Opening Day on the South Fork of the American River

The second annual Opening Day was a huge success. Last year Team JK, WK Ambassadors, CCK, and Ninkasi Brewing came together to host an event that was focused on raising funds for American Whitewater. Between selling clinics, raffle tickets, and of course great beer we were able to earn $3,200 for AW. That was a big deal for a first year event. We needed to ensure that we stepped up yet again for AW. We added some new clinics, team members, and more beer. At the end of the day we raised over $5,000 for AW. I was excited to be teaching a “spice up your river running” in my Fun Runner for a second year, and I was super excited to see quite a few returning students from the previous year. I guess I was not hard enough on them the previous year! My group of new and old students was super solid and we had a blast working on everything including catching waves on the fly, aggressive eddy hoping, stern squirts, and good stroke doctrine. With our current drought conditions in Cali we started to loose water and when we arrived at trouble maker, the most difficult rapid of the day, we had a rapid that was significantly different than at normal release level. This provided us the opportunity to put those new skills to the test and to work on some water reading. Noah and I offered up a few options of lines and we even had some folks step up to the spicy option! A solid BBQ and good beer were the perfect fuel to keep everyone enjoying the bands and movies provided by “A Wet State”. I am already looking forward to next year!

Later; Colin
Team JK