Mascoma Slalom 2024 - Jim Block Photography

The Mascoma Slalom has ran every year since 1963 and is the oldest consecutively run slalom race in the country, according to the Ledyard Canoe Club web site. I have photographed it at least four times previously.

The river is flowing from the left to the right, in all the photos in this blog. In most of the photos, the kayaker is heading upstream, as in the photo below.

The area at Baker’s Crossing near the Packard Covered Bridge in Lebanon was crowded before the race. Keeping with tradition, the race started much later than advertised.

There seemed to be more kayaks and participants than I remember from the past.

There were races of all ages, but not all actually ran the course.

There were more people and kayaks gathered than seemed to make the two passes though the course. I was near the end of the course. Perhaps a number bailed out before reaching me.

Before the race began there were announcements of the rules and penalties for missing gates or hitting them. However, I could not see any gate checkers present at the gates near me during the race. I was near a very challenging (and easy to not even see) gate. Quite a few racers blew right by it.

As I have done in the past, I positioned myself near an upstream gate. This is a gate that the kayakers must pass through heading upstream rather than downstream. Thus, while they are going through the gate, they are moving fairly slowly, and I can occasionally freeze the action with a slow shutter speed while allowing the water to nicely blur.

I feel many action shots are more exciting when the motion is blurred rather than frozen. Most of the photos in this blog were taken between 1/4 and 1/25 sec.

For example, the two photos immediately above were both shot at 1/5 sec. And the photo below was shot at 1/10 sec.

I did not take a tripod with me. I took a second camera body with a longer lens, but I didn’t use it. I used a polarizing filter for all of the photos. When the kayakers were moving downstream, I tried to pan with them like in the two photos below.

In going through an upstream gate, the kayakers must travel beyond it, and then head upstream through the gate. Often they will drift sideways or backwards, sometimes ducking low to avoid hitting the gate, and then paddling madly to get through the gate. Then it is a quick turn back into the mainstream and a hard paddle for the next gate. An example of this is shown in the two photos below.

Below is another example of a kayaker drifting sideways past the gate then heading back upstream through it.

A hard turn into the current and then… Opps!

Here is a duck under and then nice recovery. The kayakers head must pass through the gate in the correct direction and only pass through it once to count.

The majority of the photos in this blog were shot with a lens focal length wider than normal. For example, the photo below was shot at 32mm equivalent focal length.

I was low near the water and quite close to the kayakers when they came through the gate allowing me to get up close and personal photos as in the slide show that follows.

Interestingly, there was a slightly submerged rock very near Gate 14. I believe most of the kayakers did not hit it, but some must have. You can see it in some of the photos, including the four below.

To show a comparison with photos shot at a fast shutter speed, the following two were shot at 1/800 sec and 1/1000 sec. This freezes the action, but I do not find these as exciting as those shot with a slow shutter speed.

The pair below shot at 1/2000 sec illustrate the drift and duck-under technique at this upstream gate.

There were surprising long periods when no kayak came by. At times canoes ran the river. One attempted to pass through the upstream Gate 14 but quicky gave up. The brave folks in the canoe below skipped this upstream gate but attempted the upstream gate two gates later. Not very successfully, however.