North of Boise on Idaho’s Highway 55, with Old Chub beers in hand and a barbecue just big enough to manage a 12-pack of Oscar Mayers, a crew of programmers, veterinarians, marketers and business professionals ditch their suits for sprayskirts.
The magnetism that draws Idaho’s river-folk to an old fish ladder of diverted mountain runoff has held fast for decades. The Gutter is home to a tribe of grey-haired paddling people playing hooky from their desk jobs to immerse themselves in the humble pastime of gutterballin’, running figure-eights around the drops in the Gutter’s near-perfect whitewater year round.
Since long before the sculpted high-volume whitewater parks of Cascade and Boise—50 miles to the north and 25 miles to the south, respectively—the Gutter has been quietly nestled down a back road in Horseshoe Bend on the Payette River, attracting its own brand of dedicated work-dodging mischief-makers, looking for a slightly less sophisticated class of park n’ play.
The Gutter’s 100-yards of short drops, holes, surfable waves and powerful eddy lines are a tried-and-true destination for training in the pre-season, just a couple hour drive from home of the world-class North Fork Championship.
The real draw, the draw that keeps locals coming and out-of-towners tuned into Horseshoe Bend’s radar, is the massive wave that arises when a submerged air bladder—usually functioning as a dam—is partially deflated in the spring during peak runoff, diverting water through the four-tiered fish ladder.
The phenomenon is a rare sight; the last bladder deflation took place two years ago. As children whisper about the arrival of Santa Claus or a visit from the tooth fairy, the paddlers of Idaho wax poetic about the Bladder Wave that kicks off the paddling season in the earliest days of spring.
If the water level in the reservoir is high enough, the dam’s manager in Horseshoe Bend will make the call that brings paddlers from across the country. Along the Gutter they camp, in tents and under tarps, in the chilly spring air, waiting for the swell that will humble them for a new year of paddling.
“We surf on the wave, throw little blunts and do low-angle cartwheels,” says 17-year Gutter veteran, Mike Voorhees.
When Voorhees isn’t paddling the North Fork, he plays hooky from work and takes the long way home, stopping in Horseshoe Bend. He’s raised his three sons to be paddlers, starting them on the Gutter at age six before moving on to “harder stuff.”
Despite a feisty Hometown Throwdown hosted by Jackson Kayak in 2010, the Gutter has stayed outside the limelight of the paddling scene.
“They love dialing down their skills, trying different strokes or going backwards into eddies,” says paddling photographer John Webster, a frequent visitor of The Gutter.
“The older guys, that’s their jam.”
This article first appeared in the Spring 2015 issue of Rapid magazine.
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