Boise River Kayak Park

My name is Cody Harrigan, I have been blessed to have lived in  Boise Idaho for all my life. I enjoy the Treasure Valley and surrounding areas because of the outdoor life that is offered.  One of my new favorite features of Boise is the Whitewater Kayaking Park.   This park has been long awaited by me and many others. It is a complex system of air bags and hydraulics. The Hydraulics control the waveshaper.  A big steel plate is what makes up the waveshapers. The waveshaper is what makes it a green wave or a hole.  The air bags control the flashboard that keeps the water back for the wave and irrigation.  I had the pleasure of meeting and talking to one of the wave-masters (that is what I call the people that control the parks features), Steve Obert gave me a tour of the room where all the controls for the flashboard and wavehsapers are. Steve Obert has many options that he can do with the shape of the wave but also has to keep in mind the farmers that need a certain level of water for irigation. At the present time with lower water Steve Obert is limited to only letting so much water run past the dam.

I have kayaked since I was 12 and have enjoyed every minute on the water.  In the last few years I have not had time to kayak, it has been a tragedy.  The Boise Whitewater Kayak park is about five minutes from where I live. This allows me to have time to go kayaking almost daily even with school and work.

This Kayak park is sweet!  I have been having so much fun day after day, going kayaking and playing on the water falls.  My brother and I started going down the waterfall just a few days ago.  On the first day that my brother went down the falls he started out with good speed and jumped right off into the big surf wave and started surfing backwards, well I tried to do that today.  I started off with good momentum and jumped right into the wave and sunk. I was instantly flipped upside down. Check it on my high speed camera below.

 At first this wave was very intimidating for me.  I would just go down to the river and sit there in my kayak watching others.  After a few days of this I was able to start going in the wave.  The first few days of going to the kayak park for an hour or so it was very challenging. With little knowledge of freestyle kayaking I had many vicious wrecks were I would catch my edge and flip over in the bottom of the hole. I have been going down to the kayak park for about a month now and I have overcome some of my fears and have started working on freestyle moves.  The first move I have been working on is the spin. The spin is were the boat spins 360 degrees in the wave.  Check out this short video of me spinning(The Spin this link will take you to youtube a HD video) and keep watching my blog for the cartwheel.

References.
              City of Boise. Boise River Park. Cityofboise.org (2009-2011). Web. 1 October 2012.