Red Cliff – Mountain rivers are essentially composed of water and rocks. Creeks, however, reverse the order.
There certainly were more rocks than water at this year’s edition of the Paddler magazine extreme creek race Thursday, after a recent wave of cold temperatures in the mountains left a scant 50 cubic feet per second of liquid streaming down the jumbled cascade of Homestake Creek where it joins the Eagle River. Still, more than 40 of the world’s top kayakers willingly risked battered elbows and occasionally bruised egos to tackle one of Colorado’s steepest sections of whitewater during the 2005 Teva Mountain Games.
“I think it’s a good race that’s real technical and real difficult,” said race winner Tao Berman of Seattle. “This is one of the more difficult races just because there are so many rocks and so many little obstacles that you could lose the race on. There are other races that look much more spectacular, but the lines are so much easier to hit that there are fewer variables in those races. This is one of the hardest races that I’ve done just because there are so many places where you can lose the race.”
Berman, who lost the first race of his 2005 kayaking season just a day before in the Dowd Chute Paddlecross at the Teva Games, made a strong showing in his first run of the 2-lap race Thursday, sluicing through the 480-foot-per-mile gradient 2.8 seconds faster than his closest competitor, Pat Keller of Ashville, N.C.
Keller, the 2003 race winner who turns 19 on Monday, trimmed the lead by two seconds on his second run down the river, but failed to match Berman’s winning time of 3 minutes, 33 seconds. Eric Jackson of Rock Island, Tenn., finished third in 3:41.
“I wasn’t charging quite as hard as I could have on my first run because I wanted to save some energy for my second run,” Keller said. “But on my second run, I used everything I had. You can’t really go down the whole run charging in this race, because you’re going to mess up. You have to take your time, time your strokes, use your edges to help yourself turn and use your energy the best you can to work it out. You really have to stick your moves.”
The precision necessary to be competitive was evident throughout the event, as some of the world’s best kayakers fell victim to the demands of Homestake Creek. Among the most notable was 2003 freestyle world champion Jay Kincaid of Reno, Nev., who was forced to swim when his kayak was pinned between boulders on one of the creek’s many technical drops.
Women’s champion Nikki Kelly of New Zealand also found herself on the rocks on a couple of occasions, but managed to regain her line and separate herself from the rest of the field by 12 seconds after two runs. Tanya Faux of Australia finished second, followed by Robin Betz of Blacksburg, Va., 25 seconds off the pace.
“If I hadn’t gotten spun out on a rock, I might have given some of the boys’ egos a bruise,” said Kelly, whose two-run time of four minutes was better than several men. “I’m just happy I’ve got no holes in my boat.”
Scott Willoughby can be reached at 303-820-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com.
