The Watauga “Grand Prix” took place this past weekend, consisting of a four mile downriver race through the class IV/IV+ Watauga gorge on saturday, and a Downriver Freestyle/Head to Head sprint rolling competition on various rapids throughout the gorge on sunday. The weekend was absolutely rad! Competitors came in from Asheville, Tennesee, Virginia, South Carolina and elsewhere.

The start of the race on saturday was chaotic as usual, as around 40 racers mass started directly above a particularly low road bridge. The longboats made their way to the front of the pack as the field began to thin out over the 4 miles, although the first couple of major rapids were pretty interesting. The race finished over the 15 foot stateline falls at the NC/TN border with Andrew Holcombe leading the pack, followed by JB, Toby Mcdermott, Eric Chance, Mark Taylor, and myself taking 6th place. Ty Caldwell was not far behind with the 1st place short boat finish.

Myself, Andrew Holcombe and Garret leading the pack through Hydro. Photo Emory Klesick

Sunday featured the 1st annual downriver freestyle competition, with consisted of a 2 minute run though hydro to do whatever you wanted (including play in the extremely sticky pour over  at the bottom), a head to head sprint race through heavy water, and finishing with a freestyle trick competition off state line falls.  This set up was awesome it allowed for a ton of creativity, everyone pushing each other to try new, harder, different stuff, and most of all an insane amount of fun for the competitors and spectators alike. We had a huge pack rolling down the river of not only competitors but people new to kayaking as well, even a few watauga first timers. It was awesome having the whole community out there boating together. Through Hydro, boaters were rock spinning, splatting, pirouetting, spinning, cartwheeling, back wheeling, and doing an endless variety of somewhat not intentional rodeo moves in the stomping hole at the bottom, making a great show for everybody.  Toby took this one home with a sweet ride followed with a paddle toss-loop to swim.

The head to head through heavy water was a carnage-fest filled with the highly encouraged shoving, pushing and cheating. This quarter mile long multiple s turning rapid was perfect, and was won by Colin Hunt.

Finally the last, scariest event of the day was freestyle off state line falls.  This is about a 15 foot drop with a very exposed piton rock on the bottom left but gave up some sweet freewheels to almost everyone.  Toby took this one again with the very scary backwheel, followed by me with a freewheel brown claw, and Chance with a freewheel to beatdown.

This weekend of kayaking was an awesome event that brought everyone together for a combination of pushing it hard, having fun, goofing off, and great friendly competition. To me this event is what kayaking is all about!

Cheers, Clay