You Can Only Run it Blind Once: The Tama River and Running a River Section for the First Time.
Words by Hal Tuttle pro SUP instructor and Badfish Surf Shop employee. @haltuttle on IG.
The rain came down hard all afternoon. Hard enough to turn the Tama River to a murky brown, latte color. I was topping up my paddleboard, as Yacu, smiling to himself, grabbed paddles from the wall. Yacu is a master waterman, a Badfish team rider, and the operator of the RiverBase Halau in the Mitake Gorge of Ome, Japan. As I put on my PFD, an alarm began to ring, loud and unignorable, followed by an announcement in Japanese. I looked towards the bridge downstream where the siren was emanating. As the alarm continued to sound, Yacu turned to me, “They are saying that they are releasing water from the dam and to keep away from the river.” Then he grinned and with a sparkle in his eye said, “This is when we go paddle.”
A common refrain around whitewater is that you can only run a river blind once, and although it is sometimes said as a joke, it truly is a special moment to paddle a stretch of river for the first time. I knew next to nothing about the Tama River as I followed Yacu down to the water with my board under my arm. With every step, I felt that unique mixture of nerves and excitement that only comes from paddling an unknown section of river.
As we hopped onto our boards and took our first paddle strokes, I felt my senses activating and growing sharper. Quickly, we descended into the first rapid: a boulder garden with pulsing waves and tight maneuvers. I watched Yacu ahead of me as he nimbly glided in and out of eddies and smoothly absorbed each wave. I followed, wide-eyed and excited, through each series of rapids, accepting the fact that I didn’t know what to expect around each corner: trusting in my paddling partner, my board, and each paddle stroke. When the whitewater began to subside, I began to fully take in the impressive rock features and dense, green hillsides that ran steeply down to the water.
Enjoying a mellower stretch along the Tama River in Ome, Japan
In many ways, that feeling I get from paddling a stretch of river for the first time is one that I am chasing every time I am out on the water. Paddling rivers allows one to see the world from a unique point of view, and there is always something new to see. Here in the Arkansas River Valley, we have a few sections of river, such as Browns Canyon, that can only be seen from a boat or board and about 100 miles of paddleable whitewater with world-class views. I do not take any of that for granted, and I’m grateful that my work teaching SUP and rafting affords me the chance to run the Arkansas multiple times a day, every single day. However, we can forget how lucky we are sometimes, and I often think about how I can find that special flow state feeling I experienced on the Tama River while paddling the same river every single day…
I think I found my answer in my experiences with Yacu. Yacu, who has been paddling the Tama for more than twenty years, was smiling nearly the entire time we were on the water. He was constantly looking at the scenery around him and then looking back at me excitedly to tell me something about his home and this river: the stories he’s heard about the solitary tree on the hillside and the earthquake that left it standing so prominently… how he has grown the region’s stand up paddling community in the last two decades… the way that the river has become shallower every season as the dam just upstream halts more and more sediment from reaching the sea. Yacu has surely paddled that section of the Tama more than I can imagine, but his passion for running the river, helping protect it, and sharing its stories is not diminished.
Yacu and I after a surf session near Mt. Fuji
If nothing else, I’ve learned that sharing in somebody else’s first time on a stretch of river can be just as rewarding as my own first experiences. Back here in Salida, Colorado, I will continue to look for the new in the old and do my best to share the magic of this river I love with my paddling community and with folks who don't know it yet.
One of Hal's clients Tyler crushing his first time down Lower Browns Canyon during a lesson with RMOC
I don’t know what the next section of river I’ll get to paddle for the first time will be, but I know that wherever it may be, I will be sure to revel in that special moment. After all, you can only run it blind once!
-Hal Tuttle