John, Toby, Adriene, Biscuit, Tater, and I loaded up the van and hauled a bunch of boats over to the First Annual Cascades Race on the Nantahala river Wednesday night. Last week the call went out over the Facebook airwaves that there was going to be a race on Cascades. We love us some extreme racing down here in the south so we knew we wanted to support this event on one of the classic southeastern sections of creek boating. The race had a 5pm start, I love day light savings time so we had time to work most of the day then head over for a couple practice runs before it all went down.
As is per usual Toby "honey badger" MacDermott was faster, smoother, and in better shape than all of us so he took the top honors. He was so fast I never got a picture of him. Note the stylie medals made by Candice. Thanks Candice!
Adriene laid down a scorching time as the only female entrant into the race. In fact she hurt a lot of boys feelings by coming in 5th! However the highlight of her night was meeting the infamous Mark Zwick. If you have ever run the Green you will remember the rapid called Zwick's and you thought why in the world is this rapid called Zwick's? Well its because Mark Zwick had that rapid named after him, and I will let him tell you that story.
The top 5 results as I understand them are:
1. Toby Macdermott
2. John Grace
3. Some asshole named Shane Benedict
4. Jon Clark / Tommy Yon tied
5. Adriene Levknecht
Here is a video I put together of my race run with a gopro and some other shots at Big Kahuna (the biggest rapid on the run) and a link to more photos. Click Here
Cheers Shane
