Clear Creek Bleacher Hole @ 80 CFS

Last week we made an after-work trip down to Golden to check out a newly reshaped hole in the white water park: Bleacher Hole. Last year this hole was almost unsurfable by both SUPs and kayaks. Lucky for us, the rework has made this hole great for SUPs!

As usual, we had a whole quiver of river boards available: the 8′ Badfish River Surfer, the Badfish MVP-S, the Glide Sesh, and the Hala Peno. There was a bunch of us in the lineup, and we all swapped boards while discussing the pros and cons of each. Here’s my thoughts on how each board surfed.

The 8′ River Surfer was a bit too big for this wave. It felt like a boat compared to the other boards. I could only make small gentle turns, and it required quite a bit of forward and backward foot shuffling to keep the board on the wave.

Unsurprisingly the Badfish MVP-S surfed the wave well. Unfortunately the fin (despite being tiny) kept dragging on the rocks forming the wave. I had this same experience when surfing in Boulder, and this has only ever happened on the MVP-S. Either the location of the fin box, or the overall volume of the board causes the board and the fin to move further up the wave than other boards. Everyone agreed however, that the MVP-S was the easiest board to surf.

The Glide Sesh surfed extremely well, but at times felt a bit sluggish. It required some extra force to get the board to move around the wave. The Sesh was still super fun, able to carve up the wave and could almost ollie and grind.

The best board of the day was the Hala Peno. The wave had a fast flat face, which turns out is excellent for the small inflatable. The Hala is light, which made it nice and agile. At the same time it was almost as easy to surf as the MVP-S. And since the wave was super shallow, it was great having the durability of an inflatable.

Overall a great day out exploring a new wave and comparing boards with friends. We had a great turnout as well with seven surfers all sharing this tiny river wave!