Back In Norway, and on the jam.

Hello all, I’m now back in residence on the banks of the beautiful Sjoa, with high water and beautiful weather, having just arrived after traveling up from the south for a week in Voss, the waterfall capital of Europe.

The annual Voss Ekstremsportveko is a huge festival attracting thousands of athletes and spectators from all over the world for an incredible week of showing off at various dangerous and spectacular activities. From BASE jumping through longboarding to Kayaking, Mountain Biking and Skiing, the week has it all. We were of course there for the kayaking, and high water levels combined with unseasonably hot weather made for good times all round.

Much of the week was spent paddling on the Brandseth, one of Norway’s most beautiful rivers, and home to the downhill race, Ekstremsportveko’s biggest kayaking event. Water the colour of Bombay Sapphire, clean enough to drink flows down waterfalls, slides, and some tricky combo moves to create a kayaker’s paradise, albeit one with several possibilities for a beating.

Good flows made for a fast and exciting race, with good representation from the UK. A bad start on my part knocked me out of the finals and down to position 22 out of 80 competitors, however given the standard of competition and time only for a single practise run I was happy enough. A mention must go to Lowri Davies and Liz Bell who paddled to 2nd & 3rd place in the women’s race, after Norwegian machine Mariann Saether, who as always beat a significant proportion of the male field. In the Men’s race the slalom paddlers cleaned up again, with Italian Michele Ramazza winning on average, despite a blisteringly fast final run from Kiwi Sam Sutton.

Towards the end of the week, News started drifting through that the elusive Teigdal was flowing, a rare treat indeed , and home to arguably the best paddleable waterfall combo in the world, the infamous Double Drop. Having psyched myself up for this waterfall every year but never found the right flow, I decided this was too good an option to miss, and after a big day’s boating Ric ‘the northern bullet’ Moxon and I headed over for an evenings hucking…

The drop consists of a 9-10m mandatory boof into a tiny (it’s smaller than it looks) pool, before plunging directly over another 12-13m drop with one or two rocky ledges waiting to punish any mistakes. You cannot see the halfway pool until you are right on the lip and it therefore feels a lot like boofing off the edge of the world. Ric Moxon went first, charging hard as ever, and after breaking his paddles across his deck on the first landing, pulled off a sweet two handed stroke over the lip of the second. Gnarly.

I was up next, and feeling quite lonely by now in the eddy at the top. I pulled out of the eddy into the sunshine, took one last glance at the view, and prepared to fly. my first landing was soft, and within two strokes I was out of the mist and in freefall again. I landed more vertically than I had planned, resurfaced in the base of the fall, and another broken paddle later I hand rolled up in the pool feeling a little dazed, but buzzing nonetheless.

I’m now settling down once again to life in the Sjoa valley, and have been enjoying the classic Aamot and Store Ula runs, so stay posted for more pics to come. Anybody heading out this way over the summer, come and stop by the Kayak camp for a paddle and a cup of tea. There have been exciting new changes and some renovations this year, and with the Ula race making a comeback, the Sjoa festival is looking to be a good one.

Cheers, see you there,

Nick