The beginning of Cameron County's Canoe and Kayak Classic is in an unlikely spot. Roughly seven miles outside Emporium, cars, trucks and paddlers standing over their boats jam one side of the road. On the other is the Emporium Country Club, perched on a hill overlooking an empty golf course.

It's the first Saturday of April and for the past 34 years, canoeists and kayakers have lined the bank of Driftwood Creek to compete in the 11-mile down-river race. The participants, distinguishable by their PFDs (personal flotation devices) and registration numbers, stand near their boats chatting.

They are a sundry mix of racers. Some wear camouflage pants, flannel shirts, cowboy hats and dirty sneakers. Others wear drysuits and neoprene booties. The boats they push into the water are aluminum canoes, fiberglass racing kayaks, open-top plastic kayaks, sleek wooden canoes and everything in between.

The mood at the starting line is lighthearted. By start time, 11 a.m., the sun has burned away the morning chill and paddlers are reconsidering just how many layers to pile on beneath their PFDs. Driftwood Creek, a branch of the Sinnemahoning Creek and tributary to the Susquehanna River, runs in the shadow of the Appalachian Mountains -- a torrent during a wet spring, a trickle in the summer.

"Last year the water was borderline and the day was freezing and snowing and horrible," recalled Ken Derg, 72, who organized the race for almost 20 years before handing the responsibility over to Randy Bailey.

Despite bad conditions last year, 88 boats raced. This year 126 boats -- 35 kayaks and 91 canoes -- were launched from shore, a record for the event.

"A lot of new faces this year. It's getting spread by word of mouth," said Bailey.

Although participants now come from surrounding states, the race remains very much a community event. There's a spaghetti dinner after the race; the specially designed cherry wood paddle plaques given as prizes are made by a local company.

"I think it's the greatest sport that nobody knows about," said Derg. "You don't get road rash from falling off your bike, it doesn't tear up your hips or your knees like running. The only [bad] thing you can do is fall out of your boat."

The weekend Derg was canoeing in Cameron County, Chrissy Zeltner was racing in West Virginia, at the Cheat River Narrows.

Zeltner, of Fairmont, W.Va., is Derg's opposite in nearly every way, save their mutual love of the water. Her boat of choice is a kayak, her water of choice is white and frothy, and her race of choice is wildwater.

"In wildwater, I race downstream as fast as possible, in as straight a line as possible," the 38-year old massage therapist explained. "My goal is to get from point A to point B."

Wildwater races usually take two days. The first typically consists of two sprint races of a quarter-or half-mile. A classic race of three to four miles is held on the second day.

Wildwater racers use kayaks at least 13 feet long, skinny and sporting a V-shaped hull, which makes them faster. Once flipped, they're hard to roll upright.

River rapids are ranked from Class I (basically no white water) to Class VI (20 percent chance loss of life). To make easier rivers harder, Zeltner often uses her racing kayak, a red Wave Hopper. To prepare for races, she kayaks as much as possible on flat water like the Monongahela or Tygart Rivers, and in white water such as the Lower Youghiogheny. The only thing that keeps her off the river is ice.

Even though Zeltner has been racing for only two years, she has competed in national championships and is ranked fourth among women. She's quick to add that few women race and only 80 are ranked.

"[Wildwater] is more laid back and there's a terrific rapport between racers," Zeltner said. "I dabbled in slalom and they're a lot more aggressive and competitive. The wildwater guys are just fantastic."

Slalom racing began before wildwater and Dave Kurtz was racing between gates before Zeltner was born.

At 76, Kurtz is something of a legend and the improbable stories he tells are not tall tales, but kayaking history.

According to "The River Chasers," Susan L. Taft's history of American paddling, Kurtz, and two other men paddled the Lower Yough in Grumman canoes on May 30, 1959. Not content with Class III rapids, the next day the men ran the Upper Yough -- a technical stretch of whitewater that sports four Class V rapids. Their run, from Sang Run to Friendship, may have been a first descent.

Soon after, Kurtz, then a graduate student at Penn State and member of the Penn State Outdoors Club, turned his attention to slalom racing.

"Slalom is an obstacle course in a rapid," he said.

Paddlers zigzag through gates -- two poles about 4 feet apart hung from a cross bar attached to a wire strip that crosses a creek or river.

"You have a serpentine route between the gates, and current courses have about 20 gates so that it takes a little more than a minute for a good paddler to go through all 20,," Kurtz explained.

Kurtz taught himself slalom racing and made his first slalom course using directions in "American Whitewater" articles. A chance meeting with Yugoslavian slalom boater Natan Bernot changed everything. Kurtz was aware that Bernot, who was taking graduate courses at PSU, was a slalom racer, but thought his paddling technique was too "wild."

Bernot happened to stroll by during one of Kurtz's training sessions. Eager to spread the sport of slalom, Bernot said he would provide a design for a kayak for Kurtz's class.

"He'd design it and we'd make it and we could come to the world championships," said Kurtz. "So we figured out what fiberglass was all about and in 1963, we went to the world championships," which were held in Spittal, Austria.

Kurtz and his compatriots may have been considered the bee's knees among American paddlers, but they were soundly beaten in Europe. The few that went to the championships straggled in last or nearly last.

Kurtz continues to teach his "kids" and has taken them to competitions all over Europe. He's a firm believer that slalom paddling is the best way to teach kayaking skills. Some drive all the way from Manhattan for his slalom course in Bellefonte on Spring Creek, north of State College, where he has about 30 gates strung across the water.

Back on Driftwood Creek, the racers are trickling in, floating under the short metal bridge that is the finish line in the small town of Driftwood. Family members and friends line guardrails, keeping a lookout for those they know, shouting encouragement and congratulations. The winners finish in about 1 hour and 15 minutes. The race will take most between an hour and a half and an hour and 45 minutes.

The racers take out and, hefting their boats to one shoulder, carry them to their cars. Some join the spectators on the bridge, their wet clothes and tired smiles marking them as paddlers.