Heres a quick wrap up of our last two weeks in the water.  
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The one thing that I enjoy least about freestyle competitions is driving a long way to wait around for a really long time to compete for a total of two minutes (ok…4 minutes if you make the finals, maybe 6 minutes if it’s a really big competition).  This past weekend the New England Whitewater Triple Crown eliminated any possibility of boredom by requiring competitiors to compete in Wildwater, Slalom, and Fresstyle, for combined points to determine an overall winner.  The Town of Tarriffville rolled out the red carpet for us, letting us pretty much camp wherever we wanted to, and even reserved parking for us at the venue.  I finished somewhere amongst the top ten.  I’ll definitely give er a go next year, and try to win some money. 

Sup boaters!  So I recently had the opportunity to get in the fusion.  Testing it out on the Columbia River, with The Columbia Experience – we paddled 15 miles on the 270,000 cfs, floating past Nuke Plants and waterfalls!  Next was off to Bailies Creek…a small, fun stretch outside of Kennewick that included two 5 footers and a 15 footer.  The Fusion preformed great and was my only boat I used for 20 laps on the main falls.  Sick photos from Lana Young.

Check out Huckin Huge.com for the Pyranha paddler, Ryan Scott’s epic descent of the “Nuke Flume”.  1500+ feet long and dropping 160 ft.  – cool stuff.

HERE IS A VIDEO OF THE FUSION IN ACTION!  ENJOY!!

Here are some photos of the weekend.  Rockin’ in the Fusion, scouting the Nuke Flume, shot by Lana Young.

While Norway still lays in winter land, we left to Corsica seeking for warmth and water. Our norwegian-canadian-italian group of 7 paddlers met on the Island for an epic 12 days of creeking. 10 rivers: but easily 50 rapids and 30 boofs a day! Corsica is having one of the best years for water this season, with record snow pack from the last 30 years. Kayak Session invited all paddlers for a gathering in the central part of the Vecchio vallee; great initiative to gather european creeking enthusiasts and at the same time make the locals realise how freakin’ lucky they are to have such awesome rivers!

http://www.demshitz.com

 
Come one come all!!!  Here is a schedule of our video premiere’s. This could be subject to change… Stay Posted.

April

• 18th Whitewater Warehouse, Dayton OH 
• 23rd Appalachian State ASU Paddlefest
• 25th NOC Demo Daze

May

• 1st Cheat Fest, Albright WV – World Premeire!!!
• 13th Reno?
• 23rd CKS Paddlefest, Buena Vista CO
• 25th  Paddle Life, Steamboat Springs CO

June 

• 2nd Rocky Mountain Adventures, Fort Collins CO
• 12th Mild to Wild, Durango CO 
• 20th FIBARK, Salida CO

This weekend was the first event for the spring season in the Northwest. I raced in the Large Karnali and it proved itself as a great race boat. I finished 2nd in the pro extreme race, and 1st in the topo duo category (my first time in a topo it was sweet). Regional Team Pyranha paddler Todd Wells had a solid showing winning the freestyle off of Sunset Falls, click the read more link for all NWCC highlights.

Photo by David Briggs.
This is the site of the normal Canyon Creek Extreme Race which had to be moved the EF of the Lewis due the this natural disaster.

Details on Todd Wells and other NWCC Hightlights so (more…)

We’ve been getting some decent flows in Pennsylvania.  It’s always nice to get out and play in the back yard.  I’ll let the pictures and video do the talking for our recent Holtwood sessions.

Holtwood Session Video

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I first met Ivan a few years ago, he is a Ugandan teenager who happens to live very close to the Nile Special – probably the best playwave on the Nile.

Along with a few other paddlers (most notably Billy and Carly Harris) I helped train him in videography and photography. We would pay him to video or photograph us on the wave, both skills he picked up with remarkable aptitude considering he had never used a camera before.

Ivan grew up with some serious health issues, until fairly recently was unable to get proper medical attention. His illnesses have now been treated and cured by Soft Power Health, an organisation that Love it Live it donates a percentage of all our income for Uganda trips towards. It was set up by Jessie Stone (doctor and kayaker) to educate and support local communities on health issues. Unfortunately he has been left with a permanent deformity of his chest, limiting him in how much physical labour he was able to do.

Ivan was 16 at this point but hadn’t been to school since he was orphaned a number of years ago. Since then he has lived with his uncle and could not afford his school fees. After some discussion we agreed that half of his wages I would keep back and once Ivan had saved enough money we would use it to pay his school fees so that he could rejoin the education system. Kayakers left donations in exchange for the good pictures that Ivan had taken of them, and before long I had enough for his first semester. A great start but not a very long term solution.

I was back in the UK doing some LiLi work, and an idea came to me. I contacted the local primary school, who happened to be studying third world countries in their geography for one of the classes, and I went in to have a bit of a chat about Ivan.

They instantly latched onto Ivan story, his big grin and amazing photos. The class at Minera Primary School have now raised the necessary funds to put him in boarding school, which I pay for him annually. He just finished his first year back in education, which he passed with flying colours!

Ivan with all his school friends, holding a photo of the class that now sponsor him.

In the holidays he still takes photos down at the wave. He is now better than most kayakers at spotting when the big moves are coming, he understands about lighting, foreground and background and how to take interesting photos. Here are just a few of his amazing photos…

Spectators at the Nile Special trying to figure out what is going on!

Perfect timing… A Helix in the Nile Freestyle Festival

An interesting angle of a different kid giving photography a go!

He is studying hard and wants to become a professional photographer… good luck to him with his studies and ambitions and thanks to the kids who are raising the funds to him in Wales!

Demshitz Pleaser # 1

Demshitz Pleaser # 2

Demshitz is a collective video masterpiece of whitewater kayaking footage from the past 2 years in North and South America. Good times, Good lines, Good Music, a few HUGE crashes…and more! Find out more about Demshitz and the Demshitz movie @ www.demshitz.com  as well as a schedule of Demshitz premiere parties!   Check back for more pleasers this week as we continue to bombard the internet with footy!!! Help Demshitz continue to live the dream. Buy Demshitz Today!!!

Its been two years since I first ran this drop. Landslide activity has continued to change its size. Its now a sweet 50 footer. Yesterday we warmed up with a nice LW run at 3.6 feet and headed down the road for a huck session. It was super smooth run for me, I slid in from the side and melted into the main flow becoming one with the drop. Hucked the paddle and tucked up, I barely felt the landing when I hit the pool.

Photo Copyright Lane Jacobs

You can see Erik Boomer at the bottom of this one.

Here’s the drop two years ago.

Hi,

We had qualification for Worldchampionship in Thun 2009. I done it. And I will go there.

We had two small competitions in Platling. There was the wave on rght side and the hole on left side.

So I´m looking forward to Thun.

Hey there

Ali Marshall and Pete Scutt just paddled the second descent of the Mugu Karnali, finding 30 miles of beautiful class 4/5 whitewater.  The team later walked up to the top of the runable whitewater of the Humla Karnali befor paddling 100 miles of 4/5 whitewater in 2 days.  An increadible trip.

For the rest of this post go to http://fatcatslatestnews.blogspot.com/

Water is still a little low out here in Colorado, but it didn’t stop the 28 kayakers from breaking out the boats for a little racing.  Saturday marked the 4th annual Monarch Mt. snow boatercross.  As far as anyone knew it was the only one of its kind and it was more fun than I could have imagined.  They built the course the day before but it had not been tested by a boat.  I decided to probe the course for them…..needless to say, after my probe run we determined it was way too fast and dangerous as I flew across the pond and over the padding that was supposed to stop me. They shortened and slowed the course in an attempt to minimize the chances of a broken neck!

(Photo by Kaleb Timberlake)

It was basically a giant bob sled course with the finish line on the back side of a slushy pond.  It was a pretty standard boatercross set up.  Heats of 4 with the top two advancing.  After 4 extremely fun and exciting rounds I ended up taking home the gold and making a little cash!

(Photo by Kaleb Timberlake)

I have been getting the Karnali out on the river training for the upcoming racing season and have been impressed with how fast it is, but had no Idea it would be the ideal race boat for snow as well.  HA!

The most exciting/scary part of the day was watching two of the raft teams fly out of the course full speed into a wooden shack on the mountain sending one guy to the hospital.  Fortunatly the injurys were not too serious.

I will definitly be back to this event next year!

After visiting the Iguaçu waterfalls in Brasil, i was surfing the net about big waterfalls. Obviously, there is Pedro Oliva’s new world record, set just a month ago, here in Brasil…

But who really started this all? Do you know Annie Taylor?

Annie Taylor’s story on Wikipedia…

My kind of ‘open end’ trip in Southamerica has brought me to Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and now Brasil. To Brasil we came without any expectations or beforehand knowledge.
We just wanted to do some boardsurfing and make new plans, maybe cross north to Venecuela, and off course, see if we find some paddling.

So on the way to Florianopolis we turned off at the first interesting roadsign:
‘Rio Paranhana, Parque Aguas Vivas’
and before we knew it, we where hooked up with the super friendly locals at Brasil Raft.

Rio Paranhana gallery

The Rio Paranhana is a mellow little jugle creek, has a lot of Rafting, a Slalom Course, and was a nice introduction to jungle paddling, plus we got some info and contacts, on where to go next.

After a couple of days we left to spend some time boardsurfing near Florianopolis.
And now, after a few rivers more, we are in Iguaçu, waiting for a permit to paddle below the Iguaçu Falls!

So i got some time to soon report more.

It has only taken Tom 2 months since our return to buy a working laptop, load 5 hrs of footage on to and edit it into 8 minutes of fun!

All of you state side, keep your eyes open for an appearance from your own Andy McMurray!  You have to love those over keen yanks!

NZ paddling 2009 Chris and Tom from Tom Strongman on Vimeo.