| A brief guide to running waterfalls by Chris Joosse | ||
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The photo sequence on this page is of the author running 'Big Brother' on the Green Truss stretch of the White Salmon in Washington State at medium flow. This waterfall is run a lot, but at high levels is generally portaged because the cave on river right becomes a more serious hazard. The first frame shows the final moment of transition from floating to falling- the boof stroke on this drop was used arrest the rate of pitch, and turn the boat so that on landing the boater would porpoise away from the cave on river right. The entry on this drop occurs on a sharp right-hand bend in the river, and the author is actually traveling generally river left, away from the cave on river right at the bottom of the drop. The second frame shows the author transitioning from that stroke towards a forward-leaning 'crash' position. The landing on this run came down at about 50-60 degrees, (a little flatter than planned) roughly on the edge of the curtain on river left, in order to avoid the general push to the right (and into the cave) caused by the crown at the bottom and the downflow on river left. For perspective, the boat is an inazone 230. The shot was taken from the river right bank with a long, long lens.
Resources: More Pictures: The Author at Spirit Falls (photo by Juergen Nickles)
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 Photos by Dave Waag Running waterfalls rules. There, I'm biased and there's no denying it. It's one of my favorite things to do. That said, it can be dangerous and the consequences of a mistake can be severe. This article is meant to be a guide to help you think about the way you approach bigger drops, and to give you some ideas for techniques that will help you protect yourself from injury when things go wrong... and sooner or later, everyone will make a mistake. What this article will not do for you is give you the skills- for that, you need to practice, preferably on smaller drops, until you're comfortable with it. I'll assume that before you begin to scout your line off of a waterfall that you've already decided on where you want to land and (more importantly) where your exits and hazards are- and that you've got some sort of safety set in case things go awry. This is an activity that can go from very fun to very not-fun- a waterfall has a LOT of power- so pick your drops with care and plan your execution with a worst-case scenario in mind before you actually commit to it- hopefully this is just a case of cautious pessimism, but it pays in spades to be prepared when your plans get derailed... and sometimes that's just what happens. Waterfalling is fun fun stuff, and with the right approach your fun-to-carnage ratio can be very high indeed. The problem you now face is fairly complex, but can be broken down roughly to the following set of questions:
The answers will all be related, so we should start from the end and work our way back to a starting point from which all of this will work- in essence, as with reading a rapid, we begin with the desired end, and work our way backwards from there to discover where we want to start and what we'll need to do in order to get there. From there, it's all a matter of working out the details. We'll address the above questions in turn, starting with the first:
Picking your spot Often a waterfall will have a crowning boil conveniently placed in the pool at the base, and this is generally a nice, soft, highly aerated bunch of water to land in- landing in these is generally a forgiving experience with regard to impact, but can be difficult to control once you're there- there are few places as violent as the base of a big drop. Landing on the boil is usually desirable, provided you land on the side of the boil that's kicking in the direction you want to go- this makes your exit automatic, and doesn't require you to be 100% precise with your landing attitude. Look at the crown of the boil when scouting and realize that this is a fast-moving piece of water, and you'll go wherever it pushes you once you're there. Keep this in mind when plotting your escape- sometimes your best bet is to punch deep and resurface in a better place. For our purposes, let's assume that the drop you're scouting is not one of those glorious straight-off, land-in-a-big-fluffy-pile, pointed-however-you-like drops that will immediately spit you out into a big, calm pool unhurt and upright. For those drops, you can do more or less what you like and most of the time you'll come out okay. If all the waterfalls in the world were like this, I wouldn't have written this article and we'd all be hucking ourselves off huge drops with no problems. Alas, however, the world is not a perfect one, and we're often faced with the necessity of dealing with situations that contain a little more risk. The purpose of this article is to give you some ideas about how to marginalize this risk as much as possible. Usually, as drops get taller, we find that it becomes more and more necessary to land vertically- penciling in to the pool provides us with the smallest profile, allowing us to penetrate the pool farther, effectively distributing our impact out over a longer period of deceleration time. There are a couple of things to discuss about landings, now that we've reached this point:
Flat Landings: Sometimes you just screw up, sometimes your pool is a bit shallow, and sometimes you've just got to boof to avoid a hazard and this means that you're coming in for a flat landing, or at least, flatter than you'd like. The problem here is that you risk injuring your spine on impact, and the solution is to get forward over your bow into what I refer to as 'crash position'. Crash position involves getting yourself in physical contact with your bow deck, with an arm between your head and the lip of your cockpit combing, head turned to one side or the other- sort of like the setup position for a roll, but with your paddle and arms in tight. The shaft of your paddle will be roughly parallel to the boat, your head will be pressed against your arm, your arm will be pressed against the deck of your boat. This will keep you from whipping into the deck of the boat on impact, keep you from straining neck and back muscles fighting the force of impact, and most importantly, it'll keep you from channeling all that impact force directly up your spine. Instead, you'll take all of that force on the chest, shoulders, and arms- you might be sore, but you'll paddle away. Perhaps a better way to think about this position is that you're driving the force in your upper body *through* the boat and into the pool- rather than fighting to get your upper body up and away from it. It should go without saying that from sufficient height, there is no way you'll be strong enough to fight the deceleration forces involved- if you try to 'get away' from your deck (seems like the natural thing to do), all you'll do is strain your back muscles as you proceed to accelerate your face into your cockpit rim, and it's a reasonable bet that your day will just get worse from there. Get into contact with the front deck of your boat, it's your best alternative when you're coming in too flat. It should be noted that all of this is likely to happen pretty quickly- practice getting into crash position quickly, and you're more likely to be able to make the decision to use it in time for it to be useful. Also, as a general rule, make sure you're warmed up and stretched before committing to bigger drops- even if you do things perfectly, as you go taller the forces involved in your landing will become remarkably huge. If you just hiked in to do the waterfall, or if the falls is at the beginning of your paddling day, be sure that you're physically prepared or you'll be sore afterwards. If you've ever played contact sports, you remember all those isometric shoulder, leg, and neck exercises they had you do? Now would be a good time to go through them. Bow deflections: As you fall into the water, your boat will probably make it there first- and because your boat has rocker, it's tendency will be to porpoise upwards, or deflect, toward the surface. This is a good thing, as it often brings you to the surface in a desirable way, but it's vital that you predict when this may happen- because this porpoising action can be crisp and nearly as violent as a flat landing. If you're not in a forward-leaning position, a bow deflection can turn the boat under you before you catch up with the boat, and the result could be that you'll load your spine with impossible force- so again, the crash position described above is prescribed, both to prevent bow deflections, and to deal with their consequences. For medium-height drops where crash position may not be 'necessary', get into the habit of turning your head to one side or another on landing- just in case. The author has managed to soften his nose on the deck of his boat by failing to do so on a 12-foot boof that 'looked like it had a soft landing'. :-) Boat choice: All other things being equal, I favor smaller boats, playboats even, to practice running drops- provided that the landing zone is deep enough. Smaller boats are easier to manage, have less surface area to engage on landing, and in general will penetrate the pool deeper than their longer, more highly-rockered creek brethren. Usually, however, you're stuck paddling what you're creeking in- so if you're wavering between getting something long vs. something short, consider that shorter boats are a plus when it comes to landing waterfalls safely... and also note that round hulls tend to land with less snap (should you land flat) than do flatter ones. Dealing with your paddle: There are a lot of ideas about what to do with your paddle when there's a pool of water rushing up at you, and some of them are quite bad. Do NOT put your paddle above your head as you enter the pool- this can have several bad consequences:
While we're discussing things not to do with your paddle, it makes sense not to land with it in front of your face. If the impact is severe enough to buckle your arms, you could easily injure yourself that way, and remember, we're here for fun, not to see if we can re-set a broken nose in the field or if we can find all of our teeth. :-) Two other options exist that are safe and practical- one involves simply tucking your paddle shaft down across your waist, which is what Tao Berman did on his world record drop- however, this can be hard on your paddle, (his broke on impact with the pool) and in the event of a bow deflection you may end up taking the front of your cockpit in the face. The second, which I favor, is more or less built in to the 'crash position' I described above- you spear the oncoming water with one blade of your paddle in such a way that it'll deflect down and onto the bow of your boat. This can prevent bow deflections, and once you've shed a lot of your speed underwater, it turns into a control stroke as you resurface. Be sure not to allow the paddle to deflect upwards, away from the boat- the danger is that it'll go back behind you and wrench your shoulder, or even possibly come up and into your face. Keep it low, and use it to spear a hole in the water- and if you do it right, your helmet will follow through that same hole an instant later. Tuck your head into that hole, and be prepared to feel your paddle flex a bit. It's wild. Another bonus to using the 'spear' method on entry- if you do it right, that spear-stroke becomes a control-blade, either a brace or a quick roll, already set up. Punching a hole in the pool: So you're coming in perfectly, and you hit the pool- what's so complicated? Well, nothing really- at this point, you just need to make sure that you follow through on it. If you're coming in from height you'll have accumulated some pretty impressive energy along the way, and if you cringe away from the impact, it'll blow you back, smack you onto your back deck, knock the wind out of you, take your paddle away, and probably take 5 bucks out of your wallet while it's at it. Remember, punch through the surface of the water like you're breaking boards, Karate-style- this will minimize the 'thwack' factor and also, perhaps not coincidentally, make your entry profile into the pool smaller. It's also important to understand that you don't want to tense up so much as you want to simply drive through the surface of the water- when you tense up, what you're doing is trying to remain immobile- half of your energy is going forwards, half of it is holding you back. Put all of your energy into going forwards, so that you're more relaxed upon impact. If you're tense, the energy you devote to holding yourself back will be added to the oncoming impact, increasing your chances of being blown back. Over-rotation: Some drops want to pitch you past-vertical- and this can be painful on landing, because your tendency will be to sit back in the cockpit to keep the bow pointed where you want it to go- until you're on your back deck, entering the pool essentially belly-first, absorbing a lot of impact on your diaphragm, which can knock the wind out of you. A good plan is to use the crash position described above, and take the brunt of the landing on your back and shoulders. It should be noted that if shallow rocks are a concern... you might want to consider that before you reach this point. Another possibility would be to simply spear the water with your paddle and follow your paddle with a straight body into that hole, as if you were cliff-diving and just happened to have a boat around your waist and a paddle in your hands. Keep in mind that there's a risk of imploding your skirt and/or falling out of your boat on impact when using this approach. Getting to your landing Now that we've got some ideas on how to deal with the event of actually hitting the pool, how do we get to this point in more or less the direction we planned? Well, it's more or less all a matter of what happens in that last stroke, and that last stroke can be a doozy. :-) The problem you face is in establishing the right pitch rate in order to get you to the bottom more or less vertical, in your forward crash position- but first, let's define some terms-
Now, as your boat goes off the edge of your launch point, there is generally a moment where one end of the boat is supported by water and the other isn't. Depending upon the abruptness of this transition and how fast you are going relative to the flow of water at the lip (which is accelerating, just to make things complicated :-) you'll naturally have some degree of pitch initiated by the transition itself. Sometimes this is perfect and you don't need to do anything but go with it- but sometimes the drop will want to pitch you past-vertical, sometimes it will introduce some roll to your launch, and sometimes you'll need to introduce some yaw in order to land where and how you want. As a general rule, you should be going at least as fast as the water is until you separate from it. If you're going slower, you risk engaging your stern in the downflow at the launch point and pitching backwards- which has, more than once, resulted in an unplanned flat landing. During the moment of launch, as the launch transition pitches you over, a good forward stroke, a la the boof, can be used to slow or even stop your rate of pitch- ideally, you arrive upon a pitch rate that will end up with you landing vertically at the bottom. If you over-do the boof stroke, you risk under-rotating, and if you miss it, you risk over-rotating. Consider, as you scope out your drop, where your last moment of input (i.e., that last stroke) is likely to be. That point is generally your moment of commitment- the moment by which your pitch, yaw, and roll rates must be finalized. It is sometimes possible to get extra control strokes in by sweeping against the water that's falling around/near you, but these can be dodgy- it's preferable to be where you want to be by the time you're fully committed to it. Also consider that as the height of your drop increases, your precision must also increase- because not only do the penalties for missing a good vertical entry go up, the time you spend pitching/yawing/rolling beyond your moment of commitment also increases. Also consider that as the height of the drop increases, so does the intimidation factor- it might seem to be a natural response to lean back, away from that big precipice, but that's not what you really want to do- stick with your plan. Sometimes it can be desirable to under-rotate slightly, in order to porpoise to the surface rapidly, upright, and with directional control- be aware that although this gives you excellent control over your exit, it can be hard on you physically- be sure to use good defensive judgment and use that crash position! Use your head, slick Running waterfalls is as much a head game as it is a physical activity. It's arguable that the physical part is the easiest. This is a game where mental mistakes, fear, and incomplete planning can lead to less-than-desirable results, so it pays to visualize and rehearse in your head just what you want to do- it's a good habit to get into. Summary So there you have it- a beginning point from which to think about how to approach those waterfalls you've been looking at for so long. Again, this article is just a guide towards helping you think clearly about how to plan running those big drops- it's not going to give you the skills, just the ideas. In order to get the skills, you'll need to practice, preferably on smaller drops at first, with good safety, good friends, and good judgment. Be safe, and above all, have fun! If you have questions or comments about the contents of this article, please let me know. |
We
begin with the exit in mind- that is, a landing that will put is in a
safe place, beyond any boil lines, (getting trashed at the base of a big
drop is an experience devoutly to be avoided, yessirreebob) and then try
to figure out a workable impact point that is attainable from the drop.
