Plunge Into Creek Boating

Rock walls closing in, his kayak moving downstream fast, John Kiffmeyer approached the edge of Brownstone Falls. A final nudge and Kiffmeyer was airborne, his boat a missile flying four stories high inside a roar of white.
 
It was the spring of 2002, and Kiffmeyer, a machinist from Big Lake in his mid-twenties, was attempting a risky waterfall drop on the Bad River in northern Wisconsin. The right line would net Kiffmeyer a bit of glory in the local creek-boating scene. A wrong move on Brownstone Falls, which jets 40 vertical feet in a tight gorge at Copper Falls State Park, would send Kiffmeyer to the hospital.
 
Creek boating--a subset of whitewater kayaking where paddlers seek narrow streams, fast currents and waterfall drops--makes no pretense about risk. It is a sport that focuses on streams so steep they look like waterslides. Rapids tumble and explode, and expert-level class V whitewater is the rule more often than the exception. Currents on some streams can pull a kayak completely under, its occupant suctioned along down for the ride.

Fringe Movement

Nationwide, about 2.2 million people whitewater kayak, according to Outdoor Industry Association of Boulder, Colorado. Creek boaters comprise a small percentage of that figure, though major manufactures like Dagger, Necky, Pyranha and Prijon have for years built boats made to withstand the rigors of the sport.
   
The Sierra Nevada range in California, the Rocky Mountains and streams in the Southeast are creek-boating hotspots. But in the upper Midwest, where rivers drain an immense watershed surrounding Lake Superior, dozens of creeks play host to kayakers in search of a rush.
 
"When the water is up, the Lake Superior area is as good as anything," said Peter Noren, a veteran kayaker from Minneapolis. "The density of streams is unique."
 
Indeed, more than 25 navigable rivers and creeks lace Minnesota's North Shore alone, from Duluth's Amity Creek north more than a hundred miles to the Pigeon River at the Canadian border. Another two-dozen creeks and tributaries cut Superior's South Shore in Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula, making the Midwest a little-known Mecca for steep-water seekers like Kiffmeyer and his ilk.

Risk Assessment

At Brownstone Falls in 2002, where the boaters got out to scout the 40-foot drop before pushing through, Kiffmeyer steered his kayak slightly off route. Missing the main pool at the base of the falls, his boat nosedived into solid stone just slightly submerged, breaking both of Kiffmeyer's ankles on impact. "It felt like falling onto cement," said Kiffmeyer, now 33.