2014 Little White Race

 Kind of overboofed Spirit Falls in the race... Photo Credit- Francois Bassard

 Boofing Spirit  Photo Credit- Francois Bassard

 Getting Spiritual

 With the finish in sight- Wishbone

 Cruising down 'Getting Busy'

Stoke in the eddy above Chaos after my first run down Spirit with Nicole & Katrina

The Little White Race is definitely one of the best extreme races I have been to! Organised by World Class Academy Director Capo Rettig, this event is so epic because it is well organised, backed by an awesome community and held on a incredibly beautiful class 5 river. Having arrived in Washington State at the end of April I became familiar with a bunch of the runs in the area that were running nice and high due to the Spring flows. I waited until the Little White dropped to 3.8 for my first run and found it pretty exciting and magical. I only got in a few runs at this flow before heading out to the Grand Canyon. I returned around a week before the race to lower levels of 3.5, then day by day it dropped until finally race day it was around 3.2. With the lowering of the water the longer sections of continuous whitewater became a lot easier (Getting Busy etc.) and the gorge drops became more rocky but still super sweet. 

2days out from the race my long time friend Katrina Van Wijk arrived. A large crew of us hit the water and with the stoke was high. Clay Lucas talked me through the line and I finally rallied off Spirit Falls! I was really happy with my line and managed to get my bow down nicely! I took the sneak on Chaos as I felt like being conservative. 

Finally the race…the stoke before the race was epicly high with competitors rolling into town from all corners of the world (Including Chile, New Zealand, France, Canada & Spain) just days before the race. There were maybe 30/40 men competitors, 3 Females in the Individual and then a bunch of team racers that included a combined female/male team with young charger Hannah K & Chris M. The downriver race kicked off first with the open men, open woman than teams. Evan Garcia took out the mens while Katrina Van Wijk took home the Woman’s competition for the 2nd year in a row! I finished in 3rd just behind Nicole Mansfield and was happy with my run. With 10runs down the river under my belt I was going for smooth and clean lines and managed to have a solid run with a few costly mistakes, but all in all I was stoked! The continuous style of the Little White keeps you busy and on your toes for the whole race run (for me 17mins 32sec). 

After the downriver event was the slalom on Spirit Falls! By far the stoutest slalom race I have ever done! It was pretty nerve wracking watching a lot of the men competitors as quite a few (including some very good paddlers) got sucked out the back of the ‘Hyphy’ eddy just above Chaos. To be honest though I felt more nervous for Spirit Falls. I ended up boofing Spirit Falls far too much & landed a little on my tail then rolled! I was a bit flustered by it & missed the 2nd super easy downstream gate. I then pulled myself together and went for the ‘Hyphy’ eddy and made it nice and clean then peeled out for a nice line over Chaos. Nicole & Katrina followed nailing all the moves! We were all stoked!

Final results overall:

Mens- Evan Garcia, Louis Geltman, Rush Sturges

Womans- Katrina Van Wijk, Nicole Mansfield, Louise Jull

Stoked to come back next year!