“Don’t panic,” Mark Novosel answered.
By By:Sean Hadden
“Thank you,” said Frank, owner of Wave Tech Kayak School,
partially run out of Alpenglow Mountainsport in Golden.
Frank then tipped Novosel upside down into Big Soda Lake in
Lakewood and watched as his student stayed locked in the kayak for
five seconds.
Novosel pulled the grab handle of his spray skirt, fell out of
the kayak and surged to the surface.
The spray skirt fits over a lip around the kayak entrance and
creates a watertight seal between it and a person.
Novosel had just finished his first wet exit, a technique of
last resort for kayakers, but a skill that can save a person from
drowning.
People who want to learn to kayak need to learn to be
comfortable underwater, Frank said. “The more time you spend upside
down in a boat, the better off you are.”
Frank tipped Novosel three more times, forcing him to stay
underwater longer each time, finally extending his time under the
lake’s surface to 15 seconds.
“I don’t care if you smoke cigarettes, everyone has 90 seconds
of air in their lungs,” Frank told Novosel. “You’re not going to
drown if you don’t panic.”
After about an hour of learning to eject from a kayak
underwater, Novosel began learning how to right himself without
exiting the kayak.
People who have seen expert kayakers tip over and then
immediately, effortlessly, flip back upright, are tempted to think
the technique is easy to learn.
It’s not.
“It took me more than two years to learn to roll,” Frank told
Novosel.
Frank breaks down the roll into steps, then strings them
together gradually as students master them.
Novosel’s first step was to learn the hip snap, a movement that
creates most of the momentum needed to regain an upright
position.
The tricky part is integrating the next step, the sweep, while
keeping the head down and forward as one sits underwater, Frank
said.
“Rolling is not a muscle move,” Frank said. “It has nothing to
do with muscle.”
The sweep is key to a successful roll.
To complete it properly, a student must raise the paddle out of
the water and place it lengthwise alongside the kayak while still
upside down and underwater, Frank said.
Then, with the paddle set up, a student must learn to execute a
hip snap.
Next, at the height of the momentum the hip snap generates, he
must sweep the paddle across his body and through the water to
generate the force necessary to regain an upright
position.
Even after roughly 50 attempts with Frank’s help, Novosel could
not complete a full roll on his own.
He had several near successes, but finally Frank stopped the
lesson.
“Yeah, I’m a little dizzy,” Novosel told him.
“When you first learn, rolling can make you dizzy,” Frank
said.
“It’s tough until you develop that muscle memory,” said Jay
Ebers, a kayaker from Parker who works at Alpenglow.
But, despite seeming slightly frustrated with being unable to
master the roll his first day, Novosel liked the kayaking
experience enough that he returned to Alpenglow to buy his own
kayak.