Wisconsin Whitewater - July 17

A fellow paddler in the Eau Claire, Wisconsin area (Brian B)called me to let me know that they'd gotten a lot of rain recently and the rivers were running high. I grabbed another local paddler (Dan M) and drove out at 6am on Saturday. We met up with Brian and some other local paddlers to test out the Black River, Jim Falls @ 8,000 cfs (10x normal spring release), and the Chippewa River.

The highlight was definitely the Chippewa River which was at 24,000 cfs and pouring out of the gates at the downtown dam. The standing waves were all on the other side of the river but still looked big from where we were. After a bit of discussion about planning and safety, we did a flyby to check things out with out committing too much. Everything looked good so we decided to give it a go and actually try to surf some of the waves.

Even though we'd floated past and looked at them, it's still a little unnerving purposefully paddling into the waves and seeing how big they are. Basically it was like having an ocean wave, crashing surf and all, sitting in one place on a river. I'd guess it was 8'+. Turned out to be a riot with great surfing. It was retentive enough that you could spin and stay on it but it would still let you wash off if you flipped or wanted to get off.

Unfortunately the video we took is zoomed too far out to see much but it gives you an idea of the scale of things. Watch how quickly I move once I get in the current and zip past Dan (in the yellow boat). It's hard to see the individual waves but if you look on the far shore you can see some of the ones we couldn't get to because the current was so fast. There's not much to see after the 1st minute but if you bother watching the whole thing, listen for my yell of excitement as I get on the wave (1:40) and the photographer laughing. He wasn't a paddler and thought we'd just end up getting flipped around out there.