The roar from the crowd Saturday on the sheer banks drowned out the train-like rumble of the waterfalls on Oh-Be-Joyful Creek.
“It sounded so cool to be in the eddy above the big drop and hear the crowd,” said Brent Toepper, a kayak industry veteran and organizer of the sixth annual kayak race down one of the nation’s steepest creeks.
Thirty-one of the country’s strongest creek paddlers (25 men and six women) rallied in Crested Butte for the big-league race. With a gradient of 400 feet per mile and frothing with fresh snowmelt, Oh-Be ranks as a classic among the heavy-hitting kayakers who find their thrills plummeting down rocky gorges.
Friday’s practice runs before race day offered a lot of carnage, as a few dozen experts tested their skills. Swimmers lost their boats for good. And there was a handful of swimmers, including tested veterans who made the tiniest of errors in the slate-filled slides and drops.
Oh-Be is mostly a collection of 20-foot-plus waterfalls and slides. Jason Beaks, from Washington, D.C., greased every drop and slide perfectly, logging the fastest one-lap time ever: 3 minutes, 41 seconds. There is no stopping, just a foam-and-rock surfing, mile-long free fall faster than the world’s speediest sprinters.
A decade ago, when a few of the biggest names in kayaking would gather for unofficial races down Oh-Be, not many would race. They would hurry, but they still would catch the three or four eddies above the meanest drops.
Saturday, almost the entire field went without the benefit of a couple of movement-free moments in the micro-eddies where mere mortals wait for their brains, bodies and breathing to catch up with their boats.
“This race was a good combination of a lot more water – probably more than ever before – and people who actually trained for it,” said Clay Wright, a Tennessee paddling icon who used to race down Oh-Be more than a decade ago and tied for third Saturday.
The men raced two laps, and their times were combined. The women went once. All 31 kayakers had paddled with one another on various steep creeks. That gave the event a family reunion feel, Toepper said.
“All the right people showed up,” said Toepper, who as a rep for Pyranha Kayaks joined Immersion Research and Astral Buoyancy in sponsoring the event. “The people who came not sure they were ready to race figured it out on the practice day the day before. It went perfect.”
Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-820-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
