Through Hell or High Water: Tashka’s Avon Descent on a paddleboard

The Avon Descent is a two day, 124km race starting from the town of Northam and ending in Bayswater (a suburb of Perth, Western Australia).

While the course runs through a small town and starts and ends in civilisation, most of the river runs through farmland, vineyards, national parks and gorges. Very limited river access makes this a particularly special experience, where participants get to see country not many get a chance to.

As the river is seasonal, only filling from a dry riverbed once the winter rains come, competitors never quite know what they’re going to get on the weekend. The race’s motto “Through Hell or High Water” reflects this: some years the river’s so low that competitors have to carry their paddle-craft or powerboats over long stretches of dry pools; while in other, flood years, the river comes alive and many of the rapids become seriously powerful (up to grade 4) with large stoppers, standing waves, boils, whirlpools and big drops.

The river also runs through an 11km forest of small ti trees which, once the water starts to flow, gives paddlers the chance to navigate a tight and swift maze full of dead ends and overgrown patches with the additional chance of getting washed into the trees or stuck behind pile-ups of fellow stuck or capsized craft. It pays to learn the best route through the ti trees before the event.

Once competitors near the city suburbs, the Avon meets the Swan River and flattens off. Then it’s a 30km sprint to the end of the race past various riverside markets, festivals and spectators enjoying a barbie while they cheer on the exhausted paddlers and various power-craft hooning by to the finish line.

To best suit the flowing sections of the course I paddled a 12'6" by 32" wide, V-hull, Red Voyager iSUP. The length and hull shape gave me the flexibility to paddle efficiently through the many pools between rapids while the width still made it stable enough to ride the rapids and smash through the standing waves... That’s not to say I didn’t get unstuck at times, but I still had a lot of fun, relishing how responsive the Voyager SUP was despite its length. In fact, once I got to the ti trees I had a clear advantage over the other paddle-craft as I was able to make last-minute calls when it came to changing direction to avoid trees and other stuck paddlers.

Mostly what caused me grief was the fins getting stuck on rocks. I’d replaced the stock twin-fins with 2" mini-fins, but they still received a beating (you can see me in one of the videos jumping on the nose of my board to release the fins from a weir). Going finless was not an option though, with the distance I had to paddle. Lucky for me come day two, the water level had increased by 0.7m overnight so this was less of a problem.

Despite the fins getting hammered, the Voyager board held up really well against the rocks and rapids. The Red patented MSL® construction and removable RSS battens down the side of the board meant that despite being light enough for easy portages (after the first weir incident I thought walking round the others might be the smart thing to do) the board was tough and durable enough that by the end of the race there was minimal damage to the board. Which is something that I was very happy about after having to pull out of a previous solo Avon Descent after smashing my plastic ski to pieces. Looking at the carnage down some of the bigger rapids and the number of DNFs this year, it was clear other kayakers and skis encountered similar predicaments this year as well.

Follow Tashka’s adventures on Insta via @tashka.goeswell