HOHW trip report
Posted by Kevin M,
20 May 2013 · 1,214 views
HOHW trip report. Tops in all categories. Best get the numbers down before we forget. At the moment it appears that the GKC kicked some serious butt. First off the rafts. Our team of misfits manage to place 3rd and 4th of 27 Esprit Rafts. That is pretty amazing considering they don't raft together. But it also put them 6th and 7th overall. Amazing effort. Our rival club the KWP took one look at our raft team and bailed out. They didn't even bother racing. Next in the races our club appears to be in first place among club times for the town pet race. Unfortunately ORR has not submitted their time yet and they will likely beat us. In fact, they had better beat us, they are slalom racers who were in plastic race type boats. If they can't beat a bunch of club boaters in creek boats then they need to step up their game. Sunday Joel and Richard place 3rd in a very close Animal race, Alex and Kyle finished 4th out of 4. There wasn't a mixed team Category so technically Kyle and Alex were the first mixed team to cross the finish line. To put this race in perspective, the race teams finished the race in one hour 20 minutes. The mortal boaters took 5 hours to complete the same course. Our group of 8 boaters, scouted the drops, set safety and still managed to have 4 swimmers and one rope rescue of a stuck boater. We didn't even run the last drop. Meanwhile the racers ran the whole thing without scouting and managed not to swim once. This was especially impressive considering that the night before the racers made a geniune effort to dehydrate themselves at the “race meeting” held in Andrew's hotel room. In case you think the mortal GKC boaters were in exceptionally bad form, a group ahead of us with approx. 8 people had 3 swims. A group of KWP behind us had a shoulder dislocation. Great effort. Great event. It is definitely a showcase event for boaters in Ontario. Something that WO should be proud to be part of. If anyone is interested in a T-shirt from the event to show support for saving the Pettawawa, I think they still have some shirts left. $20.00 shirts and they are the high quality Metowe shirts. The weekend also managed a rather impressive 7 swims for the GKC. Congratulations to Cortney: Who got confused while running the second drop on the upper Pet. Instead of river running she suddenly thought she was competing in a rodeo. By the time she figured it out, she had already ran out the clock with some impressive moves and had to swim. Kyle: For a very impressive beatdown at lovers. Nicely scraped knuckles are his prize for the swim. Andrew: For deciding to swim on Friday in order to give himself a good excuse not to race. Wes: For getting back in the game with a nice ride in a sticky all day play hole Ed: For being fooled into thinking that Cortney really was in a rodeo and trying to compete with her. Lee: For getting railroaded into a swim on the upper pet. Rob Stoehr: This was definitely the swim of the weekend. He was so far offline that he may as well have been paddling another river. The rapid was 100 feet wide and Rob was 150ft offline. Couldn't have messed that line up more if he tried. But wow what a scary surf. From downstream he couldn't be seen for his entire surf. Evidently after bailing from his boat, he was being held in the hole on the bottom of the rocks. He managed to grab his boat and climb back up above the water where he found himself still in the hole and surfing on his empty boat. He did not want to be there. Mike Farwell, ever ready with a rope was in an excellent position for Rob if he decided to leave the hole. However Rob was making the most of his out of boat experience. After much panicking from some other boaters, Mike was convinced to leave his position to try to extricate Rob from the hole. It was about that time that Rob left the hole and proceeded down the rest of devils arm chair. With Mike out of position, there was nothing to stop Rob from continuing from the devil's armchair and into the devil's cellar except Cortney and her rope. Fortunately for Rob, Cortney nailed the throw and swung his sorry ass to safety. This was a well deserved swim because Rob had earlier won the rodeo competition at the second drop with a very impressive back loop out of the hole. Later in the day, he was roped out of a pour over still before he had a chance to swim. Definitely a rather holy Sunday for Rob. If there is something that I missed, please add to the blog. Thanks for a fun weekend GKC.