Corky Carroll: It was cold and hazardous, but the river wave was just too good to pass up

I recently had a visitor who lives in upstate New York and has a river near him. He was mentioning that sometimes the standing waves in one section of the river look almost rideable.

Truth is, they probably are.

Back in the early 1970s I lived in Ketchum, Idaho, for a few years. Ketchum is where the Sun Valley ski resort is, and I was spending time skiing and playing music right after I retired from professional surfing competition.

We rented a house in an area called Warm Springs and had a creek that ran behind our backyard. One spring that creek turned into a pretty fast-moving small river and, lo and behold, there was this nice head-high standing wave right there behind our house.

I had a board and wetsuit with me, as I would drive over to the Oregon coast to surf at times, so I figured why not try to ride that wave. It looked so perfect and inviting.

So I suited up and jumped in the river, a frosty 33 degrees — freshly melted snow tends to be cold — and paddled my arms off trying to catch the wave as the rushing river was taking me past it. No dice. Then I got battered and beaten through some rapids and rocks before I could get out.

I spent the afternoon fixing my board from all the dings and went to the store and bought some dish-washing gloves, a water ski rope and a foam kayak helmet.

The next morning I duct-taped the dish-washing gloves into the sleeves of my wetsuit as the water was so cold it hurt my hands, put on the helmet to protect my delicate head from getting bashed into the rocks and tied the water ski rope to a big dead tree on the bank of the river.

I got in the water and used the speed of the rushing river to stabilize my board so I could stand up and then backed myself into the wave. Perfect. Once I was riding the wave I let go of the rope and was surfing. And it was really a good wave, tons of speed and perfect shape.

After about five minutes though my legs started to get tired and I caught an edge and fell. Once again I went banging down the river dinging my board on every rock. It was like being in a pinball machine.

Not easily deterred when it comes to surfing, I spent the afternoon once again fixing my board and coming up with a better plan for the next day.

This time when I had backed myself into the wave I didn’t let go of the rope. I just let it get a little slack in it — that way when my legs gave out I could just pull myself back out of the wave and ride over the bank and get out. No harm, no foul.

And it might have been a great plan, if I hadn’t gotten a bit too cocky and overamped on a cutback. After falling off I still had hold of the rope. The result was about the same as being pulled from behind a boat, no air and no way to get out of the situation other than to let go. So, I let go. And again, went banging down the river.

Only this time, my board went around a big rock on one side with me on the other, with my surf leash wrapped around the rock.

This left me drowning in a deep spot, held underwater. The only way out was to get my surf leash off my foot and release the board. The last I saw, my board it was going around a bend down the river.

So, I got out of the water as fast as I could and rushed into the house to throw on some sweats before jumping into my car and heading down the river to find my board.

The creek dumped into the Wood River, which ran all the way down to the Snake River at Twin Falls. That’s the place Evel Knievel tried to jump the canyon — I worked on the film crew for that.

I followed the river all the way out of town, until it went away from the road. No board. Then I drove down to the next town and sat on a bridge over the river for a couple of hours hoping my board would come by. Nope, still no board.

As far as I know it went all the way to the Snake River, then to the Columbia River and probably made its way out to sea at Astoria, Ore. After that, who knows? It could be stuck in that giant garbage patch out in the Pacific Ocean. Or it could have washed up on some beach and become the property of some lucky passerby. But I never saw it again.

That ended my river surfing.

But, the point being, river surfing is a totally viable thing and they are doing it now in many parts of the world where there isn’t an ocean. Yeah, the water is normally really cold and there are hazards, but if it’s the only wave around and you are a surfer then why not?

My hat’s off to the river rats around the globe who brave the elements to shred a few freshwater peaks.

Ask the expert

Q. I was out surfing yesterday in Newport Beach and had a bad experience with a local surfer. I was paddling out and was trying to get over a wave that this guy was riding and I guess he had to swerve a little bit to go around me and he didn’t make the wave and fell off. He came up screaming at me for getting in his way. What was I supposed to do? I didn’t want the wave to break on me. Is there some sort of rules of the road that says who has the right of way or something?

Tom Clark, Costa Mesa

A. Yes there is and it’s pretty clear. The guy riding the wave has priority over people paddling out. It is the responsibility of the person paddling out to not paddle right in the way of a person trying to make a wave. In other words, you should have stopped and let him go by.

Yes, the wave would have probably broken and you would have had to eat the whitewater. But so what? It certainly was not a life or death situation and you would have survived with no issue, other than taking a couple of more minutes to get outside.

The problem is that most beginners have no clue as to these kinds of things and just panic to get over a breaking wave, like it’s a zillion feet or something. Of course, that said, there are exceptions where you might just get stuck and can’t get out of the way. The best thing to do in that situation is to put your arms up and let the person on the wave know you are stuck and are not going to move. If they know that then it will be up to them to miss you.

The whole idea is to have fun and for nobody to get hurt, but there are some simple rules to follow to help that along.