Avon Descent (August 7/8, 2004) - No
Ordinary Kayak Race
by Brendon Grail, Melbourne
|
When a buddy of mine e-mailed me a couple of months ago to ask whether I was interested in doing the Avon Descent with him, I wasn't sure exactly what he was asking me. Was I being asked to: a. climb down Avon mountain
(in which case, were we going to get dropped at the top by helicopter?) It was a bit hard to figure, because Damon's an adventure racing dude who competes in about 14 different sports, so I couldn't actually work out what type of 'Descent' he was talking about. Well it turned out to be none of those things. The Avon Descent is a kayak race as it turns out, but no ordinary kayak race. This is a 134km adventure on very lumpy water on the Avon River in Western Australia. Starting about 150km north-east of Perth at the town of Northam, the Avon river winds its way down the beautiful Avon valley, with some wicked grade 3-4 rapids along the way. The Avon River is dry in summer and only really comes to life in Winter, hence the timing for this race. The Avon Descent is a legendary event in Perth and has a long history (this was the 32nd running of the race). Initially established as a race for power-boats, it subsequently has evolved into a 2-day race for all types of water-going craft. Of the 804 competitors in the 2004 edition of Avon Descent, I reckon there would have been 500 different types of craft from superlight kevlar K1 sprint kayaks to bath-tub style canoes and sea-kayaks. When I first started doing some research about this race, I wanted to find out just how difficult the rapids were. Having a sorry history in kayak races with rapids (I once broke my kayak in half in a race on the Derwent river in Tasmania), I was told not to worry about the rapids. "Have you seen the river before?" they asked me. "No I'm from Melbourne and never been to Perth". "Well it's the ti-trees you should be worried about then." What? How the hell can kayaking around some miserable little ti-trees be difficult? If that's all there is to it, then this is going to be a breeze, I thought to myself. So I e-mailed Damon back to say 'Yep' I'll do the race. Our first task was trying to organise to borrow or hire a boat for the race. Initially we were looking for a double surf-ski, so we placed ads on all the kayaking websites in WA begging to borrow or hire a boat. After about 2 weeks without a response, I called a few shops in Perth to try to find out why no-one was offering their boat. I found out that there is not a single kayak shop in Perth who will hire a kayak for the Avon Descent. The reason the race is (in)famous for ruining equipment, with very few boats getting to the end unscathed. OK, what now? I called Qantas and they wanted $300 to transport a kayak. Bugger that. Fortunately we finally found a couple of guys who were generous (crazy?) enough to loan us their single plastic boats. I scored an Endorfinn plastic ski and Damon scored a Fluid Druid plastic down-river kayak. Just days before the race, we received a weather update saying that water levels were low and that (I quote) "Beware the rocks at almost every rapid. Those in plastic boats will need to work hard to make cut-off times. Those in composite boats will need to work hard to get boats to the finish in one piece." From my window seat flying into Perth on the Friday morning, I was encouraged to see lots of water lying about it certainly looked like a lot of rain had fallen at least I was praying that it had. We were greeted off the plane by Andrew, our support crew. Andrew informed us that there had been a thunderstorm the previous night that had probably dumped a lot of water up in the valley, so perhaps it wouldn't be too bad after all. Andrew had done the Avon Descent before, and for the first hour told us all about the race. All really interesting stuff, like how a guy died a few years ago on one of the 'easier' parts of the river. Or how a lot of people strike serious trouble less than 1km into the race and have to withdraw before they've even had a chance to say 'Fu(k was that a rock'. One of the first things we were corrected on was our pronunciation of the word 'Avon'. If you pronounce it with a long 'A', ala the Avon Lady, you're immediately recognised by locals as being a twit from out of town. To gain genuine Avon Descent cred, you have to pronounce it as 'Gavin', but without the 'G'. Being a relative ignoramus when it comes to kayaking, I had been wondering what the hell 'Shooting a weir' meant. In the information pack for the race, it mentioned that there were 2 weirs in the race that you could 'shoot' if you were experienced. After getting the pronunciation of the river wrong, I didn't dare ask Andrew what 'Shooting a weir' meant. Instead, I asked whether we could check out one of the weirs to see if it was 'shootable'. (yeah baby, I'm wid da lingo) When we arrived at Extracts Weir, I finally worked out what it was all about. Instead of a sheer 5 metre drop off the other side of the weir, they pile a bundle of rocks like a ramp and then place big long plastic pipes across it, kind of like rollers. 'Shooting the weir' simply means that you launch your boat out of the water up onto the rollers and then slide down the ramp like a toboggan. It definitely looked fun, but still frickin' dangerous. Race morning dawned cold but clear, although the race start was delayed by an hour due to fog further down the valley. With my typical pre-race nerves playing havoc on my guts, I was overjoyed to find that there were 6 porta-loos at race start, to cater for 800 competitors and about 5,000 spectators. Logistically that just didn't seem like a fair ratio of crappers to punters, at least not to my stomach which by now was doing somersaults. 15 minutes later I was finally at the front of the line, willing the girl who'd just entered to only be up for a number one. Normally I really enjoy my pre-race dump, but I was not able to enjoy this one in peace. How can you when there's a line of 15 people in a single queue outside your crapper if people were as desperate as me to get in there, then I'd be lynched if I took any longer than 55 seconds to complete my duties. For the start of the race, we went down to the first weir to see how the first few grids of power-boats would handle the low water levels. Well, what a spectacle. I witnessed a big stack, with a power-boat ploughing into another that was lodged at the base of the extract (they didn't shoot it very well), causing the navigator to do a somersault and land upright in the other boat. Then some guy tried to do a turn too fast and bent his prop (on dat big rock!) and his race was over, literally 60 seconds in. Doh! The non-powered craft started a half hour behind the power-boats, 8 kayaks leaving in grid formation, with 30 seconds between grids. I was starting from grid 38, so a long way down the field. I decided (wisely) to approach this race differently to most other races I do. Rather than bolt like a scalded cat from the start, I went out easy, figuring that 14-15 hours of paddling was a lot different from my 1-2 hour training paddles. I shot Northam Weir successfully, or at least I thought I did. I got stuck half way down the ramp and had to get out of the boat to dislodge it. As I stood up, both legs went from under me, and I slid the next few metres on my bony butt, taking the boat with me. The crowd loved the entertainment and let out an almighty cheer, which helped to soothe the pain in my ar*e and a big gash in my elbow. Fortunately I wasn't rammed from behind by another kayak, so I was very lucky to escape relatively unscathed. The next few hours of the race were very difficult. With the river only 20cm deep in parts, I had to use a wide sweeping stroke, something I had never practised. Having to use completely different muscles took its toll, and despite working like a ba*tard, I wasn't really making good forward progress through the field. Fortunately the river open up a bit in the latter stages and I was able to return to a deep stroke and started to pick up ground leading into the final 10km section of ti-trees. As I approached the ti-trees I was fortunate enough to be just behind some other guy. Having someone to follow through the ti-trees was a stroke of luck because all I could see in front of me was a thick wall of trees, with multiple small channels. Now I could see why they said this bit would be difficult for someone who had never seen the river before. If you took the wrong channel, you'd end up hanging yourself on low-lying branches or worse still, lodged tight in a narrow stand of trees. And with a 5 metre long boat, it's not that easy to turn the thing around! The guy in front of me didn't even slow as we approached the trees and confidently steered into a small channel on the right. With such a confident move, I figured he knew what he was doing, so I just followed him (I would later learn that this guy had done the race 17 times, and hundreds of times in practice, so he knew the fastest route through the trees!) Twice I was unable to manouevre my boat around tight technical turns, the fast-flowing water ramming me into branches and tipping me in. Fortunately both times I scampered back on and caught back up to Mr 17 Times. Powering through the trees in these really narrow channels was quite intimidating, and a real andrenaline rush. We exited the ti-trees about an hour later to the welcome sight of the finish line. As I stood out of the boat, I did a drunken wobble and nearly fell over, my legs half-asleep from lack of circulation. 57km down, only 77km to go! Sunday morning was a replica of Saturday cold and foggy. I was a little apprehensive going into day 2 because I had suffered some serious pain in my right wrist during the last couple of hours of day 1. Fortunately Andrew had a supply of Nurofen, so I popped a few before the start. The first few km's of today's stage was through more ti-trees, before the real fun of the race begun. The start format was today was based on finishing times from day 1. I was relatively surprised to find that I had placed 9th out of about 150 starters in the male long plastic race category, so was elevated to grid 25. Only 4 kayaks left in each grid this morning, due to the technical nature of the ti-trees. Even with only 4 starting in my grid, we still experienced some log-jams in the trees within minutes, several times having to wait for people to untangle their boats from trees before being able to pass through. The first big rapid of the day was Emu Falls, a hard-core grade 3-4 rapid. I could tell this was going to be dodgy because there were rescue people standing around the falls everywhere with ropes. I was concentrating on the approach so much, that I only noticed at the last minute that a lot of people were heading off to the bank on the right to portage the falls. Damn, too late to pull back now. I launched myself between the two big boulders at the entrance to the falls, succesfully made the tight left hand turn, but failed miserably to make an even tighter right hand turn at the base of the falls. I was suddenly in the 'Washing-Machine' at the base of the falls, my boat upside down and lodged between two boulders. I could see the officials madly waving the red flags at the top of the falls, warning other kayakers of the obstruction. I was able to swim to some rocks further downstream, smashing my right shin on a rock on the way, whilst some super-efficient rescue guys dislodged my boat and brought it downstream to me. It all happened really quickly, and I lost only a minute or so, so I was really pumped to have that behind me. Only moments after Emu, I noticed something wrong with the paddle near my left hand. Damn it, I had cracked the shaft of the paddle, and shards of carbon were starting to protrude. This made me very nervous because I wasn't carrying a spare paddle, although Damon was carrying a spare paddle in his boat and he was not far behind. Thank goodness I had made a decision to wear gloves on Day 2 (due to the numerous blisters after day 1) without the gloves, the carbon shards would have shredded my left hand. The remainder of the rapids seemed rather tame by comparison to Emus (except for Syd's Rapid which was my favourite), although I was once again lucky enough to be following Mr 17-times. By entering rapids about 30 metres behind him, if he got through unscathed, I followed his line exactly. If he went ar*e over t*t (which he did 3 times), I always went to the left. This worked every time, although on one occasion I launched my craft into space when I hit a huge boulder at speed front on fortunately there was a big water flow going over it, so it caused no damage to the boat (or me). At every rapid there was a huge crowd of people on the rocks cheering us on. This really was a race that the locals love, and the support really helped me to ignore the pain I was feeling in my wrist. On approach to the final rapid of the day, Bells Rapid, I could hear the cheering of the spectators before I could hear the sound of the pounding water. Sure enough, after exiting a short stand of ti-trees, there were literally thousands of people lining the banks, eagerly awaiting the next Bells casualty! I succesfully made the first 2 metre drop, but in my joy at having stayed upright, I failed to start turning right quickly enough and I was heading straight for a rock wall at the base of the drop. Mr Commentator introduced me to the crowd "This is Brendon Grail from Melbourne and Brendon has his name written all over those rocks!" Well damn you Mr Smarty-Pants, I'll show you. I started back-paddling like I've never back-paddled before. I reckon I came within 2 feet of kissing the rocks when I finally regained control of the boat, I then managed to sweep hard right and missed the wall by mere centimetres. The crowd let out a huge cheer and I was waiting for an apology for Mr Commentator, but alas it never came. Good thing it didn't either, because on the next smaller drop about 10 seconds later, I had a big stack and came off, bashing my left shin on a rock and carving a big hole out of my thermals and depositing some skin and flesh on the rock. I think it's my destiny to have big stacks on the last rapid of the day (it was the last rapid of the day in the race in Tasmania that broke my boat too). After stopping just below the rapids to refuel with a baguette, banana and Nurofen and get some encouragement from Andrew, I started the final 30km flat-water slog to the finish. This section of the race is renowned as being psychologically the toughest part of the race, especially for people in plastic boats (because plastic boats are notoriously slow in flat water). I started to run out of steam with about 15km remaining, and bonked badly with only 5km to go. I paused for a minute to eat a muesli bar, down a squeezie and have a long, long pee ahhh, that's much better! To pee while paddling, you simply stop paddling, lean backwards and then let it flow keeps you nice and warm for minutes (although it also caused some nasty stinging due to lack of skin in the nether regions, scrubbed off from 13 hours of friction against a hard plastic seat). It was absolute joy to cross the finish line after 13 hour, 3 minutes and 50 seconds of paddling, which was good enough to finish 10th long plastic out of 124 finishers. Once again I did the drunken sailor's jig after standing up, and nearly strangled myself on my finisher's medal which some lady was in the process of slinging around my neck. Fortunately my wrist and my paddle survived the epic, although three days after the race I still have pins and needles in my right arm and it hurts to shake someone's hand. Damon didn't have quite as smooth a run as me, carving a hole in the front of his boat and having various mechanicals (rudder, pedal system etc), but he still finished high up. Finishing this race is a much bigger challenge than finishing most endurance events, due to the pounding that your equipment gets from the river. We couldn't have done it without our awesome support crew thanks Andrew and Jenny. And thanks to Garth for the loan of the ski, which was just unbreakable. This race has everything shallow water, pounding rapids, ti-trees, wide flat river. It's no wonder that the South Africans come across to this race in droves. The atmosphere at the race is awesome, and the Perth public support the event like you wouldn't believe. I think that surprised me the most was how friendly all the competitors are. Unlike triathlon where big egos jostle for position and get audibly anxious at the least inconvenience, at Avon Descent it's more like "No worries mate, I don't mind that you just slammed me in the head with the nose of your kayak, I'm sorry for getting in your way, have a nice day" (seriously!) If you're looking for a relatively safe adventure that is cheap and also lots of fun, it's definitely worth doing this race once in your lifetime. If my words didn't get the visuals happening for you, then check out the Channel 10 highlights package on Saturday week. And check out the website http://www.avondescent.asn.au Brendon Grail |