping huge
bags of gear from the back of his pickup.
Years of ER-assisted trial and error have helped Bob create a riverboarding
uniform that's both fetishy and formidable and can protect most people from the
risks associated with hurtling skull-first down a snowmelt-engorged river:
hypothermia, concussion, shattered kneecaps, splintered shins. "Not to mention
drowning," Bob added. Basically, you cover your body in X Games
afterbirth—water-rescue helmet, Kevlar gloves, motocross shin guards,
bodysurfing fins, rafting life vest, wet suit—then grab a thick foam bodyboard
with a swallowtail and rip-proof plastic bottom, and belly-surf the rapids like
an enormous armored otter.
"You're a strong swimmer, right?" Bob asked me. Pretty strong, but . . . "Then
you'll be fine," he concluded. "Just don't let go of your board. No matter
what."
Bob may look like a dissolute Norseman who's surrendered to grog, but he is a
lifelong water guy and former Cal-Berkeley oarsman, not to mention the owner of
a fast-click, problem-dissolving brain. He spends half his time as a
mathematical analyst for the Centers for Disease Control and the other half
inventing white-water gizmos. Back in the eighties, Bob watched rescue teams
ford a flood-swollen river on Boogie boards and decided to try it himself. By
the nineties, he had come up with a flat foam design for a board that was not
only sleeker and more maneuverable but also tough enough for his ex-girlfriend,
the blond adventurer who doubled for Meryl Streep in The River Wild , to
riverboard three hundred miles through that gnarliest of water slides, the Grand
Canyon.
"Riverboarders can play where everyone else shudders," says Bob, whose Trekkie-like
elocution tends to elevate the whole goofy enterprise into an epic adventure.
"Kayaks get jammed on rocks, rafts flip over, but a riverboard can cut
bing-bing-bing from wave to wave."
THERE ARE TEN OF US, but shortly after Marse's story and our kick-and-paddle
sprint across the river to the rocks, we're nine: The other first-timer doesn't
stop shaking his head no until one of the more seasoned guys swims him back to
shore.
Bob, meanwhile, is giving us detailed and thoroughly incomprehensible
last-second instructions on how to handle the first run of white water: "That
brown stain is actually a submerged rock, not a wave, so go around it. But if
you do go over . . ."
"Watch yer 'nads," Marse interjects. No sport should involve watching your 'nads,
I mentally object, and miss the middle chunk of Bob's battle plan.
". . . you've got to punch through the next wave," he continues, "then kick like
hell to your right at the second big rock that's sticking out and swing around
to your left. . . ."
First wave, second rock . . . all I see is a snarl of froth and the mental image
of a yellow flipper swirling around and around.
One by one, the other guys are detaching and kicking into the current. I don't
want to fall behind, so I flipper hard after them. Too hard, it turns out; I go
hurtling past them.
Crap. Before I know it, I'm nearly on top of the brown stain I'm supposed to
avoid. I thrash my fins and urge my board hard aport, but I'm still speeding
straight at it. I crash right into the rock, then slide over, barking the hell
out of my shin. I don't know how that rock missed the shin guard, but I've got
to forget it for now because I'm rocketing toward a wall of water that's rearing
against a holy-shit-size boulder. No point trying to steer, I now know, so I
brace to deploy Bob's emergency procedure: Roll behind the board on impact.
But . . . there's no impact. I shoot right up the water wall, curve around the
boulder, and slingshot back out the other side. Damn! What a kick! I punch
through the big wave behind it, as Bob predicted, and clear my eyes to find
myself coasting into a long stretch of smooth-running current. If it weren't for
my throbbing leg, I'd be pumped. I reach down to probe how badly my shin is hurt
and find molded plastic. I did hit on the shin guard, it turns out; without it,
I'd be trying to make shore right now with a compound fracture.
That little thrill ride teaches me something else: Since I'm encased in six
millimeters of air-injected rubber and a life vest, I'm going to pretty much
float along no matter what I do, so I'm better off just chilling and enjoying
the ride. That's why I didn't splatter into the boulder: By staying still, I
just flowed around it like another chunk of driftwood.
Good things to know with Meatgrinder coming up fast. I flipper in behind Bob to let him pick our line, discovering that I actually can swerve the board pretty nimbly by alternating kicking legs and shifting weight. But once the current grabs us, I white-knuckle the grips and let everything else go limp. It's working great; I'm cascading down rock ledges and plummeting in and out of trouble until, suddenly, my new allegiance to passive resistance is shaken as I see Marse pointing to a swirly spot dead ahead and shouting, "That's it!"
I start twisting and kicking like a convulsing epileptic. I'm straining the board so far right that I'm on the verge of flipping, but there's no way I'm getting whirlpooled under a rock without a fight, even a pointlessly dorky one. I just manage to swing past, and as I go by, I look back and see Peter, a forty-something yacht assembler who loves riverboarding so much that he caught a red-eye home from Hawaii just to be here today, somehow turned around and heading back up the wave, like a spawning salmon.
What the hell . . . ? "That's the essence of riverboarding," Bob tells me later. The trick to "surfing the hole," he explains, is to first ride through a wave, then climb ashore and leap back into it, facing upstream and kicking like a demon until you balance at the point where water pouring down meets water being churned back up. Catch it right and you can hiss back and forth on the crest like a Boogie-boarder in the barrel of a breaker. Miscalculate and you'll find yourself on the shitty end of a wave you were lucky to get through the first time.
When we haul ourselves out of the water after Triple Threat, I decide to give it a stab. Correction: All I'm really doing is belly flopping in with no expectation of pulling it off, hoping the other guys will give me credit for trying and leave me alone with the stunts so I can focus on surviving the day. I steel myself to getting chewed up and spit out, but after a burst of semi-sincere kicking, everything goes eerily quiet. I must have accidentally nailed my entry, because I'm burbling in place. It's like sensory deprivation: I'm weightless, and even the roar of the water has stopped, since the wave is breaking behind me.
I drop a shoulder and the board skims across the wave to the right. Drop the other one and I'm back again. I'm zipping back and forth, having a blast, when I look up and see an outfitter's raft heading right for me. Everyone freezes—the rafters pause with paddles in the air, not believing someone would be farting around in such a boiling mess—and I'm wondering how the hell I can dodge this monster. Triple Threat resolves the stalemate; when I try to angle my board out of the raft's way, I break balance with the wave and get ripped under. I don't know if I'm head down or up, but instead of swimming for daylight, I hear Bob's voice saying, No matter what . . . , so I keep clinging to one of the hand grips. Eventually I pop up, coughing water to the thumbs-up and woo-hoos of highly entertained rafters.
I'm suddenly struck by the reason I'm having so much fun: Riverboarding may be the only sport I've tried that I can actually do first crack out of the box. I'm not nearly as skilled as the pros, sure, but unlike skiing or surfing, I can get in and mix it up with them. By the time we hit Satan's Cesspool the next day, I'm hanging tough with Peter as we surf the roughest wave on the river.
"You taking point on this one?" I hear Bob ask after we finally renounce Satan and drift on downstream. Without noticing, I've kicked ahead of the pack as we enter the final run of rapids. Yeah, why not? Meatgrinder already seems like a long time ago.
How to Experience This Adventure:
FLY into Sacramento and drive an hour east to Coloma, an old prospecting town.
CONTACT Beyond Limits Adventures (800-234-7238), which will take you on two rollicking, shin-bashing days on the South Fork of the American River for $299, meals and Mad Max costume included.
SLEEP in one of the cabin tents set up along the river ($75 first night, then half price). Lesser men can stay at the cushy Sierra Nevada House (530-626-8096; $89).
DRINK a Golden Cadillac (think Galliano milkshake) at Poor Red's, an 1850s-apothecary-turned-saloon in nearby El Dorado. Gnaw on the stegosaurus-sized ribs ($11).
GO late May through early September; the earlier in the year, the faster the water.
SIDEBAR: Real Men Don't Need Boats—Three More Places to Prove It
*Clark Fork River, Alberton Gorge, Montana.
The sick waterflow here (which makes the Grand Canyon look like Thomas Kinkade's
backyard stream) creates huge standing waves on which you can glide back and
forth—nirvana for riverboarders. Montana River Guides; 800-381-7238.
*Ottawa River, Davidson, Quebec.
For East Coasters, this surprisingly warm river (downright tropical in August)
boasts the big water of the West without the cross-country trek. Two narrow
channels compress the current into piles of foam you can hover over longer than
Star Jones at a buffet. Esprit Rafting; 800-596-7238.
*Trinity River, Hoopa Valley, California.
The rockless, relatively straight chutes are forgiving for newbies but still
plenty fun. Work your way up to the natural dams, where the river pools for a
bit, only to pour you over drops that'll make you check your fear—and your
pants. Birch Circle Adventures; 415-459-7717.
—PETER MARTIN