It's splish, bash at Paddlemania

Thanks to the end of an almost two-year drought, water levels were high enough this year for Paddlemania to again feature the Fin Falls race course, which spans some of the best rapids on the lower St. Louis River through Jay Cooke State Park.

“This race highlights some of the more gnarly rapids you have to navigate, including some Class 4 rapids,” race director Cliff Langley told the Pine Knot last week, explaining the water had been too low the past two years for that race course.

Spectators faced two choices for Saturday’s race: Take the easy route and enjoy watching the first part of the race from the swinging bridge at the state park — or hike “river right,” then either pick one’s way over waves of jagged rock, or scramble down the almost-vertical river bank to get a select front-row seat. Others found a platform of rock high above the river and watched from above.

The timed whitewater kayak race started just upstream of the bridge, then passed underneath, and through a short stretch of flat water. With the river turning right, the fun continued with a small waterfall. That is the “fin” of the Fin Falls race, Langley said. From there, it dipped into a mini canyon to finish, sometimes bouncing dangerously close to the rocky walls of the small river canyon.

It takes a special breed of person to race through torrents of water and rock. It also creates special friendships, said John Holtan, who came up from Minneapolis to work safety for the race.

“One of the unique things about kayaking is everybody comes from everywhere else,” he said, sitting with a group of old friends near the Thomson Dam before the race. “Usually friends don’t come into it together, because there’s a really unique personality that

really wants to get out there, and is comfortable being upside down with rocks in super-cold water.

“It takes a lot of weird personality attributes. Normal people don’t do this,” he added.

Thus, there were racers from Carlton County,

Duluth, the Twin Cities, even one from Idaho.

Although he’s been whitewater kayaking for five years, Saturday was the first race for 2023 Cloquet grad TJ Sabyan.

“It’s a little nerve- wracking but I’m really excited to get down there and race,” Sabyan said.

He started kayaking through his snowboard coach, who makes a habit of inviting his athletes out on the river. They went one day, then the next.

“I ended up going every weekend after that and just kind of kept with it,” Sabyan said.

That led to a job with Langley at Swiftwater Adventures, a rafting and high ropes company which offers whitewater rafting tours from Scanlon to the Thomson Reservoir.

It gets easier with time, he said.

“I definitely used to get a lot more scared, but now I’m getting a lot more comfortable in my kayak and in those rapids down there just because I’ve done it quite a few times,” he said. “It’s not saying that I don’t get scared. Every time I run a route, I’ll get a little nervous. It’s good to be nervous, diligent. I’m a very cautious person. You don’t want to be too confident; that’s when stuff starts to go wrong.”

Nothing appeared to go wrong Saturday, as kayakers raced downstream every minute starting around 2:15 p.m., spectators cheering as they raced through the liquid chaos of the rapids, many disappearing from view momentarily after the falls, only to bounce back up and weave their way downstream.

Casey Lloyd took first place, finishing the course in 6 minutes, 40 seconds. Burgess Norrgard, who grew up in Cloquet but now splits his time living in Idaho and New Zealand, took second place with a time of 6:45. Brian Robin took third in 6:51. Cloquet High School teacher Ryan Zimny placed fourth in 7:01 and Clint Massey fifth in 7:05.

Zimny has been whitewater kayaking since the 1990s, and was the second racer down the river Saturday. He said it’s an incredibly supportive, versus competitive, community.

The Paddlemania races are a fun tradition, he said. And conditions were good Saturday.

“The release flow was a little higher than the last few years, so the water was a little pushier, which was a nice bonus for us,” Zimny said. “It’s a fun section of challenging whitewater, and pushing hard through it gives an added dimension of difficulty compared to our usual relaxed pace.”

And it was good to see other adrenaline-seeking old friends.

“Most of us aren’t really around each other except for events like this, or during the spring melt on the North Shore,” Holtan said.

After the race they lingered in water to watch the next racers come down and then loaded kayaks into personal vehicles or the Swiftwater trailer, heading back to the dam for more together time before going their separate ways.

Until next year.