Wenatchee River surfing at high water.
Imagine balancing on your feet with a board beneath you, all the while navigating fast-moving river rapids.
This experience is how CHS art teacher Alan Pace gets his mind off things, and it’s called whitewater stand-up paddleboarding. Whitewater paddleboarding is the sport of navigating bumpy river rapids on a specialized stand-up paddleboard.
When Pace moved to Cashmere, he began paddleboarding the easy parts of the river in the summer to cool off. Pace said, “I quickly learned from the local kayakers that the river is a lot more interesting when it’s running high. I got a wetsuit and the right safety gear and gave it a go the first time the water levels came up. When I fell in the rapids, I loved the feeling of getting tumbled under water and not being in total control.”
Pace enjoys paddleboarding because it gives him a chance to be present in the moment when he’s on the river. Pace said, “If I’m surfing or going through rapids, I have to focus on what I’m doing so I’m not thinking about all the random things going on in life.” Pace’s favorite thing about being a paddleboarder is surfing river waves. “It felt impossible when I first started, but as I got better, and the boards got better, I was able to surf a lot of river waves that you usually only see kayakers surfing.”
Pace finds time on the weekends to go paddleboarding; he’s even had the opportunity to compete in races around PNW. In 2019, Pace competed in a race on the upper Clackamas River in Oregon.
Pace has become so proficient at this sport that he has even secured a sponsorship. “It’s also fun doing something so uncommon. I was never good enough to be a sponsored snowboarder, but this sport is so obscure that I can actually be a sponsored whitewater paddleboarder as a middle-aged guy with a dad bod. Pace said, “It’s been really cool having a relationship with Halagear- they make the best whitewater paddle boards on the market. Over the years, I’ve been a ‘team rider,’ a brand ambassador, I’ve been able to test prototypes, and I’ve even designed some of their graphics.”
Pace has learned a lot about safety in his years of paddleboarding. One of the things he said was never to use an ankle leash while paddleboarding on a river. If it gets caught on a rock or a log, you could easily get pulled underwater and drown. You have to have either no leash or a leash with a quick-release mechanism.
“The scariest situation I’ve been in was when I paddled Boulder Drop on the Skyomish River. It’s a pretty difficult rapid full of huge boulders. I did it once at low flows without a problem. I didn’t do my homework and went back to do it at higher flows, where the rapid is known to be extra retentive, meaning it could hold you in the same spot, recirculating you like a washing machine. That happened to me when I fell in. I got pulled deep but climbed my leash and was able to hold onto the board. It took a minute to finally figure out how to escape that hole. I could breathe the whole time, so it wasn’t too crazy, although my Apple Watch said my heart rate hit 102. If I were in there without my board, I probably would’ve had a much harder time getting air. That’s why I feel like a paddleboard is actually a pretty safe way to do whitewater.”
Pace’s favorite rivers outside of Wenatchee are the White Salmon in Southern Washington and the Lower Salmon River in Idaho. “One of my favorite memories was paddling seventy miles down the Lower Salmon with my son, Zane, and a couple of other friends. We carried all our camping gear in dry bags strapped to our boards and completed the trip in three nights.”
(Mr. Pace)
Pace has had years of experience and practiced with safety training; he’s an amazing art teacher and an extraordinary paddleboarder.
