A few days ago, New River Academy took some of its more advanced students to do one of the more challenging runs of the year: the Nevados. This run is a good sized creek with a few twenty foot drops on it, that take skill and quick thinking to hit the lines, but have very few, if any consequences. Below our takeout is a different story. The Lower Nevados is an extremely hard run with some serious drops, including the infamous Demshitz drop; a ten foot boof into a fifty foot drop that reconnects halfway though. There’s no need to worry though, we didn’t even come close to these drops. We stuck with the Upper Nevados, a solid class V run that while only about a mile long, offers tons of fun. It starts out with a cool ten-foot waterfall into a long slide that the students were not allowed to run because of the potential to ramp into the air five feet, and then land face-down on rock. We cheered and took pictures as Dave, Lorenzo, Tino, and guest coach for the day Jake Greenbaum styled the line. Then we got into our boats and headed down to scout the first drop. This drop was a solid twenty-foot waterfall with a decent lead-in. The trick to this one though, was that you had to boof the drop and do a ninety degree turn and then stomp your feet down. The turn helped you avoid the bank that was five feet past the drop, and the stomp makes sure you don’t land flat. Everybody did the line perfectly and it was a very fun drop. We then went through some class IV boogie water until we got to the second drop: the pinched twenty. This is a very intimidating looking drop, although it doesn’t have much of a line to it. Basically the entire river constricts to a boat width and falls twenty feet. This may sound easy but there is about a three foot boof over log before it, so you have to hit your boof and then line yourself up to go off the drop. This drop had some more interesting lines than the last drop. Jacob broke a paddle and somebody else who wants to remain nameless flipped on the lip of it. Everyone turned out fine at the bottom and we proceeded to the next drop which was a super fun, ten-foot auto boof. Right after this was a runnable but hard rapid that most people portaged. Unfortunately, Kira flipped on the auto-boof and went down the first drop of the portage where she got worked and swam. She did the smart thing and ditched her boat and paddle right away to avoid the next drop and fortunately we found both of them (though her boat was in the eddy above Demshitz drop). After this drop we were in a pickle since we were down two paddles and a boat. Dave made the good decision of making us hike out and that is what we did marking the end of our Nevados adventure.
To see more of Jason Terry’s pictures and blogs, click here: Jason Terry’s Blog
Jake catching air off the slide
Alex giving a perfect example of the turn and stomp on the first drop
Clay on the second twenty-footer
