The Kan is Alberta’s most popular whitewater river. Flowing north from Barrier Lake into the Bow River through the adrenaline-sport Shangri-La of the Rockies’ eastern edge, the Kananaskis River is within an hour’s drive of Calgary. It has plenty of variety, including a slalom course and good playspots like Widow Maker, Hollywood Hole and the crowd-pleasing Green Tongue. Freestyle kayakers share the river with beginning canoeists and Olympic racers, and although eddies sometimes get the vibe of a skateboard park with everyone lined up to throw down a sick one, even the biggest huckers are willing to help out a swimmer.
Best of all, consistent dam-controlled water levels make the Kan a dependable all-season playspot. The water god—TransAlta hydro— doesn’t have paddlers in mind when it plans releases, but things work out so the medium-volume Kan flows roughly 30 cms almost every day year-round.
Now, there are more reasons to hit the Kan—bigger, better, brand- new playspots.
During a low-water period in late April, contractors moved in to add 700 tonnes of new rock and shift around existing features. They created new waves, holes and eddies near the former Santa Claus pourover, halfway along the Kan’s two-kilometre stretch of prime whitewater. The project, spearheaded by Jeff Germaine and Patch Bennett through the Lower Kananaskis River Users Association (LKRUA), aimed to develop high-quality park-and-play spots that would spread out the use on the river and reduce congestion.
Paddlers are stoked about the results of this $50,000 upgrade, which produced three notable new features.
The middle feature is the chosen one to draw the masses away from the Kan’s ever-popular Green Tongue. Formed from the old Santa Claus wave, this new feature has been provisionally dubbed “St. Nick” until paddlers at the Kananaskis Whitewater Festival can settle on something jazzier than “one, two and three.”
Approaching St. Nick, paddlers see a horizon line and a tight constriction. The river narrows by two-thirds into a super-fast, powerful wave. With a steep face and retentive foam pile this wave allows for spins, blunts and big bounces. “You can air blunt on both sides,” said Bennett.
Bennett is also happy with the results of feature number one. “It’s a breaking wave that you can cartwheel and loop in and blunt and do many of the newer moves. But it’s not super sticky…. We wanted something that offered a bit more wave surfing that you could throw in some cartwheels as well.”
The third new playspot is another wave sized for less aggressive boaters, well serviced by a huge eddy on river right. Kan veterans will notice other, subtler changes including a partially formed fourth feature—a work in progress that timed out when TransAlta turned the taps back on—and a smorgasbord of new eddies, smaller play features and learning spots.
Other improvements, including finishing cleaning out eddies on the slalom course, are in store for later this summer, and if this spring’s success is any indication, the Kan will continue to improve.
“If we’d managed to get three features as good as what we’d already had we would have been pleased.” Bennett concluded. “Now we’ve got two features at least as good as we had before and one feature which is considerably better than anything we’ve had before.”
This article first appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of Rapid Magazine.
