Tuesday, 21 July 2015

How To Slay Phil's Hole - Hunter Gibson

So you want to slay Phil's hole? Well you want to ask one simple question first "is it thursday?". I'm joking. While we reserve Thursday's for Phil's surfs at Keeners,  you can slay Phil's any day of the week. You just need three things. One, a big lungful of air. Two, someone to save you. Three, an epic costume.

For number uno. This is not as simple as it seems. You are being constantly thrashed in water and have many very small windows to breathe. But you need to know exactly when your head is actually in air rather than water. This is surprisingly difficult to tell when you are in Phil's because most of the water is super aerated and you can't really feel which is which. Your time in air is so short and you are being tossed so violently by highly aerated water that you almost have to keep your eyes open while being surfed.

For number two. That is simple you can be a decent human being to other kayakers and they will be more than happy to save you. Or you can be a keener where your targets, I mean friends, will almost always save you. If you don't get your lungful and swim, you will be rescued into the football eddy. This is a huge swirling mass of water, kind of like a super large whirlpool, but in slow motion. This is where most of the water from the entire rapid goes. So rescues are fairly easy here. The only issue is how massive and strong the eddy is. This means that you must actually have to swim away from the shore and let the eddy carry you all the way around to shore. which is a weird and somewhat scary experience at first, but once you try to swim to shore you will realise the logic behind this.

Finally for number three. You need to stop by the dollar store before going to the river. Make sure you have duct tape to put on your costume. Buy a bunch of stuff that matches a theme, preferably something vicious like a princess. Then you duct tape the costume to your gear so you are intimidating for the hole. That way the hole will be scared of you and you will be able to surf and breathe easier. The hole will be scared of your princess costume and trash you less.

Once you have all of these things you will be able to slay Phil's hole with the best of them.

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