New Belgium FIBArk Whitewater Festival History
The FIBArk boat races started June 19th, 1949 when six boats entered the Arkansas River in Salida, Colorado on their treacherous 57 mile run to Canon City through the vertical cliffs of the Royal Gorge Canyon. Fueled by the spring snow pack runoff from the mountains of the Continental Divide and 5 or 6 feet above normal level the river water ripped down the canyon creating tremendous currents and boiling rapids where the valley walls narrow and the river floor drops. “An invitation to death” claimed the boaters as they looked over the course, but of the 23 entrants in the race that year only two experienced Swiss boaters reached the finish line. The following year the race was shortened to 45 miles excluding the dangerous Royal Gorge waters ending in Parkdale and, although ten boats entered, again only one man finished the race of tremendous endurance. The third year the race eliminated portages and single-boat teams and was set at its existing length of 25.7 miles from Salida to Cotopaxi. Eleven boats entered that year and ten were able to finish. This Classic Downriver Race is still the longest whitewater race in the United States.
During the first years of the boat races, every conceivable type of craft was used to navigate the river. Some of these crafts, the original hooligans of the river, included catamarans, airplane belly-tanks, and pontoon boats. The boats that won the races, however, were the fast, maneuverable, covered kayaks. Developed by the native Northern Americans for hunting, kayaks are easy to paddle, work against strong wind, tide or heavy seas, are easily lifted and carried, and keep the paddler warm and dry. The kayak has been “re-discovered” as the ultimate rough water small craft. Kayaking for sport developed in southern Germany in the early 1900s. Lured to the whitewater rivers rising in the Alps, people began experimenting with wood framed, fabric covered boats. These boats became known as fold-boats because they could be disassembled and carried in a relatively small set of bags.