Gonshang, China 

It took the New River Academy two days on our private bus to arrive to the Salween River near the Nu Jang Valley town of Gonshang.  We drove five hours roadside to the Salween peering our windows prior to arriving to our Gonshang base.

Students woke up each day for morning workouts, completed an accredited structured schedule of classes, and ran to after school shuttles. Our shuttles were packed into the backs of small trucks with bench seating. We were on the road for an hour, and then we put on the Salween. 

The Burning Time Wave

Students were most excited to paddle the wave featured in Scott Lindgren Productions’ “Burning Time.”  We found it and took turns surfing the monster.  Students raved, “It must be the best wave in the world” as it had so much potential to toss.  Unfortunately, its tosses were hard to control, and there was a pro-level eddy catch and potential trashing post-surf.  Shredders took their turns attempting to catch big air as video and photo classes organized themselves to both shoot and surf.

The Salween Run

We chose a section of river approximately 12 miles above the Burning Time wave to paddle; about an hour down river of Gonshang.  The Salween has a friendly nature to its giant waves that uniformly create glassy waves.  We guestimated the flow to be around 16,000 cfs.  Each rapid was large and had squirrelly eddies.  Thus, the rapids provided challenges for all of us.  For Sean Johnson, Katie Kowalski, and Morgan Tidd they would work on their kickflips.  Michelle Yates gained confidence as she paddled the biggest water of her life.  Daniel Stewart, Cael Jones, Sam Fulbright, Matt West, and Brian Boyle had an endless selection of waves to hit macho moves and pistol flips.

Daniel Stewart accelerates four feet off of Fortune Cookies’ right curl on the Salween River

A Fortune Cookie Departing the Salween

New River Academy teen kayak students woke early on our last day with the goal of arriving in Duqin that night.  After two and a half hours of curvy roads, abrupt breaking, continual honking, and the thinning of my coffee students yelled, “LOOK AT THAT WAVE!”  Kyle Dinnel asked, “Could we stop here?” I quickly advanced to the driver and made him stop the bus with an arsenal of three Chinese words.

Shane Groves and I ran back to the wave to assess if it was good.  The wave was 12’ high, had a perfect and rare eddy access, had a giant foamy pile, was steep, a nearby bank for shooting, and the sun was shining. 
“Wow!  The perfect wave.”  I thought.  “Levin Brown had planned for us to drive to Duqin and we were on a schedule.  Hmm, we came from the otherside of the world for this wave.  When do you ever find a wave this good?  I hope Levin is as excited as we are once we tell him we have to surf.”

Michelle Yates enjoys the biggest surf of her life on this 12’ high Salween wave

Before we knew it, we were unloading kayaks and enjoying a 3-hour surf session on the biggest and best wave we had experienced.  Is it as good as Minibuseater, Nile Special, the New River Dries?  On this day, everyone in our group argued with giant smiles on their face, “it’s the best wave in the world.”

Eli Spiegel illustrates the power of the Salween’s Fortune Cookie wave 

Students later discussed what to name the wave, because we have never seen it in videos.  Morgan liked, “El Duche”, someone else pushed for the Flying Dragon in Chinese “Fei Long”, but it was when we began naming rapids after Chinese dishes that we came up with the most popular name.  “Fortune Cookie” just felt appropriate.

Fortune Cookie was the perfect end to a productive week of school, fabulous river running, and huge wave surfing.