Playing in the rapids

Kurt Foley compares whitewater kayaking to skiing down a mogul hill. Joe Powers says running his small boat through swift water and maneuvering it around waves is a bit like skateboarding. Ray Imel equates his kayaking experience to surfing.

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Slide show will feature SE ocean kayaking

A veteran ocean kayaker will talk about some of the extremes of paddling in Southeast Alaska waters and show some of his favorite slides in a benefit program Friday night.

"Wild Waves and Quiet Places" with Scott Foster will be shown at 7 p.m. Friday at Centennial Hall. Admission is $8 for adults, $5 for seniors and students and $20 for families. The event is a benefit for the Juneau Raptor Center.

"What I wanted to do is show the variety of weather and sea conditions I've encountered in three decades of paddling in Southeast," Foster said.

Some of his best trips have been off Southeast's outer coast, where the seas can be higher than the protected Inside Passage.

"I get a wonderful thrill, but also a scary sense paddling away from islands when the view ahead of you is just water. It just makes me a little tense," he said.

Part of the show will illustrate the tranquility of paddling on calm waters in comfortable weather. It also will feature times Foster fought wind and waves and had to hole up on the beach or an isolated rock. "I don't have pictures of the biggest waves I've been in because I was too busy trying to stay safe," he said.

Foster works as the University of Alaska Southeast's information officer and has hosted KTOO-TV's "Rain Country" series. He's also a newspaper and magazine columnist who frequently writes about kayaking.

"You kind of feel like you're on the deck of an aircraft carrier traveling at high speed," Imel said.

Foley, Powers and Imel are part of an informal group of whitewater kayakers who search rivers and creeks in Juneau and nearby areas for convoluted currents and what they call "play holes."

These guys aren't in a rush to go anywhere. In their style of kayaking, the point is to find fun features, such as a standing wave, and play. The game features rolls, "cartwheels" in which they flip their short boats bow to stern and back to the bow again, and "flat spins" that use muscle and current to turn the kayaks 360 degrees in a matter of seconds.

They can spend hours going a mile. Find a large enough wave and they're in heaven.

"You just feel like you're a stone skipping on this enormously smooth, glassy surface," said Powers.

Not that long ago, most whitewater kayakers used boats long enough to carry a few days' worth of supplies and gear. While they ran rapids and chutes and played in pools, their outings usually involved getting from one place to another.

A lot of whitewater kayakers still run long rivers. But in Juneau, where it doesn't take much time to get from the mountains to the sea, some kayakers have switched over to the newer, more durable, short boats and newer, shorter routes.

"We used to run rivers and go from Point A to Point B," said Imel, who works as a teacher. "Now we look for features like standing waves. If you're stopping and playing in river features, it makes it more exciting."

The kayaks are made out of polyethylene, which is lighter but more durable than the Fiberglas or plastic used in most ocean kayaks. They're also shorter, allowing the boat to become more of an extension of the paddler's body.

"It's a pretty tight fit now, but that's good because you can do more stuff and have more control," Imel said.

"The shorter boats are designed to do more tricks," said Foley, who works in Fiberglas repair. "The things we try to do now intentionally would have only happened by accident before."

In what some call "rodeo kayaking," paddlers use river features to perform spins, cartwheels and other tricks.

"The new boats are built so you'll go vertical," Foley said. "You're literally perpendicular to the water. You're either looking up at the sky or down at the water."

One of the kayakers' favorite spots is up Lemon Creek, above the business and residential area.

They park at Costco and carry their boats and gear about a half-hour walk into the valley, crossing private property but being careful to keep out of anyone's way. The ride down the creek could take 15 minutes, but it's more like two to three hours when the water's right.

Whitewater kayaking is full of peril

Kurt Foley still remembers the time his kayak rolled upside down and he hit his head hard on a rock.

"I completely shattered a helmet," said the whitewater kayaker. "Nothing happened to me, so it was good I was wearing it."

Whitewater kayaking is full of hazards, said Foley and other local enthusiasts. Rocks can shatter boats and bones. Fallen trees and snags can catch and hold paddlers underwater. Swift currents can carry kayakers away from safety.

Foley remembers when a fellow Mendenhall River kayaker was pulled under by a current and his spray skirt snagged on a stump. If the skirt hadn't ripped, freeing the kayaker, he might have been lost in the water clouded with glacial silt.

"He just disappeared," Foley said. "You can't see anything but a foot under the surface."

Kayaker Ray Imel said some kayak safety moves are "counterintuitive." Sometimes, the safest thing to do is to head what looks like the wrong way.

"There's a lot of things that don't make sense," he said.

Joe Powers, another kayaker, said the Mendenhall is a great learning river, although its hazards and cold temperatures mean paddlers should not go out untrained or alone. Other local waterways can be even more hazardous.

"Lemon Creek is a really serious run. A swim in it would be a bone-batterer or possibly a bone-breaker," Powers said. "You have to be very conscious about not going out over your head."

There doesn't appear to be any formal whitewater kayaking course available locally, although the University of Alaska Southeast includes river rescue training in its Outdoor Leadership Program.

Beth Weigel, who co-directs the program with Kevin Krein, said students can earn a swift water rescue certificate through a course that just ended and will be offered again next fall.

The whitewater safety and river rafting class targets tour guides leading raft tours, but is applicable to whitewater kayaking, Weigel said. The course mixes classroom instruction with practice in the Mendenhall River.

Powers, Foley and Imel said they learned through classes and friends and stressed the need for proper training before putting a boat in a swift creek or river. They also recommend going out in groups.

Even experienced kayakers use caution. Powers said he always checks out a route carefully before he tries it.

"Things that scare me, I walk."

"It's just a great run and when it drops it's just a pure fun thing," said Powers, a teacher.

Kayakers also hike up Montana Creek, putting in a mile or two from the end of the road.

And Gold Creek, when the water's right, can provide a good run. Paddlers sometimes kayak much of the creek's roadside length or try tricks in waves where the concrete-lined flume's rushing water meets Gastineau Channel. What's called "The A&P Play Hole" offers off-hours kayaking, said Powers.

"We've been in there at 5:30 in the morning before school and until 10 or 10:30 at night," he said.

One of the most-used whitewater-ways remains the Mendenhall River.

"When it's at the right level it has a lot of good play spots," said Foley.

The key anywhere is the water level, which can allow for paddling from as early as April through as late as October. If there isn't enough water, or if there's too much, normally fun runs can be too dry or dangerous.

Juneau whitewater kayakers also have found good runs and play spots on the Tatshenshini River system, off the Haines Highway, and the Tutshi River, along the Klondike Highway between Skagway and Carcross.

Paddling takes the kayakers through a variety of areas, from the wilderness backcountry along the Tatshenshini to the urban back yards along the Mendenhall. And while he enjoys being in the outdoors, Powers said the point is to play in the water.

"I'm not out there communing with nature. I'm just having a riotously great time," he said.

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Ed Schoenfeld can be reached at eschoenfeld@juneauempire.com.