Alright you fellow "crazies"! What got you started riverboarding? ;)

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Yount on August 10, 2009 at 5:38pm

It all started when I was a toddler and my mother opened the baby gate in order to vacuum the steps, just long enough for me to come barreling through in my baby walker and tumble end over end down a half flight of steps.

Seriously, I credit playing at the point of the wedge on kickoff return team in American football as giving me some guts and love of high speed. I gravitated to skiboarding and mountain biking in college. I remember reading a sentence about riverboarding in a snowboard mag that was talking about a ski bum that was crazy enough to camp in the Crested Butte parking lot and ski for free during early and late season (then the author said that his crazy friend also took a bodyboard down class V whitewater). I also heard a fellow summer camp counselor talking about it. That planted the seed.

Took a few years to find the info about gear and how to do it, finally jumped in with a buddy when I couldn't find a raft company willing to let me tag along, learned from the school of hard knocks and became one of the new guard pioneers in the Southeast.

Goals: To board on all six continents, and I have a couple of rivers/runs on the bucket list: Great Falls, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Huka Falls, Aratiatia, Nevis Bluff, Indus, Zambezi, Blue Nile, etc..

It wouldn't be fair to pick a favorite, but creeks that rank high on the list are Big creek, Potomac Fish Ladder, El Chorro, and the Upper Yough. Big water runs that I could do forever and not get bored include the Cal Salmon, upper Klamath, Jacob's Ladder, Gauley, New, and Pacuarre (at high water).

Stories: ask me while we're running shuttle or chilling after a run; or just wait for the autobiography to come out in a few years : ).

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Permalink Reply by Rob Larkham on August 10, 2009 at 6:20pm

I saw some guys back in the 80's on a show called that's incredible either riverboarding or free floating down a river with helmets and gear on. I thought it looked awesome. Fast forward to the the year 2000, I moved to an area of Western Mass that had lots of WW creeks and rivers. At the time I was racing Go-karts and a friend who raced with me got into kayaking. He dragged me into boating and I feel in love. I loved the whitewater. I'm not sure how but about two years ago I bumped into "Ripboards" online somewhere and got hooked up with Shane and bought my first board. Last summer I met the great bearded one (Kevin) and started following you crazy's on hear and the rest is history. THANKS for letting me hang out and get inspred!

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Permalink Reply by Charl van Rensburg on August 10, 2009 at 7:51pm

MIKE HORN!!If you're not familiar with him, he's a South African Born Adventurer now living in Switzerland. Since the mid 1990's he's become synonymous with adventure... in I think it was 1999 he ran the Amazon River from source to sea on a Hydrospeed. It took him 7 months to do this, alone and unassisted. He lived off "banannas and pyrannas". He's also circumnavigated the world on the equator by himself; solo sailing over oceans, walking / mountainbiking over deserts and swimming or making dugout canoes to cross rivers. Here's a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Horn

Anyway, in 1999 a South African Adventure Sport Magazine OUTTHERE carried the article on his Hydrospeed trip down the Amazon and on page 49 there was a quote by Mike Horn, which (paraphrased) went along the lines of: "I have a wetsuit which anyone can buy, some swimfins, a helmet and a life-jacket. I use a Hydrospeed which is commercially available, the only difference between me and somebody else is that I chose to go". In that moment, reading that quote I made a decision to "GO".
At that point, I had been bodyboarding and bodysurfing for many years so it seemed to me to be a natural progression, translating what I loved in salt-water into fresh-water.
So, I started collecting old bodyboards and used them to make my first Hydrospeed which I covered in Tarpaulin PVC. It worked ok, but was too small, so I Google'ing "Hydrospeed" and found Raphael Besson (president of RIPH) who was incredibly helpful, giving me advice on making my own Hydrospeed and pointing me to french-language websites that offerred step by step guidelines on how to make your own Boards.
From there I hooked up with some local Kayakers, and once past the initial sniggers and comments, started running rivers with them.... some of these guys have become close friends and we have literally had to trust each other with our lives over the years.

Then, a few years back, Raphael e-ntroduced me to Josh of Facelevel.com via email, and we started writing emails to each other. I joke about it, but Josh and I are kinda Pen-Pals, since we've never actually spoken, but have built up a robust relationship over more than 3 years of emailing each other.

Through the support of Josh and Facelevel.com, I have been able to travel, meet other people passionate about this sport and find a place where I can learn and contribute, especially through the TEAMFLI platform.

As the French would say, "I hope to swim with you sometime"

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Permalink Reply by Alicia Anne on August 10, 2009 at 10:09pm

Mike Horn is definitely an inspiration to anyone with an adventurous soul. And there is no doubting his quote. There are many things that many people are capable of. The difference between the do-ers and the spectators is simply the determination and the decision to do!

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Permalink Reply by Waterboarder1 on August 16, 2009 at 6:05am

My start in riverboarding was really just a slow, imperceptible at the time, transition from body-boarding SoCal salt water to riverboarding Tunnel Chute and Brush Creek.

On our summer vacations to Tahoe, my adrenaline-addicted son asked to float down the Truckee on his body board at 7 or 8yo. I let him. When my similarly afflicted daughter wanted to join him a few years later when she was 5 or 6yo, I felt I better join her. Yes, there is a double standard in my family.

Which led to me having WAY more fun IN the water than driving a raft on top of it.

And that led, years later, to jumping in the Kern....at 3600cfs. Bad, bad idea with just beach body boards. There had to be a better way. In our collective minds, that better way involved some urethane house insulating foam, reinforced with plywood and shaped to be a body board on steroids with handles.
.
If I had to say when, exactly, I "started riverboarding", the urethane foam board days would be it. If asked to tell why I started, I would have to say a strong sense of self-preservation along with a sense of parental responsibility. OK, OK, I know it sounds warped now: The daughter routinely drops down Brush and the son, he just scares me.

And damn, I still feel guilty about the foam chunks left on the South Fork American and Kern.

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Permalink Reply by Rochelle Parry on August 17, 2009 at 4:53am

you've got some awesome kids there, Dean.

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Permalink Reply by Waterboarder1 on August 19, 2009 at 4:12am

Thanks Rochelle,
they are awesome but terrifying, to a parent, in their eagerness to push the envelope...

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Permalink Reply by Alex Koutzoukis on August 18, 2009 at 3:29pm

Good times on the Truckee River!, photo taken probably in 1998

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Permalink Reply by Jusbyn on August 17, 2009 at 4:03pm

My Wife! Grew up at the beach surfing and bodyboarding and once we moved inland I missed the ocean. She saw someone riverboarding on an Xterra commercial and thought it fit me. She bought me a board and the large amount of gear needed.

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Permalink Reply by Charl van Rensburg on August 17, 2009 at 10:27pm

Hi, I was just wondering. Do you reckon the waterfall in the background on your profile pic is runnable, where is it?

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Permalink Reply by Jusbyn on September 4, 2009 at 7:00pm

Abrams falls in the Great Smokey Moutains, Tennessee. It's a 35' drop into a deep pool so it is runnable. Many kayakers in the area run it at high water after a good rain. Small margin for error, based on what I have been told.

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Permalink Reply by Ehren Axley on August 19, 2009 at 4:45pm

I'd take the old kneeboard or bodyboard out to surf once in a while long before I knew the sport existed. I'd thought "what if" a few times when it came to doing runs on a board but never acted on it. Then 4 years ago I saw someone post about riverboarding on a kayaking website. I started digging around on the web and was amazed to find out the sport was already 30 years old. Since I grew up swimming competitively the transition was totally natural.

What really made it all happen was my wife's enthusiastic support. She took a bad beatdown and got pinned under her boat kayaking on Clear Creek and swore off the sport. She wasn't even very comfortable on rafts after that and I couldn't blame her. It was just a shame because she was such a strong paddler. So we gave riverboarding a try and she hasn't looked back. It's totally restored her confidence in the water and we can go do runs together again.

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