Whistler Creek Cup - What a great event

[Jan_dettmer]

Hey all,

I went to the Whistler Creek Cup last weekend and it was really fun.
The Creek Cup is a race that takes place on the 3 most popular
Whistler Creeks: Upper Cheakamus River, Soo River, and Callaghan
Creek. The difficulties on those creeks are class 4 and 5.
The character varies from contiuous and pushy with behemoth hoels to
avoid and boof to drop-pool with waterfalls up to 25 feet.

The races are about 10 minutes long and I found out first hand that 10
minutes in a pretty dam long. In fact it is so long that I started
throwing up my lonch whenever I got splashed and I breathed a little
water.

At the start line, racers get counted down every 20 seconds, so that one paddler starts every 20 seconds. That's a guarantee for lots of carnage
and interesting lines when people pass each other.

All 3 races get timed and will be combined to an overall time.

Iwas the only C1er in the competition but still had lots of fun competing against the Kayakers. My time on the first race was something like 12min 30 sec. The best time was 11min 07 sec. I was really amazed at how hard it was to paddle flat out for 12+ minutes on class 4+. I was clearly not in good enough shape for that long a paddle.
That said, it was a great experience to race the cource with paddlers everywhere.

Unfortunately, I could not compete in the last race on Sunday since it was at 7pm and I had to make a ferry back to the island. Oh well, next year.

The first places all went to locals. Braden Fandrich took first and then high in the ranking were Corey Boux, Loki, Mikkel...
They all have the lines totally dialed in and paddle those creeks every day. And you could tell that from their times and lines.

Great event. Would be cool to see more C1ers there next year.

Cheers, Jan

[CosmikDebris]

we should start a C1 racing circuit..... Green Race, Gauley, Russell Fork, Whistler, OBJ, Vallecito....think about how much fun that would be!