“Over the past 12 years, river surfing has exploded and it’s fair to say that in most whitewater parks around the Country, river surfers have become the dominant user group”, said Mike Harvey in recent article he penned for the American Whitewater association about his 23 years building whitewater parks and river waves.
Mike Harvey is the frontman and spokesperson for the re-built Scout Wave that his company, REP, built the Scout Wave in Salida, Colorado into one of the best static kicker river waves in North America and arguably can be considered currently the best free whitewater park river wave in the world.
For those of you who don’t know, American Whitewater is a behemoth of a national non-profit organization that was founded in 1954 and currently boasts approximately 7,000 members and 85 local-based affiliate clubs, representing whitewater enthusiasts across the nation. American Whitewater is also a key player in fighting for river conservation and river access.
You can find Mike’s article that is well worth the read at this link: “Building Surf Waves and Removing Dams on the Arkansas River” by Mike Harvey
One of the takeaways from Mike’s written article, besides building river waves and river surfers being the main users of whitewater parks (when properly built and actually surfable that is), is the tribal differences between “downriver paddlers” and “river surfers”.
Downriver paddlers are as it describes, those who use a physical hand paddle or paddles to navigate down moving rivers. Downriver paddlers include: Stand Up Paddlers; kayakers; canoers, and rafters. River surfers are just that, those who surf standing waves in the river and for the most part do not purposely travel significant distances downriver on their surfboards.
Mike explains it this way, “River surfers are by far and away the fastest-growing segment of river users here in Colorado. River surfing is bringing an entirely new population of people to the river and this is both exciting and raises some challenges.“ Mike goes on to say, “Traditional whitewater paddle sports have a degree of mentorship built in and a longer learning curve, which promotes a culture of safety. River surfing has a much shorter learning curve with some people achieving a level of competency in the first few days. This means as we welcome these users to the river communities like Salida and Colorado Parks and Wildlife face new challenges around safety and creating regulations that address the needs and concerns of a completely novel user group.“
The challenges around safety is left open by Mike in his article and the creating regulations by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Mike is referring to concerns of the mandatory use of Coast Guard Approved Personal Floatation Devices (CGA PFD’s) at Scout Wave and potentially all river waves in Colorado. What Mike doesn’t mention directly is I think the challenges around how to build a culture of safety in river surfing to include but not limited to education, situational and river condition awareness, proper understanding and use of river surfing equipment (yes the dreaded quick release leash debate), etc.
When I first began to river surf over 7 years ago, I noticed a complete lack of information, education, and river knowledge being proffered up to the exploding river surfing community. I inquired informally into American Whitewater’s willingness to create some sort river surfing program. Shockingly I was told, “unless it involves a paddle, American Whitewater was not interested.“ My reaction was, “what the ____?“
Ok it has been close to six years since that questionable response to river surfing by American Whitewater and attitude has changed toward river surfing by American Whitewater for the better. If you look at their web page and online publications, American Whitewater has actually begun to embrace river surfing. That is a promising change of events for river surfing. I would bet SUP had the same dance routine with their acceptance into the bounds of American Whitewater. Though I got to say the myopic response by American Whitewater last week to my last article about the history, trials, and tribulations of the leash and modern day quick release leashes, did not shock-cord me nor other river surfers.
So, I am putting out an olive branch to American Whitewater to address river surfing’s needs when it comes to realistic promotion of safe river surfing and to convene a public discussion or forum or meeting on how to address these river surfing safety. Let’s start with American Whitewater reaching out to the general public with say a questionnaire about modernizing their Accident Database on how to more affectively investigate significant accidents and fatalities all while making recommendations for each accident as a learning point for all users of the rivers in the nation/world.
LBK
The Denver Surf Report 
I had cross posted this blog story same day on the Colorado River Surfers FaceBook page and left the comments open; but, it was taken down for “attacking a group (American Whitewater)”. I disagreed with one of administrators on that FB page about deleting my post and said I had actually put out an olive branch to AW. Response by the admin was that an olive branch offering is not appropriate on that page. Cool, I understand the decision to delete my cross post onto their page and policy not to make public peace. But I also then removed myself from the Colorado River Surfers FB page and logged off of FB for who knows how long…. Best way to reach me is the old fashion way, give me a phone call but you will have to find someone who has my number to get permission from me to give it to you.