I was fortunate to grow up paddling the Green River Narrows as a teenager, but those trips came to a halt once I moved to Colorado for college. I was home for the fall last year, and was stoked to be able to make it down to North Carolina for the Green Race. The Green Race has been happening annually since 1996, and is legendary in the world of whitewater kayaking. There's even a boat named after & specially designed for the race!

I didn't race that fall, but posted up on the river right side of Gorilla and had a fantastic time shooting each competitor as they came over Flying Squirrel, squeezed through the Notch, and launched off the pad. The perspective here flattens out the drop some, but Gorilla is roughly a 16' waterfall with a tricky lead-in, so it's not for the faint of heart! There's a good description of this section of river on American Whitewater.

This is a shot of Jordan Poffenberger, a talented C-1 paddler from the East Coast. Gorilla is considered the crux of the race run, and paddlers are pretty lactic once they get to this point. The banks of the river are crowded with a 1,000 spectators here, so competitors feed off the energy of the crowds to dig a little deeper and finish up the race in style.

Shot on a Canon 60D with a Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM.