The Richelieu River in the bucolic Quebecois village of Chambly, just 20 minutes from downtown Montreal, is a true spring whitewater park-and-play playground. Famous among tourists for quaint stone houses, boat locks, historic Fort Chambly and a micro-brew restaurant where all the food is made with beer, Chambly is famous among paddlers for glassy green waves and its annual freestyle rodeo.
In spring the 200-metre-wide Richlelieu is murkily swollen with runoff spilling into the St. Lawrence. At the municipal park near Chambly, a dam marks the beginning of 300 metres or so of class III rapids that empty into flat water at the Basin Chambly. Families eat poutine at the park’s picnic tables and watch paddlers untie their boats and slip into their drytops in the nearby parking lot.
Chambly’s two play features change a lot from late March to early June as water levels build and then taper off into the summer. As the water rises, “first wave” appears, quite shallow at first, with half of the feature a hole which is fully playable but a bit flushy. The sweetest level for the first wave is also the trickiest level. It is a steep, smooth, totally green six-foot wave that lets you do all sorts of moves with dynamic surf speed and airtime. You need to have good wave-control skills because there is no more foam pile. You have to catch this wave on the fly and walk back up to put in below the dam if you get flushed out.
At higher water levels, the first wave gets flat and “second wave,” an even better wave, builds downstream. Second wave is an easier ride and more popular than first wave—20 feet wide, consistently steep, with more break and eddy service. This wave has lots of true speed and bounce. The surfer’s left side has a small but pronounced diagonal that allows for incredible lefty blunts.
Unfortunately, the water didn’t rise enough for second wave to build to its 10-foot potential for last year’s rodeo, so this feature hasn’t been paddled to the full potential of the new, shorter boats.
Each year on the last weekend of April, there’s a big family entertainment event called the Aquafête des Rapides de Chambly. At Aquafête, regular people get into wetsuits and swim the cold water of the rapids. This is quite a big thing, and it means that the bleachers and portable toilets are set up and ready to go for the Chambly Rodeo May 3–4, when the water level is usually at its peak.
Guillaume Larouche, also known as Mr. Chambly, is the one to watch if you want to learn how to ride Chambly. He’s back organizing this year’s Chambly Rodeo competition/surfing rendezvous, the second event of the 2003 Quebec Freestyle Kayaking Circuit.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2003 issue of Rapid Magazine.
