Recently I returned from Uganda on a Playboating trip with Satu my wife. We travelled very light, and the new paddle bag and River Trek dry bags from Palm were our main baggage for the trip. Of course we took playboats, however all in all, the whole lot weighed in at 38Kg, this for two paddlers is a light trip…
Well for years I have been on to Barney, Palm’s designer that I need solid travelling gear to get to the river. Of course Palm have made great on the water gear for years, however with recent attention to the added extras to travel in style, Barney and the crew have come up with some great new products. First and my favourite is the cockpit cover, I always through all my wet PFD, deck and rescue gear in the boat, it lives in there between runs, so to have a bomber seal to keep all my paddling gear safe is a real must. Plus in having wet gear in your car, that oh so paddler scent seems to whoffed from every boater’s car…. yet for myself with a cockpit cover I can avoid this paddler’s delight!
The new River Trek dry bags have been designed for robust travel in mine, a more malleable fabric than perviously used, and with different closure options, plus fully adjustable back straps and side carrying handles, make for a more universal companion on the road. I have a 50L for everyday use and 125L for all the road trip paddling gear. Now a real asset for a paddler is to keep the boating shoes away from all the rest of your gear. Why you ask, well, there is nothing worse than having your flash dry suit covered in mud if not worst, when you pull it from your bag for the drying line. Get a small dry bag, 6L or so, and always place your paddling shoes in there, you’ll thank me one day, of that I am sure. And at worst, if you wish to go one better than drinking from the bootie, try the bootie bag!!!!!!!
Next up is Palm’s jewel in the crown of their new travelling gear, it takes 4 paddles, its the all new Palm Paddle Bag. Indeed 4 paddles’ easy, plus 2 sleeping mats, a 3 person tent and 2 sleeping bags, well I was sent to test it anyway. Now in the production one comes in a grey trim, as this one I stole from the new Mac Monkey, Tim Trew, nice chap, but does not have the one off, only one ever made orange trimmed paddle bag anymore….
Well that’s it for now, as I await the never ending encoding of my new instructional DVD, Genotype 2, but that is a whole other story, and until then, goodnight.
Seldom does a paddler kayak for too long before images, stories or a movie about the Grand Canyon fire their inspiration to go there. And this last Summer, years after I first saw images of Crystal and Lava, did I get to paddle the Colorado. It is as they say a must for once in your life time as a kayaker, and on this recent trip the was only ever a reaffirming of that belief.
Dave Carroll pulls hard as he hits the main event of Lave Falls.
Simon Westgarth, comes back from the sporty side on Crystal
Breath taking views greet you are every turn and the white water although frequent is not an all day every day affair. There is plenty of time to look in wonderment at this amazing place, whilst grinding out the river living routine…..
Gene17 has a few clients too, well 14 of them, including my mother and my wife’s parents all in the paddle raft. It was great to reveal a little of our world to our parents, it goes to show them what we see in our near endless quest for fun and adventure……
There’s been a lot of talk over the last few years about whether freestyle is dead. I’ve just got back from a cracking weekend at the National Student Rodeo and I can assure you that if freestyle is dead, rodeo is fully alive and kicking!! Nearly 700 paddlers turned up at the newly developed Holme Pierrepont Slalom Course (for the third year running) possibly the biggest freestyle event ever.
Once again, despite the rain and wind the students showed everyone how to have a good time - Paddletwirls, jumping in and power flips were the order of the day. Paddy had the space themed party jumping till the early hours and, 3200 pints later, everyone got up to do it all again, this time in glorious sunshine! Colanders on heads, blue faces and dance-offs on the bank.. Team paddlers Ed Smith and Lowri Davies took the men’s and women’s titles and Leeds University won overall – winning the custom Dagger GT.
I’m sure there’ll be a lot of photos circulating once everyone’s recovered but here’s some to start it off.
Thanks to everyone from Leeds University Canoe Club and River Legacy for showing bringing rodeo back to its roots! Roll on NSR 2010! Check the NSR Facebook group and website during the week for more.
In other news, the new slalom course rocks! With more features and less flat between the drops it feels more like a real river than before. The Plughole’s back and there’s a couple of great new features. More soon…
Fellow Palm-paddler, Lowri Davies, and myself recently secured our places on the GB team to compete at the World Championships at Thun, Switzerland in August 09.
Me. Photo: Cam Sans
The selection event for the GB team was held at Hurley weir on the Thames on an unusually sunny ‘classic’ 3-gates. The wave was green and unretentive but the steep shoulders potentially allowed for some big air moves – for those who were willing to take the risk of a premature flush.
Whilst most were flushing after just a couple of moves Lowri proved that it was possible to stay on the wave for the full 45 seconds and she did so in several of her rides ticking off the moves to give her 3rd place on the ladies’ team, just behind Emily Wall.
Lowri, Photo: Chris Jones
I had relatively shorter rides, flushing off the playboaters-left radial several times, but scored enough points with air blunts and back stabs to give me 1st place and a ticket to my 6th World Championships and a 12th year competing for Great Britain!
Photos: Cam Sans
In the men’s event it was local boy Doug Cooper who did not appear to be worried about flushing as he landed some huge clean blunts, pan ams and big aerial clean back blunts.He took 1st spot on the men’s team ahead of team-regulars Jon Best, Alan Ward and Richard Chrimes with relative newcomer Sam Anderson taking the 5th spot. Full results of all categories can be found on www.ukfreestyle.com
It’s been a sweet couple of weeks here in the Fort. I escaped work early last Tuesday to go on an epic solo mission to the far end of Loch Arkaig. Before I knew what was going on I was slogging towards the Allt Cuirnean in the middle of a monsoon.
Ed Smith Droppin into Triple Falls No. 3 at Man Flow
Earlier that day I had been dreamily looking at the Lochaber map which sits beside my desk at work. This combined with an internet search for images of the river I had spotted on the map gave me a need to go adventuring. I’d seen a cool looking double drop on geograph website, so this rapid was my main target- the plan was to take my new high def video camera and tripod to capture some radical action on a previously unexplored river.
I passed an awesome rapid on the River Dessary, which I’d seen before at low flow, which in full flood looked wicked. For some reason I kept walking…..hmmm! I eventually reached the Cuirnean to find it thumping through a deep gorge with crystal blue water. About a k up I got to the double drop- 20 foot into a cauldron then another 20. It looked mental and there was no way I was running it at that flow, so I lowered my boat down into the gorge and paddled down the freight train gorge (which I had scouted from above), dodging big trees, holes and siphons. Quite character building stuff!!
Unfortunately I didn’t get a single bit of footage, because it was getting dark and I was concentrating on just getting the thing done. I think I might go back in lower flow and with friends to have a crack at the double drop… we’ll see!
Anyhoo… I had three cool days prior to these events which I did catch a bit of film of. The first day was just me and a very low Dubh Lighe (one of my favourites) on which i was testing out my new camera. It was a bit dark, but still a couple of fun moves to make…. The next day I was on the Etive with Ed Smith and it was pretty flippin high. Check out the cool shot in the vid of Ed showing us all how to re-surface- He always comes up upright and I’m never quite sure how. Apparently he gets a stroke in when he’s under that keeps him driving forwards which is definitely something that I’m going to practice… You’ll also see Ed storming through a massive hole at ski jump as though it was nothing. Very cool!
Ed Speedin
Right Angle
That Saturday I had a turbo paddle down the Nevis with Callum Anderson, Steven Cant, Brinky and Paul Maydew. It was a bit on the low side but lots of fun. Most of the footage is from that day. This short clip was also shown at the very end of the Fort William Mountain Fest Paddling Night and the music is by Bat for Lashes- hope you enjoy! (I’ve had to lower the quality a bit for web use…)
More recently- this weekend- I went to have a look at a big drop on a tributary of the Ailort. It was about 50 feet and looked pretty good to go, but after extensive thinking I decided to woose out. There wasn’t much water going over it so it could easily end up being a body wrecker, but maybe I’ll go back one day. Or maybe I’ll just find someone braver and film them running it… Luckily there were a couple of other cool drops which I did get to run. The stills are grabbed from video which I’m holding back for the production of “Sneaky Freaky Creeky”. It might be a while coming, but there is going to be a Scottish boating movie being made over the next year or so.
Last Friday I went over to Family Adventure Store to deliver their fleet of Dagger boats, they are one of our eleven Dagger Test centres.
Dagger Test centres have a vast range of Dagger boats for you to come along and test out. All Test centres have water on site or nearby to get you out there quickly in the latest designs.
The NSR prize boat came out and looks sweet, even if I say it myself! The NSR Prize Dagger GT
The National Student Rodeo (NSR) has been amalgamated with Paddlefest ’09 and it looks like it’s going to be a cracking weekend. Come along to Nottingham on the last weekend of March for probably the biggest kayaking festival this year!
Here’s a few photos (thanks to Claire, Gus, Jim and Jen (and me) for the photos) from my recent trip to the Nile:
I go all the way to Africa only to find everyone has got the same outfit as me!
It was tow on levels at Nile Special - low but still good fun and big air!
Front surf air!
JC uses the 'Harry Potter' tow-on technique.
Back stabbing on Nile Special
Low water levels meant club wave was running in the morning - a really fun wave but it was usually really busy. I timed my trip with just about every other European freestyle paddler!
Total Gunga rapid is no longer there:( (due to the dam work) and has been replaced by this kickflip/wave-wheel rapid. Its not quite the same!
Bujagali falls - look, no boat!
Silverback - looks a whole lot bigger from down there!
Silverback - spot the paddler no.1 (still upright - just)
Silverback - spot the paddler no.2
You can't go to Uganda without taking the obligatory 'boda photo'...
....and a sunset photo
The latest news on the dam is that the river should remain unchanged until April 2010 – so lots more opportunities to get out there and paddle!
Looking forward to getting back out there already!
Last week out on the road a visited to new places, The first was Brookbank Warwickshire and there new store in Warwick, after there move from the old Paddlesport site in Compton Verney they have now settled in and i dropped in to catch up with Keith the manager there.
Later that day it was my first visit to a new dealer, Canoe Kayak Trader (Leam Boats), their location is idealic set in a park right in the middle of Leamington Spa with direct access to the River Leam. Have a look at this video which shows all they do.
