Thursday, December 28, 2006

Creeking Technique: the STOMP

Watch Stomp Video

Hey Folks,

Just checking in from the mountains of North Carolina, where I've just had a month of incredible creekboating on the Green River, the Raven's Fork, the Toxaway, and the Horsepasture. I'm super pumped about being in my Magnum right now, so I thought I'd share with you an important technique that all creekboaters should have in their repertoire, the stomp.

This technique is very useful for drops under 25 feet that you don't want to pencil, but may be painful to boof. It also provides a way to correct from a big auto-boof off the lip, or to get a bit of angle so that your boat scoops forward out of a big hole, rather than backendering. It also looks way cool!

A little bit big to boof, too shallow to plug... a prime candidate for el stompo.


So without further ado here's how you do the stomp:

1) Approach the lip with a reasonable amount of speed, and confidence that you're going to be able to finish your boof stroke and be in control.

2) Take your boof stroke, but remain in a neutral position, don't thrust your hips forward, moving your body back, or pull your knees to your chest, moving your body forward. Just stay relaxed and neutral.

3) Once completely disconnected from the lip and in control, jump forward and punch out with one or both hands on your paddle.

4) Without losing a beat, focus on kicking your heels away from your body, and returning to that neutral position you started with.

5) Land with the paddle blade forward that you want to take your next stroke with.

Pat stomping Frenchy's 40 on Big Kimshew...


This is an awesome technique for when you want to save your back, and I've used it in emergency situations on drops up to 50 feet. On drops that big however, it's way better to roll the boat over with the water, and tuck from a neutral to a forward position more slowly.

Anyways, good lines out there everyone.

Stomp Video(19 mb)

-Chris Gragtmans



**All shots by Max Kniewasser, thanks bud, you da man!**

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