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APPEAL TRIBUNE
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2017
Life in the
Valley y
sanews@salem.gannett.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF GEORGE NUCKOLS/CREATURE CRAFTS
Boaters take a Creature Craft on a wild ride down the North Fork of the Smith River in northwest California.
Crafting a new kind of creature
Controversial boat makes whitewater more
accessible, but some worry about safety
ZACH URNESS
STATESMAN JOURNAL
GASQUET, CALIF. It’s been raining
for almost a week here on California’s
northwest coast, and the Middle Fork
Smith River has transformed into a
raging, swirling, terrifying torrent of
whitewater.
Even the craziest kayakers and raf-
ters would have a difficult time con-
vincing themselves to run the river’s
Class V rapids at this level, and there
isn’t enough whiskey in all the land to
get me to consider it.
But as I look upstream, through a
sheet of driving rain, something ap-
pears on the river that I’ve heard about
but never actually seen in person.
Two neon-colored boats shaped like
gigantic triangles bounce down the
rapids and into a black-walled gorge,
tipping and twisting as though riding
ocean swells.
The person on the oars of the first
boat is Aaron Babcock, who during the
past two years has earned a reputation
for running high-water rivers in the
oddly shaped boats known as “Creature
Crafts.”
Action stage on the Illinois River?
Sure.
High water on Chile’s Baker and
Futaleufu rivers? Hey, why not?
This type of behavior might be ex-
pected from an amped-up 20-something
with Red Bull in his veins. But Babcock
isn’t one of those guys. He’s a mellow,
almost quiet, 37-year-old from Banks
whose day job is leading trail mainte-
nance crews in Southern Oregon for-
ests.
Yet here he is, running titanic white-
water normally reserved for extreme
athletes.
What makes it possible are the Crea-
ture Crafts.
“The Creature Craft allows me to
run water that I wouldn’t feel comfort-
able with in a raft,” said Babcock, a
longtime oarsman, who lives in Wil-
liams.
The added level of comfort comes
from the Creature’s unique design fea-
ture — an overhead brace or roll cage
— that stops the boat from flipping
upside down.
“In a raft, if you get flipped, the boat
goes completely upside down and ev-
erybody falls out. You have to get out
and re-flip it, which is sometimes im-
possible,” Babcock said. “In a Creature,
you’re strapped into your seat and you
tip over on your side but don’t fall out.
There’s a technique to rolling it back
up. It just allows you to stay in the boat
and not swim.”
Creature Crafts have faced plenty of
scrutiny in the whitewater community.
Some feel they give boaters a false
sense of security, inspiring people to
run rivers too dangerous or above their
skill level.
But Creature inventor Darren Vancil
said the boats are just the next in a long
evolution, from canoes to kayaks to
rafts and stand-up paddleboards.
“This is a safer boat — there’s no
argument,” Vancil said. “Nobody has
fun when they’re scared to death.”
What makes Creatures so attractive
— and controversial — is that it allows
people without elite skill to run Class V
rivers.
“If you took a straight beginner,
handed them a boat and turned them
loose on huge whitewater, obviously
that’s not smart or what we’re about,”
Vancil said. “But the reality is that most
people don’t have the time or inclina-
tion to build their skill over the 10 years
required to run really big water. Crea-
ture Crafts get you there a lot sooner,
and a lot more safely.”
An outsider that changed the
game
On the surface, Vancil is not a likely
candidate to engineer a whitewater
revolution.
He didn’t grow up on rivers or white-
water but instead focused his energy on
wrestling, a sport that took him to Colo-
rado Mesa University in Grand Junc-
tion.
After graduating, Vancil started
running rivers with almost reckless
abandon. The toughness built up during
decades of training served him well, as
he was often knocked out of boats he’d
built himself.
“Coming from a non-traditional river
background, and not knowing anybody,
I just started boating — I expected to
flip and swim a lot,” he said. “I prob-
ably swam over 100 times in those first
years.”
One day, his luck ran out. In 1997, he
ran Gore Canyon’s Class V rapids in a
9-foot boat he’d built himself.
“We ended up swimming every ma-
jor rapid, then we got stuck in a toilet
bowl, and I really got hurt,” he said. “I
needed two shoulder surgeries.”
Instead of being scared off the river,
Vancil used the time off to brainstorm
designs for a new style of boat that
wouldn’t flip as easily.
“I would wake up at night with an
idea, then we’d go to the shop and see
how it worked,” he said. “I still wanted
to run big whitewater, but I didn’t want
to go to the hospital again.”
Like a mad scientist in his lab, Vancil
used the discarded pieces of old boats
to piece together his Frankenstein. The
models were created and tested —
ideas kept and tossed aside — until he
developed something that resembles
the current Creature Craft.
The first prototype was finished in
1998, and he started using the boats to
run rivers in 1999.
Early on, the whitewater community
did not embrace the bizarre-looking
boats suddenly showing up on iconic
rivers.
“We’d get to the put-in, and people
would literally try to block us from
getting on the river,” he said. “People
were beyond rude and disrespectful.
Boaters take a Creature Craft on a wild ride down the North Fork of the Smith River in
northwest California.
“Again, I was an outsider, I didn’t
really speak the lingo, so these guys
who’ve been kayaking for 10 years
probably thought, ‘What a bunch of
dumbasses.’ ”
The boats have slowly gained a level
of acceptance in the whitewater com-
munity — and even more respect from
the rescue community, which uses
them for ocean-rescue scenarios.
Vancil builds every boat himself —
they cost about $5,000 to start and re-
quire another $2,000 or so for oars,
frame and other equipment. For each
purchase, he’s taken pains to instruct
everybody who buys one on how to best
use it.
Even so, there’s a weariness in the
whitewater community about what the
Creatures make possible.
“I understand the desire to push the
limits — I’ve been there myself,” said
Will Volpert, who’s been a raft guide his
entire life and owns Indigo Creek Out-
fitters in Ashland. “The problem with
the Creature Craft crowd is there is an
obvious lack of basic safety standards
practiced, probably because there
aren’t typically swimmers. However,
when something does go wrong, it could
go very wrong if we’re not watching
each other’s backs.
“The Creature Craft is not going
away, but it’s important for people to
learn lessons — hopefully without kill-
ing themselves or others — and to raise
concerns about obvious incidences of
terrible judgement.”
No whiskey required
Turns out, it didn’t take any whiskey
to convince me to take a ride down the
Smith River’s Class V rapids.
All it took was watching the Crea-
ture Crafts arrive at the end of the first
run in one piece.
On the next trip through the river’s
gorge, I jumped into the passenger seat
of Babcock’s Creature Craft, which is
12 feet and 8 inches long. It had enough
space for two people and a decent
amount of gear for an overnight trip.
Behind us, Kelsey Lofdahl followed in a
Creature that was 10 feet, 8 inches.
“They’re a lot easier to maneuver
than you’d expect,” Lofdahl said.
The last thing I did was buckle a long
Velcro seat belt that keeps you attached
to the seat.
“Even if it gets bad — we get stuck
in a hole or something — don’t pull off
your seatbelt,” Babcock said. “Stay in
the boat. That’s the safest place to be.”
The river heaved and boiled and
sprinted as we entered the gorge. We
dropped below waves that seemed to
rise above the boat and crashed down
into boiling holes. The experience was
of being on a wet roller coaster, except
that the roller coaster occasionally
stops on the top of hills to twist and
gyrate before finally dropping down
the other side.
The scariest moment was arriving at
the lip of the Oregon Hole — the gorg-
e’s biggest rapid — and seeing the
foaming mouth of hole sure to eat alive
anything that entered.
“We really don’t want to be over
there,” Babcock said.
He kept to his word, weaving just
left of the monster.
At the bottom of the worst rapids, on
the final wave — and maybe just for
fun — Babcock entered the rapid off-
kilter, causing the Creature to be
knocked on its side.
It’s a strange feeling to be floating
down the river horizontal, but after a
few attempts, we managed to flip the
boat back upward.
Overall, the most surprising thing
about a trip in the Creature Crafts was
that even in the huge whitewater, it
wasn’t really scary.
Being surrounded by all that materi-
al — almost as though you’re in one of
those hamster balls — does create an
illusion of safety, for good or ill.
Zach Urness has been an outdoors
writer, photographer and videographer
in Oregon for eight years. He is the
author of the book “Hiking Southern
Oregon” and can be reached at
zurness@StatesmanJournal.com or
(503) 399-6801. Find him on Twitter at
@ZachsORoutdoors.