“Let the games begin”said Richard Fox, 5 times World Slalom Champ and ICF Vice President earlier today as he opened the 2009 World Freestyle Championships in Thun, Switzerland.
Official team trainings are now done, the opening ceremony is over, and competitors are getting for their moment of glory on the wave in Thun tomorrow. Sun is still shining and the wave is in a perfect condition for the competition – bring on the men’s preliminaries starting on Tuesday morning!
As a week of training sessions come to an end, the battle lines have been drawn and the favourites start to emerge. after a strong finish in the EuroCup events this year and high flying air moves all week, Peter Csonka of Slovakia is likely to set the standard for the finals. Perennial Champ from the US, Eric “EJ” Jackson is a master competitor, so I do not expect to see him fall short. The young ripper from Germany, Simon Strohmeier and Canadian Freestyle Journeyman Billy Harris have hit the big moves all week, yet the one to watch for the crown is clearly Nick Troutman again from Canada. Every training ride has been a blow away run, big, solid and consistent.
In the ladies, their is likely to be a face off between Emily Jackson (Daughter of EJ and wife to Troutman) and Ruth Gordan, again from Canada, these two lead the pack, and have been neck and neck all week for the most consistent big rides. Snapping at their heals are Ozzy Tanya Faux, Mariann Sæther from Norway and Lowri Davies from the UK. All have been nailing great air moves.
For the juniors its a tight split between two US chargers, Dane Jackson (brother of Emily and son of EJ) and Jason Craig. I expect to see these boys get scores that would qualify them in the mens, good air, for fast and clean moves. For the junior girls, French wave shredder in the form of Nouria Newman has been popping great blunts, to please the crowds. A special mention for C1 aerial specialist Guillaume LaRue whose clean air screws are a wonderment to enjoy, very flash indeed.
The opening ceremony finished off the team trainings in the early evening, and presented a great mixture of speeches, street dance and kayak-rap performed by Rush Sturges. Over 30 nations are present in the 2009 Freestyle Kayak World Championships and the ceremony brought together a colorful mix of athletes, many of them sporting their national colors.
Here’s a ride from Monday just to show the talents of Mr Nick Troutman: Final Day of Practise with Nick Troutman rippin\'
Check in on Tuesday for the news & scores on men’s preliminary rides! on Twitter or at Playak’s Twitterwall
Text: Satu VW & Simon
Pics: Satu VW & Simon
The boys at Palm have asked myself to run a twitter feed from the World Freestyle Champs at Thun, check out simon_in_thun, plus I will be running a bunch of audio coverage interviews and video segments from Monday when things start to heat up.
Until then, Twittering it is
Ciao
Simon
This past Spring has been one of the red letter seasons, that you hear about from of the old guard, going on about big snow pack years, where the Piemonte paddling season lasted into June and even beyond. In recent years there has been good to excellent snow conditions, yet all to often the whole lot comes down the river in mid April with some freak Easter hot weekend, or near monsoon rain for 10 days. However the Spring of 2009 was very different, the snow melted in a timely fashion, means that every day was world class, nearly every popular run was in high water conditions and even more special were all the lesser known, yet highly prized more remote runs were prime and good to go for all of May, and what a feast of sunshine steep creekin’ it was. Here is the Cervo, a small run from low altitude that faces mainly south dropping into Biellia close to Valsesia. The putin is a sun spot, check out all those sun lizards, plus see the red kayak in the river left eddy, well that was Dr Stefan from Vienna giving an example of the near prefect roll to the bikini clan ladies, I think he liked their smiles….. 
In late May the boys from Palm came over for a little photoshot and some fine paddling……….
Too read the rest of this blog entry go to: Simon Westgarth’s Blog
Next week, Tim Trew, Palm’s new boy and Mac Magician comes with sick kick Nick Horwood to the mighty Ticino. Over the last few days Matt Tidy and myself have been lining up a few runs to consider for this photo shot and general huck fest for the office boy.
To date, the research into the wider Piemonte and Ticino granite areas of Italy and Switzerland, has been extensive, and I do promise a guide book or something alike at some point. Still what is great about this season is the amount of options, as the snow pack is high and the weather stable of late. The base flow has been ideal for hitting all the runs. Now today the Gene17 trips are over for Valseisa, and we’re about to go to the Sessera for a research mission, and will do the Lower Strona tomorrow, before pick up the guys in Milan on Monday evening.
As we are nice, we’ll go for a warm up day on the might Verzasca, this is a pristine valley, set high into the mountains be hide Lago Maggiore, images of this run have littered the paddling press for the last 15 years, so its a great spot for getting the images done on the first day. Check out a few from last year…
After the warm up day, we’re off to Ribo for those Park n Huck shots and then the Loana and its side creek Alpe Basso. Now I have been a few times up here, but never found the water, however for this year, I will hope its all very different. The following is a description of these runs, translated with Google from they source, first Alpe Basso
Since walking on the path traced along the valley for about 35 minutes. Boarding is after you cross the path with a farm, the trail is level on a beautiful meadow with a little cabin on the upper right. Descend towards the river and embark on the slide.
Description Series of slides, in 2 km of descent, we counted 3 / 4 rapids with rocks the rest on a bed of rock. Attention to a jump of 4 / 5 m with possible shallow basin (Boof).
Sounds just prefect, hike to a slide and get on, and the bed rock is about 2Km long!!!! Now the Loana,
Many steep cataracts remain in our low water with some impressive bedrock chutes. The exit in the usual combination of waterfall and not the scenery is around the track wonderfully wild and lonely.
Warning barrier after the rapid hard and a cascade of 30 m in 2 jumps! Reconnaissance!
Sounds great, and with a plum waterfall at the take out. Here is a shot of the Loana….
After that we’re head in the Toce valley for the Dèvero and may be back to Strona. A real favourite of mine, and a river that rarely runs…
As you can see, there is a lot to get done in a week, and a race next weekend in Valsesia, but I’ll keep you posted on how Tim does…
PS I forgot to mention, we’ll be trying to complete filming of “My Ticino”, another short film from Gene17 about our lifestyle as kayakers, I hope to edit in October and show the film at Gene17′s Adventure Paddler’s weekend in December in Devon, UK
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.
Regards
Simon Westgarth
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……
Regards
Simon Westgarth
As May turned into June, the combination of a large snow pack and heavy Spring rains, gave us extremely high water levels, so much so the local government office, took the unprecedented step and closed all the rivers in Haute-Alpes Department. With the recently huge river levels in the French Alps, the dynamic nature of these alpine runs, means changes, a lot of changes to these boulder garden rapids.
The G17K crew have been on a small holiday for a few weeks, and we were all in the French Alps for early June. Paul Robertson from Palm HQ, came over to the Alps for the UK StudentBoaterX, and we managed to steel him away for some fun on the Guil. I had been on the Guil after the river re-opened a few days before, and enjoyed the fuller volume of the run. Normally by early June, the Middle Guil is a low volume rock dodge, where the better sport is in the Guardian Angle Gorge. This year proved different, with 60 cumecs or so, cleaning up this alpine sprint style run, with the an occasional larger pushy rapid, still great lines.
Here is a collection of images from our little day outing on the Middle Guil.
Paul on Trois Chutes, Guil
Dave on the new and improved staircase
Paul on the staircase
Dave on the exit of the Tunnel rapid
High water fun, Paul rock spinin’ one of the cleaner rocks
A drier mountain distraction for Dave Carroll and Matt Tidy
Alas, all good things must end, and with that Paul headed with Dave for Dagger Europe 2009 product photoshots, Matt headed to Telemark in Norway for a weeks guiding with G17 and myself, a week in the northern Sun with the dear lady wife.
