Tristan McLaren and James Byrd
[ Nomination by Dave Manby ]
Asked to nominate a paddling “event” for this years awards; my initial reaction was “I'm an old paddler why should I have an opinion. OK so I did something notable long before any of the young guns were born let alone had drivers licenses but that doesn't qualify me to judge”. That was my reply but then I started thinking back over the recent accomplishments and one of the paddling events that resonated with me was the film of the boys running the North Fork at mega high levels. If you need to know what river I'm talking about, you probably can't really understand, but the NF Payette is 17 miles of continuous white water in Idaho that has been the test piece for US boaters for many years. People started running it back in the 70s, in glass boats nibbling away at it, eventually a “top to bottom” run was done, then 3 top to bottoms in a day – a vertical mile dropped in a day! Doug Ammons then audaciously did a top to bottom at around 7000cfs. Eventually Fred Coriell, Ryan Casey, and Brian Fletcher put their bodies to the limit finishing an unheard-of 6 top to bottom runs, achieving 2 vertical miles in a day.
That is already a long history of impressive feats, and when the footage of the flooded NF runs turned up you just realized the bar had been raised of what was possible once again. Everyone that was running the river at that level (8000cfs) deserves recognition, but none more that James Byrd and Tristan McLaren who were the only ones to run the infamous 'Jakes' Rapid. In these days of kayakporn and Youtube saturation the high water NF clip is the one I still remember – the one that still excites me; I know I could never run the river at that level now but I like to imagine that... maybe in my day …
