Last weekend, Vance Creek Pond served in a capacity it hadn’t for five years: as a splashy playground for high-flying tricksters and a tight, technical stadium for champion speed demons — all on sleek machines packing the punch equivalent to a sports car.

Jet-ski racers and freestyle performers took to the pond in Elma, also known as Bowers Lake, on Saturday and Sunday to compete and enjoy themselves in an event called PNW WaterX, the first of a qualifying summer race tour for jet-ski riders.

Riders sliced and sprayed through the water as they weaved through a series of 15 buoys placed around the pond while attempting to navigate around, and sometimes obstruct, their competitors.

The humble Vance Creek Pond — which at 12 acres is a small course compared to other venues like the Columbia River — demanded a high degree of technical skill, said competitor Trinity Klecker of Castle Rock, whose father, Lance, was one of the event’s promoters.

“This is probably the tightest track you’ll find,” Klecker said.

As a teenager in 2017, Klecker placed second in her age category at the world championships at Lake Havasu in Arizona. But Vance Creek Pond was her training ground, the first water body she raced on when starting out in the sport a few years earlier.

That original opportunity was partially due to Dan Lindgren, a jet-ski rider and Aberdeen resident. Lindgren started organizing surf jet-ski events in Grayland in 2009, an event that eventually became an “amateur world championship.” Then, around 2015, Lindgren thought the pond in Elma would be a “great spot” for races, and would also bring tourism to the area.

“It’s like a man-made stadium, and it’s set up really well for the spectators,” Lindgren said.

Lindgren hosted the event there for several years under different promoters, but decided to take a few years off, and then was blocked from returning by the COVID pandemic. Last weekend’s event was the first of two in Elma this year, with the other scheduled for June 24-25.

For competitor Curtis Pitman of Spokane, the event’s return was as much about the atmosphere, and reuniting with the jet-skiing community, as it was about competing. Pitman first started riding on Lake Sammamish, and “met friends there that I’ve had now for 10 years,” Pitman said.

Pitman’s expertise was on display Saturday when he, mounted on a spotted lime green Kommander GPI, easily passed his competitors in a race despite taking a voluntary pond-length handicap. Pitman, a 2015 world-champion racer, said the course’s tight turns forced him to “use his legs a lot more” than in other places.

Leg power accounts for about three-quarters of jet-ski riding, estimated Tanner Thomas, another world champion present last weekend. Originally from Southeast Alaska, Thomas is technically retired from the sport — a slew of injuries forced him out — after a career of touring and competing. But he was in attendance Saturday to provide entertainment while racers took a midday break. Using his own wake as a launchpad, Thomas flipped and flew through the air, performing a series of tricks before a crowd of onlookers.

“There’s so much energy going into that jet ski that’s hard to see, but as a rider, you for sure feel it,” Thomas said afterward. “There’s nothing else like it. I used to work out pretty hard in the gym and stuff, but that would not prepare me for the battle of freestyle. The yanking and jerking and twisting, you can’t replicate that in any other way.”

Thomas was also there to pass down jet-skiing advice and training to other riders, he said.

For Klecker, that part of the event was as important as any.

“It’s almost not even the racing aspect of it, it’s the community around it,” Klecker said. “Everyone’s always super nice to help out and give you tips,” Klecker said.

Contact reporter Clayton Franke at 406-552-3917 or clayton.franke@thedailyworld.com.

Freestyle jet-skier Tanner Thomas performs an aerial trick on Vance Creek Pond on Saturday, April 29, during the halftime show of the PNW Water X racing event.

Jet-skis line Vance Creek Pond Saturday, April 29 as part of the PNW Water X racing event.