Local rafting team to hold Monday fundraiser ahead of going to World Championships
The Roaring Fork Valley-based Riff Raff Racing team competes at the 2023 U.S. nationals at Royal Gorge. Five members of the team will head to Bosnia in May for the world championships.
Article By: Austin Colbert
Last summer, a group of Roaring Fork Valley-based rafters won the opportunity to represent the U.S. at the upcoming International Rafting Federation World Championships in Bosnia. And with that competition fast approaching, the team wanted to remind the community that it’s been hard at work and is ready to race.
“There hasn’t been any let-up on the gas, at all,” team member Tyler Aikens said Friday. “We are excited to see exactly where we land within that international scale. We are going to go out there and give it everything we’ve got, no doubt. We are excited to represent. We are beyond thankful for all of the recognition and support in the valley. And we are hoping to come back in mid-June with a different view on how the U.S.A. competes internationally in whitewater.”
Riff Raft Racing, as the team calls itself, is going to hold a fundraiser at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, March 18, at the new Buck bar, located at 508 E. Cooper Ave. in Aspen. Aikens called it their “spring get-together” with the rafting community, and it will include raffle prizes and in-person updates from the team. The R4 World Championships are scheduled for May 28-June 2 in Banja Luka, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Team Riff Raft won the opportunity to compete at worlds when it won the U.S. national championship last June in Canon City, despite being a group relatively new to racing together.
“We’ve felt a lot of support from the local boating community,” Aikens said. “We’ve made some really amazing connections as far as gear goes. We feel a lot of love from the valley. All of our friends are showing up to all of these different fundraisers.”
The five-man team competing in Bosnia includes Aikens, Conrad Niven, Curtis Berklund, Taylor Norman, and Trevor Fredrickson. Other than Berklund, who works for Elk Mountain Expeditions, all work as rafting guides for Blazing Adventures.
And the squad isn’t just here to race. They’ve taken it upon themselves to be champions of the sport here in the Roaring Fork Valley and are taking steps to help with water conservation.
“All of it kind of coincides with what we are trying to do with Riff Raft Racing, and that’s to promote the sport of rafting and conserve waterways for the future,” Aikens said. “We’ve gotten really tight knit with American Whitewater, who is the face of river conservation in the U.S. And in partnering with them, we’ve started to develop some ideas on how to expand the sport of racing.”
The Roaring Fork Valley-based Riff Raft Racing team competes at the 2023 U.S. nationals at Royal Gorge. Five members of the team will head to Bosnia in May for the world championships.
Among the upcoming events Riff Raft Racing is helping promote is the return of Gore Fest on the Colorado River in August, as well as Slaughterfest – the popular local race down the Roaring Fork River that will take place sometime in June, depending on the runoff.
Slaughterfest, named for Slaughterhouse Falls, a Class IV rapid that is the highlight of that stretch of river, is where most of team Riff Raft originally connected, and it’s an event it hopes to grow again.
“We want to make these races a big deal again. We want to see people from out of state, and we feel like with our position, being the men’s open team, we have an awesome opportunity to present that label on ourselves in order to get people excited,” Aikens said. “We want to make this as competitive and as wide-ranged as we possibly can and bring that gung-ho energy back to it that was apparent pre-COVID, 10-15 years ago, when there were a handful of teams going for the national title. We want it to be a national competition again.”
The team will have a couple of chances to race before heading to Bosnia with May’s Pagosa Paddle and the Upper Clackamas Whitewater Festival, which he said is being staged as this year’s U.S. national championship. Riff Raft Racing hopes to defend its national title on the Clackamas River in Oregon before immediately jumping on a plane to Bosnia.
“We’ve just been growing as much as we can. Whether it’s finding new sponsorships and getting gear donations or going out and training. Every moment that we can throughout the summer, we would literally run waters until they went dry,” Aikens said. “Even throughout the winter, we have a training regimen we’ve been following. We are putting boats in the Snowmass Rec Center pool and paddling around there just so we can be sure when we head out to Bosnia, we are in mid-season form and ready to represent the best we can.”
For more on the team or to reach out, visit riffraftracing.com, or find them on Instagram @riff.raft.racing.
