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By Ben McCarty
News staff writer
July 21, 2008
To see more riverboarding pictures, click here.
Certainly it is possible for someone to strap themselves to a
foam board and go hurdling down a raging river with their body
being pounded by the rapids and rocks that make up the terrain.
But what would compel someone to actually do it? Well, for
starters, it's a rush.
"I think we are all adrenaline junkies," Rochelle Parry, a Gorge
Games competitor from Bellingham, Wash., said after completing
the Extreme Downriver race on Friday that saw competitors
navigate their way through a winding, treacherous course on the
White Salmon. from Top Drop Falls above BZ Corner through Husum
Falls.
Kevin Ryan of Boise, Idaho was drawn to the sport as the next
step up from whitewater kayaking as a way to ride the rapids.
"I started out kayaking first and then I fell in love with this
sport and have been doing it ever since."
It would be impossible to make a run down a swiftly moving river
boring by any means, but for riverboarders, their sport gives
the trip a bit of an extra thrill.
"It's a different way to experience the whitewater," Liz Arnold
of Hussum, Wash., said after finishing a run in the boardercross
event.
In riverboarding boardercross, up to four boarders all head down
the river at once, battling the river and each other to be the
first to make it to the finish.
Like any of the other riverboarding events the strategy is
pretty simple: Get on the board, then hang on for dear life. Oh,
and watch out for rocks.
"I hit a bunch yesterday," Parry said after her race. "But
today, I knew were most of the rocks where."
The key word being most.
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