Demshitz competes in the Payette River Games at Kelly’s Whitewater Park in Cascade Idaho: A follow-up to the post by Gerd Serrasolses.

Gerd wrote a nice summary of the event and a description of Kelly’s Whitewater Park in his post on June 25th, but I also wanted to share the Demshitz experience and competition results. Kelly’s is a phenomenal feature and the area and whitewater around cascade is outstanding!! Mr. Carbon Jed and Mrs. Jed kill it on the wave and the North Fork of the Payette stout section is not far downstream. Demshitz loves cascade Idaho!!

The feature is awesome because you can do both wave and hole moves. Dave was working really hard on getting his clean bunt mcnasty and got one during prelims with Mr. Carbon Jed. Craig’s clean blunts and airscrews were huge! Even Mike, who notoriously kills it in a hole, did wave moves in his comp rides and Bren can tricky-woo better than anybody else. Men’s scores were incredibly high in this freestyle event. Dave was really close to making semifinals with 1355 combined 2 rides, but barely missed the cut.

Craig, huge air blunt.

Men’s prelim results.

I made it to finals in the pro women’s and ended up taking 5th overall. In the last year I’ve gotten much more consistent with blunts and back blunts and it really helped at this feature. I even got a few compliments on how well I could blunt Mrs. Jed. That boat is amazing on a wave!! Rowan stepped it up and competed against the women but didn’t make the cut. The women’s division was competitive this year, even Clair O’Hara the current women’s world champion, came all the way from the UK.

Me surfing out to the green wave to set up for a trick.

Besides freestyle, there was also a combined downriver sprint and boater-cross event. The downriver sprint was mostly flat-water on the upper North Fork of the Payette and then finished in the park, and the boater-cross went right through the hole (causing some good carnage!). Rowan did really well in boater-cross taking 6th place in the Nano. Matt Anger took 4th in the downriver race and Craig was 2nd in the boater-cross.

Waiting to get on the bus for the downriver race.

The Payette River Games was one of my favorite events this year. I love the wave, hanging out in the park, and camping with everyone. One day we even brought the ping pong table outside and had an outdoor ping pong tournament and a BBQ….Demshitz style!!! It was a blast!! After the event we all got a little North Fork action and then parted ways. Now, it’s great to be back home in Idaho!!