A few weekends back we got a great crew together for the weekend in Downieville. Downieville is a tiny little town that is nestled into the North Yuba river valley at the confluence of the Downie River. This place is heaven for a WW boater in the spring. You have 25+ miles of the Yuba to boat that ranges from class V+ all the way down to class II. You also have Pauley and Lavezzola creeks that are just a mile outside of town. We boated multiple laps on Pauley and we also did a run down Goodyear’s Bar on the Yuba. This is the perfect section for the Fun Runner. There is a bunch of moderate “big water” style whitewater with one big one thrown in for good measure. I had a blast surfing my way down the river and zipping in and out of eddies with the Fun Runner. Toby also got the opportunity to break in his new Fun Runner on this section! Maytag is the big boy on this run and it is very out of character for this section of river. The whole river necks down into a walled in canyon that has a fair bit of gradient and a few spots that you DON’T want to be in. The entrance is relatively straight forward, but after that things start to get spicy! You line up in the center and drive like you mean it towards river left. On this first charge you will descend about 15 feet and that is where you meet the first of three sizable reactionaries that you need to break through without getting pushed right. Unfortunately Right is where they want to take you into a big unfriendly looking hole. If you get through those three you need to paddle uphill into a funky piece of water. The backwash of the unfriendly hole pushes up into a vertical wall that runs across the river. It effectively makes the river make a right hand 90 degree turn, and that back wash is split. 50% heads back upstream into the hole and 50% moves river right towards freedom. Splatting the wall is a good option to stay in the desired flow! Otherwise get as close as possible to the wall and drive right. I had only been on this section of the river once before and I was in my Mega Rocker back then and the flow was lower. It went great that day, but with double the flow the rapid was a good bit bigger and more difficult. This was great opportunity to see exactly how tough of a rapid the Fun Runner likes. It did great and took care of me all the way to the bottom where there was one more great wave to surf. Thanks to my group for setting safety for me!

Later; Colin
Team JK

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/42587166[/vimeo]