This river is "stomping." Photo: Eric Evans

"Marten's was pretty pushy yesterday, and there was some wood above Clover. Brown's Hole is a bit sticky at this level, but don't worry - it'll still flush you out."

Huh?

Didn't catch all of that? Don't worry. Kayak-speak is like a foreign language, it's best learned through total immersion. As in getting wet.

My first boating (i.e. kayaking) trip introduced me to all sorts of new words and phrases. Many of these slang terms are euphemisms for ugly - read dangerous - river situations.

Instead of saying, "Watch out for those strong, swift currents or you'll flip," a kayaker would say, "That rapid is a little pushy today." Or, instead of, "There's a recirculating hydraulic at the bottom of that hole," one hears, "Yeah, such-and-such rapid is sort of sticky."

If a certain rapid is "sticky" enough, like Brown's Hole on Oregon's McKenzie River at low water, then it turns into a "keeper." If it gets worse, it could even become a terminal hydraulic - what goes in does not come back out. Or only after longer than the average adult's two-minute lung capacity.

Fortunately most rapids aren't keepers and, like the kayaker said, will "flush you out." Perhaps the reason for this euphemistic slang is to take the edge off the danger, or to make the "crazy" boaters seem halfway sane. But if you're serious about river running, steep creeking (paddling narrow, highly vertical creeks), or playboating (pulling off gymnastic "rodeo" moves on waves or in holes), kayak-speak is a prerequisite.

To begin with, there's the character of the river: pool-drop or continuous. As you might guess, continuous means nonstop, while pool-drop denotes alternating rapid and flatwater sections.

Then there's the type of rapid. Most rapids are either ledges, chutes, holes, wavetrains, or boulder gardens. However, some rapids contain a combination of these elements. A rapid might have waves leading up to a ledge, and then a monster boat-eating hole at the bottom. Marten's, which houses the local boat-eating hole on the McKenzie River, is a prime example of such a rapid.

The key to running Marten's is staying between the hole on river -right and the rocks on river left - river left being the part of the river to your left as you move downstream. If you judge your line just right, you will encounter splashy waves on top followed by some boulders, a small(er) hole in the middle, and then a rewarding wavetrain - succession of four to five foot wavesÑat the bottom.

Once one summer while running Marten's in an old inflatable kayak, I missed my line and ended up augering-in to the notorious hole. Needless to say, I swam the rest of the rapid.

Kayakers, out of necessity to explain what's around the river bend, have also invented a litany of words describing the internal features of a rapid. There's the pile, boil, curl, riffle, whitewater, greenwater (the unbroken part of a wave), shelf, slot, chute, horizon line (an unnerving characteristic signaling an imminent drop of indeterminate height), eddy, eddy line, and eddy wall.

An eddy is where the water passes around an obstruction like a rock and circles back upstream; the line where the opposing currents visibly brush against each other is called the eddy line. An especially strong eddy line is an eddy wall or eddy fence. If a boater isn't careful, or isn't paying attention, the turbulence can flip a boat.

Once you have learned the basic vocabulary and armed yourself with such safety words as "self-rescue", "throw-rope", and "T-rescue", it's off to the pool in search of the elusive roll. After several weeks at the pool, many novice boaters are dismayed to learn they've only mastered the most basic roll, the onside roll. Now they have to learn the offside and handroll aswell. But you're a quick learner, right?

Standing on the bank of a rushing Class II river (rivers are classified on a scale of I to VI; Class I is anything moving, Class VI is for experts only at "high risk to life"), you may have some second thoughts. Don't. Kayaking is actually quite safe as long as you are prepared and sensible.

"To be a true playboater, or better yet a paddle bum, you must be fluent in rodeo-talk, the predominant dialect of kayak-speak."

So pull on your paddling gear (dry-top, life jacket, helmet, spray skirt, booties, paddle, and of course, boat - perhaps the Kinetic, Amp, or EZ?), and get ready for the really fun stuff: playboating. To be a true playboater, or better yet a paddle bum, not only do you have to paddle five days a week and live for rodeos on the weekends, but you must also be fluent in rodeo-talk, the predominant dialect of kayak-speak."

Die-hard kayakers, in their ceaseless search for bigger thrills and spills, have created their own words for the new moves. "Stern squirting" is sinking the stern under the water and pirouetting around. The "cartwheel" is pretty self-explanatory, and a "wavewheel" is a 180 vertical cartwheel off of a wave. Landing a "tricky-wuu" means throwing a "splitwheel" followed by a "wingover" in the same direction as the first end of the "split", finished up with another vertical or off-vertical end.

Confused? Just picture a wild whir of boat, paddle and boater.

Before you know it, you'll be speaking the language. You'll have your roll (onside, offside and everything else). You've seen the pros. So now get out there and shred it up! I want to see you sidesurf, backsurf, flatspin, cartwheel, wavewheel, blunt, boof, pirouette, pop some stern squirts, throw a bunch of ends and finish your ride with giant ender.

And remember: when you're running Marten's, the boat-eating hole is on your right.

Some of the more creative words in kayaking

1. Gnar: Big, intense, difficult rapids.

2. Stompin': Fast-paced, high-volume.

3. Burly: Big, intense and lots of holes!

4. To pimp: To hit a sweet line; it couldn't have been run better.

5. Tweetered: To get worked.

6. Mank or manky: A shallow rapid filled with sharp, chunky rocks. In other words, a lot of nasty stuff to get tweetered on!

7. Carnage: The result of running a manky rapid and getting tweetered. Implies swimmers and a garage sale of gear floating down the river.

8. Quality: Good. Used as in "That's quality!"

9. Sketchy: The opposite of quality and not so good! (Something dangerous).

10. Juicy: High-volume, lots of water.

11. Going off or to go off: To have a really sweet ride or if used to describe a creek or river, it means the water level's up and it's flowing.

12. To charge/punch: (as in "Punch that hole!") To paddle REALLY hard and power through something.

13. To catch something on the fly: To drop onto a wave or into a hole from upstream.

14. One-shot-wonder: A catch-on-the-fly wave.

15. Hole-bait: Word to describe boats that have a bad tendency to get caught in a hole's recirculation and sucked back in.

by Amanda Marushishi, WetDawg Correspondent
Amanda grew up paddling the rivers of Eugene, Ore. and is a student at Stanford University