river pirates - RiverSurfing.ca

06 . 22 . 07
RIVER
PIRATES
In search of the perfect session 700 kilometres
from the nearest ocean, a band of wave plunderers
have discovered that southern Alberta’s
rivers are ripe for the ripping.
WRITTEN BY CHRIS BOWERMAN
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PHOTOGRAPHED BY BRYCE MEYER
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RIVER
PIRATES
In search of the perfect session 700 kilometres
from the nearest ocean, a band of wave plunderers
have discovered that southern Alberta’s
rivers are ripe for the ripping.
IN SURFING LINGO, “LOCALISM”
refers to a global epidemic of territorial hostility, the result of over-crowded surf breaks, egomaniacal behaviour and poor etiquette. It’s negativity. A bad vibe. A bummer. The antithesis of
what surfing is all about, which, if you believe the clichés, is supposed to be a spiritual journey, a
communion with Nature, a path to righteousness. In short, a constructive metaphor for life.
To the band of wave plunderers who make up the Alberta River Surfing Association
(ARSA), “localism” is a four-letter word. Back in 2005, while hoisting pints on the patio at the
Ship & Anchor, the four founding dudes of ARSA—Paul Barrett, Neil Egsgard, Jeff Brooks and
Chris Szampanksi—decided their organization would be inclusive, that surfing was simply about
positivity, not cutthroat provincialism. Their passion was too much fun not to share with a larger
community of people, be they girls, guys, oldies, teenies, professional carvers or landlubbing
greenhorns. It didn’t seem the least bit strange to be redefining the surf landscape 700 kilometres
inland from the nearest ocean. The ARSA’s goal was simple: to create a sub-sub-culture in Calgary of a sub-culture synonymous with beach bums, California and a language all its own.
Fortunately for these ocean surfers looking for a fix on the dusty prairie, a fresh scene was already in the making. Barrett, a 27-year-old passport officer, had been experiencing what he describes as “horrible dry rot,” having been raised on San Diego’s famed reef breaks at Big Rock in
La Jolla peninsula (“a pretty gnarly spot for localism”). Looking for something, anything, within
driving distance of Calgary, he began bodysurfing the same icy, emerald waters of the Lower
Kananaskis frequented by kayakers and rafters. An intrepid Australian named Ben Murphy,
known as “Skinner” in the extreme-sports cosmos, had also begun carving those same mountain
waters. Where Edworthy Park bisects the Bow River, thrill-seekers were tethering themselves to
a tree. Flood waters under the 10th Street Bridge were also making waves—standing waves, a
surfer’s best friend. ARSA members have surfed rivers in downtown Munich, Montreal,
Ottawa, Idaho, Fernie, narrows in B.C., Sturgeon Falls in Manitoba. But their regular haunts—as
far as they will reveal—are semi-secret spots on the North Saskatchewan River near Rocky
Mountain House and, more frequently, given their relatively convenient locales, the dam-controlled sweet spot nicknamed “Green Tongue” and its neighbour “Santa Claus” on the Lower
Kananaskis River. Southern Alberta’s waterways, it turns out, were ripe for the ripping, and
Calgary’s river-surfing pioneers were just the right dudes to get the place wired.
Aided by the ARSA website developed by big kahunas Barrett and Egsgard, the core group
of river rats has grown to 20, while overall membership is at 150 and growing daily. Best of all,
new people are coming to the sport, mixing and meshing with the veteran surfers. “ARSA was
originally created to spread the word, to get more people involved in surfing,” says Egsgard, a
28-year-old utility engineer better known by the handle “Negs.” “We thought river surfing was
amazing and wanted a larger community of people to share the experience—because it’s so incredible and so ridiculous that you can actually surf in a land-locked province.”
WRITTEN BY CHRIS BOWERMAN PHOTOGRAPHED BY BRYCE MEYER
TWENTY-THREE
NEIL EGSGARD
PAUL BARRETT
BARRETT: “A lot of people are career-oriented,” he says. “I’m not that. I want to
“NEGS”: “Without people to create boards, bring personality, discover new waves,
go play.” To Barrett, “surfing is like meditation—my mind gets totally clear.”
push abilities and share positive experiences, my efforts would be fruitless.”
LAUREL OSBOURNE
says Negs, quaffing from a mug embossed with a skull, crossbones and the
slogan: “RIVER PIRATE.” It’s Friday night at the ARSA’s unofficial headquarters, the Kensington Pub, where the core group meets to finalize each
weekend’s river-surfing expedition in their surprisingly aqueous backyard. While the website acts as the online “How-To” guide to the sport,
real ARSA business takes place at the K.P., where, says Barrett, “They
practically expect us to clear the place out with bad singing.”
On this Friday, just like every Friday, beers are flowing, and so are
Negs’ river-rat tales—stories about waves and the dudes who love them,
like his buddy Barrett, the trailblazer who taught him how to surf, who
lends out boards and wetsuits to practically anyone who wants to join the
party, who doesn’t let a little something like -20C weather and face icicles
stop him from surfing The Kan in the dead of winter.
At a solid 6’4”, Negs could intimidate. Instead, he’s a font of positivity, a
guy whose MySpace profile talks about building ties and connecting with
people, places and things “to deepen the meaning and intensity of life.” The
kind of guy who brings his own mug to the pub, who’s quick and hearty
with a rugby shanty, who tells a mean joke and articulates convincing
proverbs, like how his particular river-surfing community is “all about making the world better.” He breaks into an initiation ditty called “The Sister
Song”—but the real mark of respect is “Shootin’ the Boot,” during which the
honouree gets to chugalug from a surfer’s neoprene boot. ARSA, Negs
says, isn’t skill-based. “But you earn your way in. If you’re an a..hole, we
don’t want you.” (Later, in a more sober moment, he would amend this to:
“We don’t care how good you are, just that you’re a good person.”)
Murphy, the 29-year-old office mover/installer, is also here in the bar,
talking about the “Zen experience” of surfing; of “epic waves” in Tofino
and back home on the east coast of Australia; of sharks, sting rays and angry seals, which only heighten the ocean experience; of being a regular,
one of those territorial guys. “Your peers teach you to be like that,” he says.
“As you get older, you realize how much it sucks. I smartened up.” Murphy is the guy you see in ski magazines doing aerials 50 feet in the air (he
met Negs in ’05, acting as the Calgarian’s private freestyle-skiing coach). A
winner at the 2001 Australian X-Games, he surfs competitively—on both
open water and rivers— and ranks in the Top 10 in Canada. So when Murphy says you—as in me, an absolute beginner, a total outsider—should try
river surfing tomorrow, the absurdity (and genuine danger) of becoming
an insider hits you like a wet trout upside the head.
Murphy’s offer is even more charged, given that tomorrow the ARSA
devotees plan to scout out an uncrowded community wave on the Little
Red Deer River. They are searching for what Bruce Brown, in his 1966
documentary homage to the sport Endless Summer, described as the
ultimate aim—staying in the curl—which symbolizes the eternal pursuit of
being in the right place at the right time. “What every surfer dreams of
finding is a small wave with perfect shape, what we call a perfect wave,”
narrates Brown. “The odds against finding that are 10 million to one.” The
film’s young stars would find their perfect wave at Cape St. Francis, South
Africa: “The kind of wave that makes you talk to yourself.”
A convoy of ARSA regulars, newcomers and interlopers would find
theirs in, of all places, a dirty river near Sundre.
CARL HUGHES
“SURFING IS ABOUT FLOW,”
“REAPER”: A new arrival to Alberta, residing in Edmonton. The Welshman found
RIVER SURFERS COME, RIVER SURFERS GO, like Osbourne, a surfing
work as a tombstone maker after putting his surfboard business on hiatus.
instructor from Tofino transplanted to Calgary, who wound up on ARSA’s website.
TWENTY-FIVE
“
BEN MURPHY
Surfing can take you places you’ve never been
without taking you any place at all. —JAKE “THE SNAKE”
”
THE TRIBE IS STOKED.
“SKINNER”: The Aussie put on a clinic at E-Town, performing tail slides,
popshoveits, rail rides, ollie 180s, hang fives, bottom turns—and this series of
JAKE QUINLAN
cutbacks. “This wave is sick,” he says, comparing it to Munich’s Flosslaende.
JAKE “THE SNAKE”: The epitome of good vibes, Quinlan pulls off a headstand—
then a face plant—but manages to stay on his board in the powerful flood surge.
Dallas and Reaper, core members from Edmonton, are sporting wide, wefound-it-first grins. The Calgary arrivals unpack and Jake Quinlan—a 23year-old whirligig of energy—breaks into a giddy sprint, hooting and
squealing: “I love surfiiiiing!” On a craggy slate ridge at the water’s edge, he
howls again—“I want to get wet! I want to get wet!”—and bolts back to the
campsite where the others are already gearing down, bare-assed on the
roadside, urgently squishing into their wetsuits. Quivers unstrapped, it’s a
race to see who will be the first down the collapsed bank and into the Little
Red Deer River—though there’s nothing little this day about the chocolatemilk torrent of unstoppable flood surge. Ripping over some kind of pre-existing obstruction, the river has created exactly what the surfing safari was
looking for—a natural standing wave. It’s no Californian Maverick or maneating Polynesian Jaws, but for these adrenalin junkies, this wave has it all: a
deep face, crest and barrel, an easy drop-in, a plum trough, the atmospherics of white wash and the repose of an adjacent eddy, which presents relatively safe access in and out of the churning rapids.
The exploratory mission is a giant success—it’s a sweet day in the
Golden Era of river surfing. The location will later be christened
E-Town, or E.T., by its discoverers—in surfer parlance, this spot is sick, and
Negs is a faceful of smile. “It’s a perfect Saturday,” he says, taking care of
some final dry-land details: waxing the board, icing the beer and leaving
his calling card—a flag fashioned out of a dead branch and his underwear—
for Ben, the aggro surfer who will totally rip E-Town when he joins up later.
But this group—which also includes Steve Arthur, another lifelong surfer
and expat from San Diego, and Terry Wallace, who cut his teeth on the
peaks of Lake Superior—is not about competition. It’s about exploration,
innovation, camaraderie and dorking out purely for the fun of it.
Boards ready, neoprene booties on, ankle leashes cinched, the ARSA
explorers start dropping into the roiling flood waters. Jake is incredulous,
and turns to Dallas: “It can take you places you’ve never been without taking you any place at all.” Reaper, a Welshman, shows off the skills he
honed surfing breaks in Cornwall, pumping the white wash, dancing side
to side on the wave, even breaking out a switchfoot or two. Negs is hotdogging, too, lying on his board in a Thinker’s pose. Jake yells “party
wave!”, jumps on his board and high-fives Negs while both simultaneously plane the surface.
Tom Crawford and Amanda Holmes arrive from Didsbury prepared
to kayak; the previous weekend, Negs encouraged Holmes to try surfing,
said he’d help her out with gear and instructions. So she drops into the
rapids on her belly and stays in the pocket. How difficult could it be?
Very. It’s impossible to actually stand up in those first oh-sh..t moments of river surfing. “You have to pay really close attention to minute
details,” Barrett says. “You don’t get as much time to set up on the board in
river surfing as you do surfing ocean waves.” Arthur lends me his wetsuit
and board, and Negs gives a quick lesson: jump as far as you can into the
current, land on your board, keep your weight over your hands as if
you’re doing a push-up, bring up the knee of your lead foot—if you can—
and balance. And when you wipe out, let the current take you back to the
eddy. “You can’t swim in bubbles,” he says, but I try, and fail, and for a few
seconds of panic my first attempt at river surfing feels like my last chaotic
moments on Earth. The flood waters are relentless but I spaz to safety. I
drop in four more times, increasingly exhausted but hoping to fulfill Billabong’s trademark—“Only a surfer knows the feeling.” Except I look and
feel more like an anemic seal with an inner-ear problem. My core workout done, I leave it to the masters.
The tribe shouts “Locals only!” when Murphy arrives, and he drops
in accompanied by the tribal beat Negs pounds on his surfboard. In a
while, the day’s first session will end as the river pirates return to the
campsite for food and warmth. Murphy will reload with gummi bears
and Vegemite; Quinlan with tuna dumped into a cold can of beans.
Someone builds a fire. Beer cans crack open. Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight
(Everything is Alright”) belts out of Negs’ car stereo. The camaraderie is
evident. “Everybody on these waters is just so happy to be scratching
that itch,” Quinlan says, “doing something they love, taking advantage of
the weather and getting exercise.”
Still, ARSA would love some waves closer to home—specifically on the
Bow River, just east of the Calgary Zoo, at the weir designed to divert water
to the Western Irrigation District, sometimes referred to as “the drowning
machine.” Besides spearheading river outings, and funding and organizing
the website, Negs represents ARSA on the stakeholder’s committee for the
Bow River Weir Project. The goal is to give local surfers a unified voice in
the projected $12-million makeover. Slated to open for public use in ’09, the
new Harvie Passage is “designated for passive recreation with opportunities
for active recreation,” says Mac Hickley, who co-ordinates the project on
behalf of Parks Foundation Calgary. “We want to make this no-go zone—
this deadly industrial hazard in the middle of the city—into something that
people don’t have to be fearful of, that people don’t have to stay away from.
We can’t promise it will be 100 percent safe because it’s a dynamic river—
the river is inherently not a placid, safe place all the time.”
Depending on flow rates, multiple drop structures may be suitable for
river surfing, but the ARSA agrees that safety comes first. “It’s been suggested that we make this a competition venue or a place with economic spinoffs, but that was written out,” Hickley says. “The name ‘passage’ really
speaks to the idea that it’s a flow-through park rather than a go-to park.”
In the meantime, Alberta’s river pirates will just go with the flow,
together, on waves known and those yet to be discovered. S
RAD TODAY, GONE TOMORROW: The hydrodynamics of a river are similar to an ocean in that they’re constantly changing.
When sand floors move, ocean waves break differently. Similarly, if a river obstruction moves or, more likely, water flow is
SOURCES
affected, a standing wave (like this one in the Little Red Deer River) becomes a “soupy” wave or “floods” in too much surge.
Find out more about the Alberta River Surfing Association at RIVERSURFING.CA.
Either way, it’s mostly mountain runoff, and it’s cold. Better technology has meant better, lighter wetsuits and neoprene gloves
Check out wave machines, the World River Surfing Association and WRSA president Elijah
and boots. The ARSA surfers use thick epoxy (foam) boards up to 6’8”—but generally about 4’11”—with a fish (or sparrow) tail.
Mack in action at SURFRIVERS.NET. Learn more about the Calgary Bow River Weir Project at
HARVIEPASSAGE.CA. And get your surf on at BIG SWELL, 1406 17th Ave. S.W. (209-5888) and
Eau Claire Market (237-8326), and at REDNIK SURF CO., 10 Richard Rd. S.W. (685-4600).