By Steffan Meyric Hughes
Quitting the sugar
One of the tragedies of kayaking is that our sport is so under-represented (by its own practitioners) in books and film. We have no Touching the Void, Dog Town and Z Boys or Endless Summer, which cemented rock-climbing, skating and surfing in the imaginations of a much broader audience.
There are no really good books, like The Longest Silence (fishing), Coasting or Riddle of the Sands (sailing) or Into Thin Air (mountaineering). Whitewater paddlers with interest in freestyle must survive culturally on a high-sugar diet of endless YouTube clips of unfeasible tricks pulled off on impossible-looking waves and monster rapids, interspersed with music. As diets go, it’s something akin to basing a long-term survival strategy on something you occasionally really want – like trying to live solely on Haribo or KFC in my case, but let’s not get into that.
After barely paddling for a year through lockdown and, if I’m honest, the sub-zero temperature spell and the pressure of home-schooling and work as well, there has been little to entertain: the Bad Whitewater Kayaking Advice Tips Facebook page was fun for a while – a legend perhaps, in its own short lunchtime – before being mass-trolled by Jackson haters and feral raft guides.
The dozen or so kayak books I have (I suspect that’s the whole canon) vary in quality between unreadable to interesting (to me, as a paddler), but I can see why none has yet had the force to ‘transcend its genre’, as people are fond of saying. And I’ve read them all – at least once.
These days, I only watch Bren Orton’s videos. Sure, it’s in the Haribo genre, but they are so good; they’re more like Tangfastic than Star Mix. That seal launch on the Wellerbrucke… kickflipping out of Champions Killer… insane. Then there’s the Dudh Kosi video that I’ve seen probably 20 times. It’s genuinely brilliant, probably the best film of its genre, but these days, I watch it for the comic wonder that the paddlers’ ‘foul weather gear’ consists of black gentleman’s umbrellas. And that crazy-looking 70s helicopter that clatters in at the end. It’s such a joke to a fellow paddler and me that I had a cartoonist draw the helicopter scene on a set of mugs for his wedding present. It was an economical yet imaginative present, I thought, and history has proved the mugs’ worth: they have outlasted the marriage.
In a similar vein, there is Mike Jones again in the Blue Nile Expedition. One of the ‘action scenes’ is a paddler in the group having his black leather office shoes polished by a street boy. Then there’s the first legal descent of Niagara Gorge. The commentary in all these is what makes it magically funny. Or the fact that they do ‘Eskimo rolls’ as a victory flourish. Or try the one about the first Brits to do the Colorado. They turn up in a cattle truck stacked with beer. “Some of them don’t even know each other,” marvels the commentator. No, you don’t say!
Other than that, I’ve been forced by the paucity of intelligent reportage to retreat to my memories. This has not been such a bad thing. Unlike memories of life, which are sometimes tinged with a note of melancholy, or at least nostalgia (never revisit the places of your childhood if you want to develop a proper sense of irony!), these are unfailingly happy or funny memories. As someone engaged in the lifelong pursuit of frivolity, I like the funnies best: like the last proper sesh, before lockdown one, on a freezing, churning big Boulters release.
It was my first time there, and there was something undoubtedly sinister about the grey water, the sound, the ‘danger of drowning’ red noticeboards, and the travellator eddy that takes you up to the wave like a rip current, one paddle blade scraping against the wall. I was with a small group of friends, who shall all remain nameless, and I noticed one of them hyperventilating before rides, the look upon his face one of unwilling determination – the courage of the donkey, not the lion. “What’s with the heavy breathing,” I asked him. “Don’t you do that before you get in there?” he asked, surprised. “So if it goes… you know… badly wrong, you’ll have longer to live?” Here’s a GOOD whitewater kayaking tip: if you have to laugh so hard you can hardly breathe, don’t lean back on your deck. Maintain a neutral, upright position, so you don’t flip.
The editor of this magazine asked us in lockdown one: if you could paddle anywhere, where would it be? I can’t remember what I said back then, but there’s only ever been one correct answer: the Grand Canyon. Always has been, always will be. But you know, seriously, right now, I’d settle for three gates, some sun (or at least water and ambient temp both in double digits) and a belly laugh. On a good day, that’s as good as anything. Roll on spring, roll on freedom. See you on the artificial whitewater course.
