Team Potomac Paddlesports

The LiquidLogic Composite Prototype

2011-12-14T21:35:00.004-05:00

Incase you haven't heard of it, or haven't seen much about it here is some Info about Liquidlogic Kayak's newest creation, a Composite freestyle boat!

http://shanesliquidlogic.blogspot.com/2011/12/composite-playboat-prototype-1.html

Video Updates from Canada

2011-09-12T13:33:00.002-04:00

This summer I made it up to Quebec, Canada to do some creeking. I managed to run some of the biggest and hardest whitewater I have ever paddled. I got up there with Nathan Sass, Brett Mayer, and a Brand new Liquid Logic Stomper. Here is a video of just a few of the drops we paddled.

Enjoy!

A week after creeking up in Quebec, I actually went back to Canada, this time to do some Playboating! I got to paddle the second prototype to Liquidlogics newest creation. So new it doesn't even have a name yet.

Enjoy!

The Top 10 Places to Eat Before and After Boating in the Mid-Atlantic

2011-08-30T09:26:00.017-04:00

I know all of you are super hardcore and fine dining doesn't factor into your decision about where to boat each weekend (yeah right), but once you're there you've got to eat something. Zagat's couldn't be bothered to write reviews of these restaurants—or if they have, I couldn't be bothered to check—so I've written them myself.

I'll be the first to admit that this list is subjective and heavily biased in favor of the places where I boat the most. A more appropriate title for this blog post might be The Top 10 Places to Eat Before and After Boating in Garrett, Tucker, and Fayette Counties, but that doesn't have the same ring to it. For those people who feel slighted by the omission of their favorite restaurants, I'd be glad to hear your suggestions. My goal is simply to provide some helpful recommendations in case you ever find yourselves in the vicinity of these establishments, and to send some business their way in gratitude for feeding me well.

The Top 10

1. In camp with your friends
Anywhere

Not even the best restaurant can beat cooking and eating in camp with your friends. Sure, it can be hit or miss. Some nights you'll have a seven course meal consisting of a cold cheesy weenie and a six-pack of warm Bud Light (true story). But on other nights you'll have grilled chicken and vegetable kabobs with twice baked potatoes and dutch oven pineapple upside down cake. Either way you get to spend time with your friends, which is what it's all about.

2. The Riverside Hotel
Friendsville, MD

This is a vegetarian restaurant and I'm a carnivore. Just think how good it must be for me to rank it above every other restaurant! It's walking distance from the Upper Yough take-out with front porch seating overlooking the river and family style dining. It serves all-you-can-eat meals featuring hearty soups, home baked breads, organic salads, and your choice of fantastic desserts all for $11. Some people treat the Tomato Basil soup like the Second Coming, but all of the soups are delicious. Whichever one they're serving is my favorite until the following weekend. The bread and butter are always soft, and if you're lucky you might even get the blue cornbread with honey. The salad ingredients are picked fresh from the backyard (including edible flowers), and the cayenne brownie is to die for. They don't serve alcohol, but you can bring your own, and the other beverages are refreshing. The only complaint I can think of is that they're not open year-round, but absence makes the heart grow fonder.

3. Hellbender Burritos
Davis, WV

When I first started running the Blackwater, people directed me to Siriani's—and for good reason—but one night the expected wait was over an hour, so I walked across the street to Hellbender's, and now it's almost always my first choice. There's rarely a wait, the service is friendly, the wood-burning stove takes the chill out of your bones, and they have giant inexpensive burritos. “How giant?” you ask. Well, the first time I went there I asked our waitress that very question. She held out her arm and gestured roughly between her elbow and her wrist. Hell yeah! After a long day on the river that's exactly what I wanted to hear, and the burrito didn't disappoint. I'm a creature of habit, so I usually get the Chicken Hellbender, which has a nice kick to it, but there are plenty of other options. If I'm really hungry I'll also get a bowl of green chili, which has an even nicer kick to it. They used to have a delicious brownie for dessert, but the lady who baked them at home couldn't keep up with demand, and if you're still hungry after the burrito I'll be impressed. Did I mention they serve local beer from the Mountain State Brewing Company?

4. Pies and Pints
Fayetteville, WV

Some rivers always keep you coming back for more, like the Gauley; some restaurants always keep you coming back for more, like Pies and Pints; and after drinking yourself under the table with the wide selection of barley pops they have on tap you may start wondering if you've been swept into a friendly version of the Gauley's famous undercuts. The Cuban Pork Pie is my favorite pizza anywhere with its marinated pulled pork, caramelized onions, pineapple slices, jalapeno peppers, fresh cilantro, and crème fraiche. The Black Bean pie is also superb. The only problem with Pies and Pints is that everybody else knows how good it is too, so the wait can be rather long on busy weekends; however, their new location has more seating than the old one and the hostesses/waitresses are good at moving things along without making anyone feel rushed. Pies and Pints is truly a classic and I wouldn't be surprised if other people list it at #1.

5. The Purple Fiddle
Thomas, WV

Full disclosure: I've never eaten at the Purple Fiddle. It embarrasses me to say it, but it's true. I walked in the door one morning for breakfast, and the guy at the counter told me to go down the street to the Flying Pig, but that I should come back in the evening for dinner and a killer bluegrass band. He was right about the Flying Pig, and I appreciated his honesty, but I didn't come back in the evening and strangely I never have. On many occasions I've meant to come back, but I'm an early-to-bed and early-to-rise kind of guy, and Hellbender's pulls me in like a tractor beam, so I usually end up crashing early in the wildlife refuge outside of Davis while my more rambunctious friends have a great time there and speak about it afterward with reverence. The way they tell it, the Purple Fiddle is the best bluegrass venue in all of West Virginia. One of these days I'll find out for myself, but for now it makes the list on word of mouth alone.

6. Cathedral Cafe
Fayetteville, WV

Cathedral Cafe gets my vote for best breakfast in West Virginia, and no trip to the New River would be complete without a stop here. Housed in a converted church with tall ceilings and stained glass windows, the atmosphere is unique. The food is uniformly good and I can never decide whether to order something sweet, something salty, or both. The prices are also very reasonable because they cater to the dirt-bag boater and climber crowd. In fact, people watching is one of the best things about Cathedral. For boaters like myself who don't climb, it's an opportunity to see another culture and eavesdrop on conversations that are remarkably similar to our own. The restaurant fills up quickly, so I recommend going early to make sure you find a table, especially if you have a big group.

(Expert tip: don't give your bride-to-be a taste of the sweet potato pancakes if she has a tree nut allergy, or you might be accused of attempted homicide. “But I didn't notice the pecans!” won't hold up in court.)

7. Canoe on the Run
McHenry, MD

The menu is short, but every item on it is good. I particularly recommend the breakfast combo with the Morning Sandwich, roasted red potatoes, and slice of melon. Your passion for cinnamon rolls will also be richly rewarded. Don't despair if you see none beneath the glass; they usually have more in the back. Sit outside on the deck and enjoy the light breeze while your mouth waters in anticipation... This place gets bonus points for having “canoe” in its name, even though I don't canoe.

8. Siriani's Pizza
Davis, WV

This Canaan Valley favorite is always busy, so you might have to wait to be seated. Service can be slow, but the pizza is excellent, the atmosphere is fantastic, and you won't be in a hurry to leave anyway. Skiing photos, equipment, and memorabilia line the walls. Sitting at one of their tables gives you a warm feeling that erases all thoughts of the harsh winter outside. They are known for their pizza but their pasta is also quite good, and I often order the O Mike Goss. One thing worth mentioning is that Siriani's is CASH ONLY. If you don’t have any cash, they’ll tell you to swing by the bank in town. Don’t even bother because the bank ATM never has money. Go to the bar across the street from the bank instead.

9. The Flying Pig
Thomas, WV

As mentioned previously, the Flying Pig was recommended to me by a guy at the Purple Fiddle. Now it's my go-to place for breakfast whenever I'm at the Blackwater or one of the wilderness creeks nearby. The atmosphere is very laid back—it feels almost like you're sitting in the bay window of your mom's kitchen, and the proprietress isn't afraid to get sassy at your friends if they can't make up their minds about what to order. The menu is no frills, but the food is high quality and there are little flourishes like the dill in the egg scramble that make this place a winner. Plus it's cheap!

10. Dirty Ernie's Rib Pit
Fayetteville, WV

This has to win the Best Name for a Restaurant award. “Dirty Ernie” evokes images of a guy out back with a smoker made from an oil drum. It's not a restaurant either, it's a “rib pit.” Even if the food was terrible I'd still go there. Fortunately it isn't. I may not be a barbecue connoisseur, but the ribs taste great and fall off the bone. This is a great back-up option if Pies and Pints is too crowded, or a great first choice if you're in the mood for some ribs.

Honorable Mention (in alphabetical order)

Black Bear Burritos
Morgantown, WV

I've only been here once, and that was years ago, but I understand the burritos are still good and they have live music on Saturday night.

The Crabby Pig
Cumberland, MD

I was introduced to the Crabby Pig only recently, but it's quickly becoming a favorite. I haven't tried the seafood yet, but the barbecue is very tasty and the pulled pork sandwich is awesome. The restaurant also has easy access from I-68, which is a plus.

Fat Eddie's
Mt. Nebo, WV

This is a mandatory pit stop during Gauley Season before heading home. It's located just east of Summersville Dam on Rt. 129 and serves up burgers, hot dogs, fries, and shakes. Try ordering the hot dog with “Full English.”

The Firefly Grill
Ohiopyle, PA

Nice place to grab lunch with outdoor seating in Ohiopyle.

Lucky Dog Cafe
Confluence, PA

If I went to Confluence more often this restaurant might make the top ten, because it meets all the requirements: good food, good atmosphere, and good people. I've only been there once, so I'm not sure what to recommend, but if you're hungry after running Drakes Creek or just took your family/co-workers rafting on the Middle Yough, this is your best bet.

Mountain State Brewing Co.
Thomas, WV and McHenry, MD

The pizzas aren't quite good as the ones at Pies and Pints or Siriani's, but they're no slouches either, and Mountain State brews its own beer, which the other two restaurants can't boast. They frequently have live music as well.

Puccini
Cumberland, MD

Friends tell me it's not the same as Uncle Tucker's, which used to occupy the same building and brewed its own beer, but Puccini's still makes delicious wood-fired pizzas.

Queen City Creamery
Cumberland, MD

This place is known for its custard, but the deli sandwiches are excellent too.

Rusty Fork Cafe
Elkhorn City, KYl

There aren't many dining options near the Russell Fork, but this one seems to be the best. It's a great place to grab breakfast before the release starts. And I love the name!

Ohiopyle Falls Fest and a view of what goes on Behind the Curtain.

2011-08-26T13:09:00.011-04:00

Photo-Lynn Mason

The Annual Ohiopyle Falls Festival on the Lower Yough in Pennsylvania was as ever, a super fun and spectacular event. It was just a little bit chilly when we left my house at around 5 am for the 3 hour drive to the beautiful little town of Ohiopyle in PA. We made just a quick pit stop about 10 minutes away from my house to pick up my good friend Gabriel Guzman. Gabe doesn't kayak that much, and barely knows how to roll, however that doesn't stop him from firing up the 18 foot tall Ohiopyle Falls during the festival for the second year in a row. When we arrived around 8:30 we ran over to the registration booth to sign our forms, and for me to get my bib. This year I decided to compete in K-1 and C-1 for the falls sprint as well as the freestyle over the falls. After a quick bite to eat I jumped in my boat for a quick run in my brand new Liquid Logic Stomper!(not so brand new after a few days on the green and a week in Quebec) My First run was sweet, I somewhat overboofed, but stomped back down to flat and skipped away from the base of the falls.

Photo-Clara Poffenberger

I trotted back up to the put in and waited for Gabe to get his gear on. Gabe was psyched on hitting the water after watching my first run. He got in our boats, and pushed off into the river. We got over the first two ledges without a hitch and waited for our turn to go in the pool above. When it was my turn, I gave some reassuring advice to Gabe and rolled over the lip with another huge boof. Gabe came rolling off the lip and plugged the seam of the waterfall. He went deep, really deep, but popped up after 3 or 4 seconds and promptly swam.

Photo- Clara Poffenberger

His second run didn't go quite as well, he flipped in the rapids above, hit a rock while upside down and swim. After a quick pep talk from me, he jumped back in his boat for one last run of the falls. Gabe came rolling down the slide and hit the curler, and flipped. While upside down he chucked his paddle and tucked up just like I taught him! We went over up side down fully tucked up and poped out of his boat a few seconds after resurfacing. I was proud and he was done.

Photo-Clara Poffenberger

The Over-the-falls Sprint-

At 12 o-clock the competition began with the over the falls Sprint. I had a very good c-1 run in the Liquid Logic Stomper. The boat seemed to just skip out and away from every drop, its definitely the fastest creek boat I have ever paddled. I managed to secure 1^st place in the C-1 class..... yes I was the only c-1er.... but still ;).

Photo-Lynn Mason

I also did a k-1 run in Gabe's Jefe Chico, which went pretty well. Overall results- 1^st C-1, 5^th in K-1 short boat. My C-1 time would have come out 7^th in the K-1 short boat class.

Photo- Radley Edward Miller

The Over-the-falls Freestyle-

My first run was not fantastic, it was my 6^th run down the falls and all I managed to do was a few cartwheels on the slide and a freewheel over the falls. My second run however was pretty interesting, though didn't really score me any points.

Photo-Clara Poffenberger

The Disappearing Act-

During my second run during the Over-the-falls freestyle competition I decided to take the river left line down the falls, I managed to hit a sweet rock spin and paddle spin down the next slide. I caught the little hole and tried to surf over to the main wave right above the lip of the falls. I missed the wave, turned around, and tried to freewheel the falls. As you can imagine, trying to freewheel a waterfall with no speed doesn't work all that well. It ended up as more of a back boof into the curtain of the falls. To me, I felt my boat plugged and felt like I was getting hammered in the hole at the bottem of the falls. When I felt the curtain of the falls slowly stop hammering on the bottom of my boat, I thought to myself a sigh of relief. I was done, no more falls running for the day....

Photo-Lynn Mason

Then I rolled up and when I opened my eyes, I pretty much shouted out- Ohhh S**T!!! I was in a little 6 by 8 foot pocket behind the curtain. Pretty much one of the worst things that can happen to you on Ohiopyle falls. I sat there in my boat, between a vertical rock wall and a semi-spherical wall of water that blocked me from the rest of the world. I sat there in the somewhat calm, but surgey eddy for about 20 seconds, catching my breath and trying to figure out what I was going to do. I knew that there was absolutely nothing anybody else could do for me. So their was no point in waiting for anything to happen. I paddled as hard as I could towards the river left side curtain, as it seemed thinner than the main curtain in front of me. I immediately got flipped upside down and smashed by the water falling 18 feet onto my boat. I ejected out of my boat and tried to swim as hard as I could down and out. I was looking for the little bit of green water at the bottom that might flush me out. It didn't work, I resurfaced in the same pocket that I had started with both my boat and my paddle, except this time out of my boat and struggling to keep my head out of the water so I could catch my breath. I had no plan, but there was a little bit of current flowing towards the right. I had no choice but to go with the current. When I got to a certain point I pushed my boat up against the rock wall and kicked off it as hard as I could and swam straight down. I went deep, very deep. I was probably down for 10 or so seconds before I came out 20 or 30 feet below the waterfall to a huge cheer from the crowd on the observation decks.

Jordan P about to disapear over the falls- Photo Lynn Mason

From the outside it looked as if I had just disappeared, and was under water for 2 minutes. After a minute a man who had had a much worse behind-the-curtain experience than I had 2 years for got on the microphone and started yelling at the safety man on the rocks next to the falls to throw in a rope. He was later fined and thrown out of the park by the Park Police for Belligerent behavior. And apparently everyone saw my boat come out of the falls before I did.

Anyways- I'm very thankful for all those out there that helped me out, tried to help me or really did anything else. Every day you survive is a great day, just something to remember. Even with that little 2 minute indecent I still had a sweet day, and managed to come out of it with nothing more than a sore back. Thanks A Lot Ohiopyle Falls Fest organizers and safety crew!

Jordan P

You know you haven't been paddling enough when...

2011-07-29T13:50:00.004-04:00

You find a bird's nest in your kayak... WITH EGGS. I found this in my Green Boat the night before the Great Falls Race on my way to do practice laps. This was actually the second time I've found a bird's nest in my kayak this year. The first time was after returning from a month in the Grand Canyon.

I store my kayak outside, standing up vertically, and birds probably like it because the cockpit is like a tree hole. It's protected from the elements and high enough off the ground that predators can't get to it. We also have a bird feeder out back, so seeds are readily available. What more could a bird want?

Unfortunately, I do want to kayak from time to time, so I had to evict them. The mama bird actually hit me in the chest in her rush to escape (I didn't know the nest was there). I carefully removed the nest and put it somewhere else, but I've heard that birds won't return to a nest after it's been disturbed, so I probably just made some raccoon's day.

The moral of the story is... if you're going to store your kayak outside, either buy a cockpit cover or get used to animals using your kayak as a flophouse.

Plattling: Week 1

2011-06-11T12:31:00.004-04:00

I am currently here in beautiful Plattling, Germany. In German, the word Plattling means flat, which pretty much describes this town perfectly. Not to say that it is a bad thing in this, somewhat small German town. In fact it makes it quite a lot easier to get around and see where your going. The main town of Plattling is along a short section of a busy 2 lane road running through a small canyon of 3 story high buildings. Much like most American towns main streets, except for the fact that everything is written in German. With pretty wide cobble sidewalk/ parking areas on either side of the road with an occasional little flower garden and a statue or fountain. The main part of town ends with a bridge that crosses the river the hole is on. Take a left before the bridge and drive through some nice looking houses, down a curvy little road and under some very busy train tracks, up a little hill and down the other side and your at the feature. Between two large grass fields lies a river with, what appears to be a small, low head dam, though is actually a pretty sweet hole, at least on the river left side. The rest of the dam has a few fun surfing spots, a few flushy green tongs and a few steep little holes, all of which is quite shallow except at high water.

The World Championships Feature is a sweet hole which is only about 20 feet wide, with, at the current water level, a flushy tong on the surfers left side, a very shallow rock in the middle and a deep spot just to the left of the rock. Though even with the flushy left side and the rock in the middle, when one finds the right spot it serves up some pretty huge loops, space godzillas, mcnasties and every other trick in the book. I have been working on a pretty solid routine, which if I can get every trick, will hopefully put me in the top five for C-1. My loop, left space godzilla and left mcnasty are all pretty solid at this spot, I have been working pretty hard trying to train up my right mcnasty, phonix monkey, backloop, and orbits here and have some of those moves starting to stick really well at this spot. I have been here for about 10 days and still have 9 days until the competition starts. Hopefully I can get some more training in, and get some of my less consistent tricks to come through better by the time competition starts. Lines are already getting bigger as the majority of the US, Canadian, British, Russian, German, Japanese, and several other countries teams are already here. It is definitely awesome to be able to meet all these spectacular paddlers from all over the world and have the opportunity to paddle with them.

Pics-

https://picasaweb.google.com/THEPoffenburgler/Germany?authkey=Gv1sRgCPbY1-XE9NGgag

Thanks again to my sponsors, Liquid Logic Kayaks and Potomac Paddlesports.

Jordan P

Ps- will try to get more pics up soon

Liquid Logic Kayaks Boat Raffle

2011-06-05T12:30:00.002-04:00

On May 26^th at the end of the Maryland Chute-out on the Potomac River we drew a raffle ticket for a liquid logic kayak of some lucky person's choice. Thanks to Liquid Logic we managed to raise $1300 dollars, out of which 1/4^th would go directly to the United States Freestyle Kayak Association, which will help fund the 2011 US Freestyle team at World Championships in Plattling, Germany. The rest of which will help me personally to pay for my plane ticket to Germany. The tickets were sold at $10 dollars a piece or $25 dollars for 3. Between my family, Potomac Paddlesports, and the help of Risa Shimoda we managed to sell 120 raffle tickets.

The Winner of a Liquid Logic boat of her choice was April George from Portland, Oregon-Now all we have to do is figure out how to get the boat to her.

A Huge thanks to my sponsors Potomac Paddlesports, for helping us sell some tickets. And an Especially huge thanks to Liquid Logic Kayaks for putting up a boat to help the Myself and the US Freestyle Team at the ICF Freestyle World Championships in Plattling, Germany.

Jordan P

Hunt's Shorts: How to Brown Claw

2011-05-16T16:49:00.000-04:00

Last Descent: Silverback Section of the White Nile

2011-05-05T15:13:00.001-04:00

This is a short Video of my experience on the now underwater Silverback Section of the White Nile.

Enjoy!

Africa: Nile Special Night Sesh

2011-02-19T04:34:00.005-05:00

Photo- Jacob Slobodian(left) Kalob Grady(centerleft) Nick Simpson(centerright)

Alex Anderson(right) Jordan P( bottem)- Courtesy of Jacob Slobodian

It was 9:30 on a Tuesday night, sitting at the bar sipping a coke and talking with Jason, a Brit who had been working here for the past year. Along with me were a few other New River Academy students. Lorenzo, one of our coaches was sitting at the table talking with some of other NRA teachers. We were discussing the wave just 5 minute paddle up the river, one of the best waves in the world named after a beer, Nile Special. Generally its about a 9 foot tall, tow on wave. Meaning you have a rope attached at a point up stream, and in order to get onto the wave from the eddy, you hold onto the rope, swing out, and surf onto it. Jason was telling us about how, because the river is dam release, it hits maximum flow at night, and when it peaks out the wave gets stickier and you can surf on. Most of the time the left shoulder is flushed green, so if you ever throw, and land too much to the left you will flush off. He told us that when the river went up, the left shoulder formed and the wave got wider, stickier, and we wouldn’t have to use a rope around midnight. 5 of us walked over to Lorenzo and began to beg for him to let us go out with Jason to the wave. After all, it was a full moon. We could all tell he really wanted to go as well, but as we were all still with the school it was a hard decision. After much discussing with Jason and the rest of us he finally said yes. Though the water was not quite high enough yet. We knew that the water on the beach had to touch a stump, it was about 2 inches away. Lorenzo said that if we were going to go we had to go now, otherwise he was going to go to bed. Though Jason said it was not going to be worth it. So our group slowly disbanded and drifted back to their tents. Alex, a student at NRA, and myself decided to stay at the bar and talk with Jason for a while. After about an hour, around 11, he went off to check the level. He came back looking somewhat excited and saying that it was just barely touching the stump and that in about 30 minutes it would be perfect. We ran over to see if Lorenzo was still awake. He was so we told him the news, he told us to go round up the troops. After telling the others we sprinted to our boats and threw on our gear, jumped in. We went over a quick buddy system so that we would lose anyone and paddled up. It turned out it was not quite high enough yet, luckily we brought the tow rope up. So we took turns for about an hour and a half operating the rope. Even though the wave was not yet paddle on, it was still the best level we had ever been at it. For the first hour the wave had a big, sick green face to launch off of and a solid pile at the top. For the last bit of our session, the water had come up even more and it was not just about paddle on. The wave also got much stickier, and even a little trashy, I had a few pretty hardcore window shades. Tired out we finally headed back in, all exclaiming about the sick paddle session. Definitely one of the more memorable events so far on the Uganda Semester of New River Academy.

Jordan P

Africa: Week 1

2011-02-08T06:35:00.000-05:00

Winter is over, at least for me. After a sweet six weeks of winter vacation, snowboarding whenever, and sleeping quite a lot, now its time to get back to work... If you can call it that. For now I am sitting here, on an island, in the middle of the White Nile river, in Uganda, which in fact is in Africa, in an everlasting summer. It's the dry season, so the suns out, hot as can be palm trees all around. The nice part about dry season is the lack of mosquitos, at least during the day. Though every night they come out in swarms. Though by sunset I am generally already asleep, safe in my tent. Wake up in the cool morning air, just as the sun begins to tip the horizon. Monkeys running through the trees(somehow they made it onto the island). During the day, while we have classes, whether they be in the shade under a tree, in one of the few chill spots(domes with a roof and couches, pillows or hammocks) or maybe next to the river, sometimes even in the river. Generally, even with school, its a very relaxing day on the Harry Lemon( yes that is the name of the island we are staying on). Only every once in a while will we come in contact with a Cobra swimming in the water, though it is advised to use caution when sitting on the grass due to the large biting ants. Overall just a chill day, until we get to the river that is.

The White Nile is a very high volume river. The Nile Special rapid, named after the beer, is about a ten minute paddle upstream, and a ferry across the current to get to the waves. There are two waves the come in at a different time of day. The first wave, Club Wave, comes in around 8 or 9 in the morning and stays in until about 12 to 1. The second and more famous wave, Nile Special, comes in around 2 or 3 and stays in past dark. Club wave is a pretty sweet, 30 foot wide, 5 or 6 foot tall wave/hole (river right is a wave and river left is a hole) This wave is sweet for the begging/intermediate play boater, as its fairly sticky, with a good pile and bouncy. Nile Special on the other hand is a tow in wave, and is a 9 foot tall green monster, and if you know what your doing you can get some of the biggest tricks there.

Every day we switch between the two, due to having to do school we are only able to go to one. The waves are some of the best I have ever surfed, and with switching to a the bigger Biscuit 55, I am able to get huge amounts of air with some of my tricks. I am not much of a wave boater but I have been able to hit some massive air, Pan ams and Blunts, and every once in a while I can hit a huge snappy Blunt-Nasty Combo.

So far, though only my first week here in Africa, it has been one of the more spectacular weeks of my life. I am afraid I am currently unable to continue writing about what amazing experiences I have had here already, due to a lack of battery power and time. But definitely check back in for another post next week.(which will hopefully be accompanied by pictures.)

Jordan P

Rio Claro

2010-12-07T17:40:00.008-05:00

The Rio Claro is a beautiful gem of a river in the Andes Mountains south of Santiago. This river valley is surrounded by, though not entirely huge, impressive rocky mountains with an arid, desert like forest. The river has crystal clear water, by which I mean you can see straight through it down to the very bottom. Which makes jumping off of high rocks and bridges quite scary due to the fact that you can see every rock as if no water lay between. The deep gorges are carved through black volcanic rock and granite to create one of the most unique rivers on earth. The canyons here are anywhere from twenty to a hundred and fifty feet tall, generally no more than ten feet wide, with huge pot holes carved in between drops. There were four sections in which we got to run with New River Academy, Siete Tazas(seven teacups), Garganta Del Diablo( throat of the devil), Entre Saltos(Entry Waterfalls), and Veintidos Saltos(twenty-two waterfalls).

Siete Tazas:
The Siete Tazas or seven teacups are seven of possibly the most perfect waterfalls ever seen. Though in reality there are only really three real waterfalls, and the other four are very fun little two to eight foot ledges. The run starts off with a bit of a hike through the Siete Tazas national park then down a near vertical dirt cliff face down to the river. We would generally carry our boats down a very steep dirt path through some trees and bamboo to a small platform halfway down the slope. From there we would lower our boats down with a throw rope into the deep black volcanic canyon. The canyon walls are vertical, extending far above us. The put in is a small eight foot seal launch and then about a fifty foot paddle over two small rapids to the cauldron above the first drop. The first drop is by far the hardest of all the teacups, it is a waterfall with about a eight foot sixty degree slide to a twelve foot drop into a tight ten foot wide gorge with water boiling off both walls pushing into a small cave on the left as the river bends. Though the cave is not bad while in a boat, it is somewhat unpleasant to have to fight out of it. This flows out into another flat cauldron and then into a sick eight foot sliding boof into another perfect cauldron. Then a small ledge which must be portaged due to a bad placed log across the entire river. Luckily there is a nice little spot where it is possible to push your boat up and over the rocks instead of getting out and walking around. The next one is another fun seven foot ledge, which one can either boof or attempt a pogo flip out of a plug. Then after that is a sick little three foot ledge into an awesome cave right above the first twenty footer. The twenty footer is insanely clean from top to bottom and lands in a perfect, large flat pool. After that is the second perfect twenty foot waterfall with a vertical slide into about a eight-teen foot free fall into a second huge flat pool. Before and after every single drop is a perfect flat cauldron, and every drop is as beginner friendly as it gets. Then the take out is to hike along the edge of a sketchy cliff above a deep gorge to the viewing platform. If one were to keep paddling into the gorge below the last waterfall it would lead into an inescapable gorge which leads into some class V+ rapids and a sixty foot waterfall. Non of which is portagable.

Last drop Siete Tazas Jordan & Clay Whitaker- Photo- Jason Terry

Garganta Del Diablo:
Our last two days in the Rio Claro valley, the coaches decided to take all of the more experienced paddlers down Garganta Del Diablo, or the Throat of the Devil. They decided to split up the group so there would not be so many people in the canyon at one time and so the other half of the group could get pictures and video. I got video of them on the most famous drop in this run and then ran it the next day. This run is further up river from Siete Tazas, though is separated from the Seven Teacups by a class VI, unrunnable gorge. The run begins immediately after Entre Saltos ends. The first drop seems to fall off the face of the earth into a huge ominous cavern with mist exploding up from the bottom of he drop. From above the drop, it truly feels as if you are dropping into the Throat of the Devil. As soon as you drop into the gorge there is almost no chance of being able to get out of he canyon until you have finished the run. The first drop is called the ski jump, and it is a sick twelve foot slide into a twelve foot boof. It is definitely one of the cooler drops I have run. Once I hit the huge boof I was stuck in the gorge. When in the gorge it does not feel much like a regular river canyon, it feels much more like being in a cave. The cliff walls extend far over our heads and only ever so often can I see the sky. Just around the bend is one of the most famous slides in the kayaking world. As we came around the corner we spotted all of our fellow students who had run the drop the day before waiting to get their shot. Each of us down in the water took turns drifting up to the edge of the drop to peer over and attempt to see the slide. When you see the pictures and videos, even when you are just standing on the cliff above looking down at the drop, you have absolutely no idea what this water fall actually is. When you see a picture of it, it seems like the sickest drop known to man, in reality, it is far better than you could tell from any picture. The curving slide itself drops around twenty-five feet into a free fall of another twenty-five feet. Now when I say this I don't think one could possibly understand how big this is, especially after looking at a picture. The amazingly perfect banking slide, is almost less of a slide and more of a vertical waterfall. By the time I reached the bottom of the slide I had already fallen twenty-five vertical feet in less than twenty horizontal feet. The hit at the bottom is very hard and feels much like hitting a brick wall. Once at the bottom of this drop the supreme feeling of awesomeness hits me. By that I mean it just feels really good to be at the bottom of this amazing drop in the most amazing gorge I have ever seen. There are several more drops in this generally less than ten foot wide canyon. There are two rapids in which requires a boof into a four foot wide, barely wide enough for your boat slides, one is about seventy feet long and I managed to flip halfway down it and get dragged on my face until the end when the river widens back up to seven or eight feet wide. There are a few more boofs placed randomly throughout the rest of the run. At one spot in the gorge a huge waterfall falls from the darkness high on the cliff wall and creates, if you believe in it, one of the most spiritual places on earth. Siting behind behind this waterfall with windy spray sparkling on ones face in the darkness of the “cavern” with black walls stretching far far above me pushes me into pondering the marvels of mother nature.

Garganta Del Diablo Jordan Poffenberger- Photo- Jason Terry

Entre Saltos:
Entre Saltos is an extremely fun, no particularly hard run with some fun rapids and a very fun waterfall. There is a short class V+ section near the beginning that we always walked with New River Academy. Then as soon as we put in after walking around the class V section, we put in right above the biggest drop on Entre Saltos. The drop is about a seven foot boof/slide into another twelve foot boof into a large pool at the bottom. After the big drop are a bunch of smaller ledges and drops between two and eight feet tall. Then there are three tougher drops at the end. One, I call Gnardrop is a very tough drop, you have to push your self over some rocks and then charge left as the river turns right, most of the water goes into an undercut wall, so you have to boof this very sketchy ridge rock that sticks out on the left side of the river. Most of the time a line through this will not look very clean, the ridge rock isn't exactly a straight forward boof, and to make it even worse there is barely any water flowing over it. Also, because the rock isn't a straight drop off all the way around, when one boofs it, one tends to reconnect with the rock right before landing, which is a pretty terrible feeling. The next drop is called Cool Eddie drop, once again, named by me. As in the name the drop has a very cool Eddie. It starts off with a cool six foot slide and then the river makes a hard left turn into a five foot boof into a large hole in a small seven foot wide walled in canyon. There is a huge pot hole eddie on the right guarded by a really cool curler made by the slide. One can catch the eddie in between the first slide and the second five foot boof. The eddie is perfectly calm and as a overhanging wall over stop of it. The last drop, I call Boca drop for some reason or another, is a twelve foot near vertical slide into the pool immediately above the entrance to Garganta Del Diablo

Biggest drop on Entrea Kai Wen Pai- Photo Jordan Poffenberger

Veintidos Saltos:
Veintidos Saltos, in English, means twenty-two waterfalls, and is definitely one of the coolest runs on the planet. It starts off with a class V seal launch right above the first eight foot waterfall. If one were to screw up this seal launch one could end up going over the waterfall in some very strange positions, as the landing of the seal launch is less then three feet above the lip of the drop. As soon as you drop off the seal launch you are already deep in yet another, for the most part, inescapable gorge. There are eighty foot tall vertical cliff walls around, all the way until the end of the run. Almost nothing is scout-able and the run is completely committing with no chance of escape from this amazing gorge. After the eight footer which has sick boof line off of the left side which lands in an eight foot wide canyon, roll around the corner into a small cauldron right above a large horizon line. This is the twenty-five footer, possibly the cleanest twenty-five footer known to mankind. The line is center left, or center right, or anywhere one could want to go. It is possible to boof or to pencil, the waterfall lands in a massive pool with almost no consequence at all. After that, there is some fun little boulder gardens with small boofs hear and there. The entire time on the Rio Claro, nearly every rock that makes up these rapids and waterfalls is easily visible because the water is just so pristine and clear. After some boulder gardens the Veintidos Saltos Ski jump comes up. The Ski jump starts below a really cool little pool under an over hanging wall, the top of the drop is about a six foot gentle sloping slide, the right side of the slide simply drops off, where as the left side rolls up the side of a wall and kicks the water out and away from the twelve foot drop. If one banks up hard on the left side, it is possible to launch yourself off and have one of the biggest boofs of a lifetime. The Ski jump lands in a perfect pool with a large rock shoal that one could hop out to get pictures or empty a boat. The water rolls around the right side of the rock shoal under another overhanging wall. There is a large rock, most of the water is going through a small crack between the overhanging wall, and the huge rock. A kayak may or may not fit through that crack, so in order to avoid finding out, it is best to run into the small channel in front and to the left of the boulder in the middle of the river. Then on the other side of the rock the best way to have a clean line is to get backwards into the water flowing out of that crack and hit a left boof in about two strokes to avoid the undercut wall on the right side below the ten foot drop. Below this, paddle through the steep narrow canyon and come upon a small horizon line right before the river makes a hard right hand turn. About five feet past this three foot boof around the blind corner there is an eddie on the right that is worth catching to take a quick look at a massive horizon line that appears to be heading straight into the cliff wall a little less than five or six feet downstream of the eddie. Now the reason it appears to be running directly into the wall, is because it is, at least partially. This is the thirty foot waterfall, and the right side does bank off the wall, though the left side is not much better as it connects with rocks halfway down. So the best line is to attempt to go right off the middle and simply tuck. Now after this traumatizing experience of surviving one of the scariest thirty footers in chile, paddle on down to the final hard drop on the river, it's the double drop. It starts off with a weird little ledge into a hole that drops immediately off into a eight foot ledge that lands in a small pool right above another seven foot, very clean drop. The first half of the rapid is nearly impossible to do cleanly. Though it is fun none the less. After this it is a short paddle through the rest of the canyon which slowly fades down. Paddle the last few small drops and then hope out right above this bridge that crosses the river, which also happens to be the put in for Entre Saltos.

Ski Jump Jordan Poffenberger- Photo Tino Specht

For more photos- http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2102816&id=1466030811

Pichilamu: A Day in the Surf

2010-11-13T18:40:00.000-05:00

It's a beautiful warm sunny day in the surf town of Pichilamu, Chile. Jacob, a fellow NRA student and I are walking on the beach towards the ocean. When we notice the size of the waves we begin to run across the sand. Before we can put in however we must walk along the beach towards a huge rocky point. We walk quickly along the water searching for the 3 people who we know are already out in the water. We managed to spot Kira, our English teacher, and Wayne another student way out several hundred yards away from shore, so far away that they are just little specks bobbing up and down against the massive waves coming in. Our head coach Tino is just putting in on the point. We finally get to a spot that appears to be a manageable place to paddle through the large 5-8 foot waves coming in. We make it out and surf the waves close to shore before Jacob decides to go back in due to problems with his boat. After I watch him surf in and hop out of his boat I decide to attempt to paddle out to where Tino, Kira and Wayne are. A seemingly easy task yet in-fact it is a major undertaking. It takes me nearly 15 minutes to make it past the breaking waves close to shore and out to more open water where only the truly huge waves will hit you. After a long while of paddling towards the small specks in a massive whitewash that are Tino, Kira and Wayne. A Seal pops up only about 30 feet away. I keep paddling slightly nervously because of the seal. All of a sudden a set of huge waves comes in, I boof the first one just as it is about to crash and fall 6 or so feet off the back side. That was Sick!, I try to do the same to the next one, however the next one is a bit bigger and my timing is just a little bit off. I paddle up to it and prepare to boof when all of a sudden I notice that I'm too late and it is about to crash on me. “Ohh FU.......!!!” is what comes out of my mouth when this 8 foot wave crashes right onto my chest and picks me up and thrashes me for a good 15 seconds and 100 or so feet. After that, luckily the ocean flattens a slightly and no more waves crash on me. Though as I make my way closer to my friends I notice the Seal popping up consistently 15 feet behind me for at least 15 minutes during my paddle. After a long long journey I have finally made it to the BIG waves and my friends. I notice the Seal pops up 10 feet in front of me, however the seal no longer worries me as I see Tino come down the face of a MASSIVE 15 foot wave and hit one of the bigger clean aircrews I have seen. We spent a few hours here. The waves at least the size of school buses. It is out here you notice the real power of the ocean. I cannot begin to describe to you what it feels like to come down the face of a 14 foot ocean wave, nor can I describe the feeling of the ridiculous beat downs that are delivered every time you attempt to surf one of these magnificent waves. Though there are two moments that I can remember that may help to portray the feeling of these waves.

The first one involving a massive 14 foot wave and possibly the biggest pan am/ airscrew of my life, if at least the loudest. I catch this huge wave, Tino goes over the green to my left. I am surfing on the border between the foam and a ridiculous 12 foot green face on my left. I edge and through the biggest pan am I have the ability to through. If I could guess at what I thought the size of it was I would say there must have been 8 feet of air under my head. I land slightly edged but mostly flat on the hull of my boat and peel off the wave. The landing Hurt, it half knocked the breath out of me and I don't initially notice the apparent earsplitting slap my boat made when I landed, But as I peel off the wave I see Tino and he has an aw sort of face. I paddle up to him and he exclaims that he heard it from behind the wave. Which if you have ever been on the ocean in waves such as those, it is often tough to hear things over the sound of the waves.

The second one is of a moment during a severe thrashing of mine, once again in a huge 12 or 13 foot wave, this time in the foam pile. I am upside down with my bow pointed towards the beach being dragged on my face by the enormous wave. All of a sudden I open my eyes and notice the water and foam a good foot or so below me, I see it coming towards me extremely fast and close my eyes. I feel the water hit me in the chest and continued to get Destroyed.

After many surfs and horrendous beat downs Tino decides that we should go in, due to non of us having a watch and knowing what time it is. So we paddle in attempting to catch rides on every passing wave. After about 15 minutes we make it close to shore, Tino and Wayne surf in and hop out of their boats.(Kira having gone back in earlier.). I catch a good sized wave and as it crashes plug for a loop and get a ton of pop out of it and bring it around to smack my hull back onto the water and surf the rest of the way up onto the sand and jump out of my boat. We hike up to the sand marveling at the magnificent day we have all just had out on the surf of Pichilamu.

2010 Season Video

2010-11-13T17:20:00.004-05:00

Just a video I found that I made of the 2010 paddling season, totally forgot to post it up.

2010 Season Video 1 from Jordan Poffenberger on Vimeo.

The Maipo Valley

2010-11-11T14:40:00.001-05:00

This year I am attending New River Academy, a high school that travels around the world to paddle while at the same time being able to do school where ever we go. This Semester we are in Chile, the past 10 days I have spent in the beautiful Maipo valley an hour from the capital city of Santiago. For the first seven days we slept under small pavilion, some of us on the ground, others in tents, and a few of us(me) would hang hammocks up between the wooden columns that hold a tin roof above our heads. The camp ground “Cascades De Las Animas” is owned by our Spanish teachers family. It is an amazing place, surrounded by massive mountains and place right on the Maipo River. On one side of the river is the entire facility, wonderful wooded Campground, an awesome restaurant with live trees ticking out of it and the inside is all masterfully carved wood, a huge pool(though the water is frigid), a sauna, and a bunch of half built but beautiful cabins which will most likely be finished by the end of the year. On the other side of the river behind a locked gate at the edge of a bouncy wooden bridge there are the Estorga Family houses. They also hold a Mountain Lion, and two giant eagles in a cage, along with 150 horses and many other amazing things. We got a chance to take a hike up to our Spanish teachers house, it was about a ¼ mile hike up the side of a mountain to his ridiculous house. The craftsman ship that goes into these houses is superb. His house is made from stone and amazingly carved wood, and it is built around a massive boulder. From his house is an absolutely stunning view of the arid desert mountains and the single massive snow capped monster of a mountain in the distance.

Every day we wake up in the insanely cold morning are and have morning workout, which is either running, yoga, or arms and abs, which is pushups and ab exercises. Then we have breakfast and the first 3 classes. Then lunch time, and the next 4 classes. Finally, its paddling time. The first day we all paddled the lower Maipo, which is a sick class 3-4 super continuous run. It is nearly non stop he entire way, though there are no dangerous rapids. For the rest of the time we were allowed to choose whether we wanted to do the lower, or the much harder Upper Maipo. For the rest of our stay in the Maipo valley, I paddled the Upper Maipo everyday. The is much like the lower, except the smallest rapids on the upper are twice the size of the biggest on the lower. The entire river is like class 4, 6 mile long roller coaster ride of a rapid. Huge wave trains and large random holes, along with tons of super fun boofs placed every 20 feet is the trademark of the Upper Maipo. Right smack dab in the middle of the 6 mile run is a large class 5 rapid called the French Curve. The rapid involves a boof over a large hole into a extremely quick twisting rapid with a must make boof over a large curler. The consequences of not making it to the left side of the river is going into this massive curler in front of a massive boulder that feeds straight into a huge undercut.

We took a day off in an attempt to make it to the Thermas up in the mountains, but unfortunately did not make it due to rock slides across the roads. Instead we went the opposite direction up the Yeso river to check out some cool concentration camps of a old Chilean dictator and an awesome waterfall just across the road from it.

Here is a video from that day.

A Day in Chile from Jordan Poffenberger on Vimeo.

Now we have moved to Pichilamu, a sick little surf town on the pacific ocean. An update of this awesome town will come later once I have had some time to go kayaking and check out this sick place.

Spring Break

2010-04-13T16:27:00.019-04:00

Two weeks ago my friend Dylan Evans and I, along with my dad made a trip to the New River Gorge area. What would follow the 5 long hours of driving to get there would be 4 days of epic brown making.( Brown being a kayaking term not referring to poop ;)

Me and Dylan at Grist Mill falls in Babcock state park

Day 1(Sunday): Got up somewhat early, packed up and hit the road. 5 hours later we make it to the New River dries with an hour or two of day light left. We played around up top for a little then decided to venture down deeper into the gorge in search of better waves. Because it was at around 8 feet on the Gorge gauge there wasn't much up top but we found some sick waves downstream a ways just as it was getting dark at what I believe to be the Kahuna waves. Dylan Hiked out early but I decided to stay a little while because I was having a blast on the top wave. It was definitely one of the easiest waves to set up for a trick I have ever been on. Perfectly green I managed some really big air blunts and nice pan ams and I think one Mcflush. Sadly no pictures. After the treacherous hike out just as the light was completely fading from the sky, we got some dinner and found a hotel.

Day 2: We woke up around 9ish, stopped at the Biscuit World for some delicious breakfast biscuits and headed to the dries. The Dries were still at a bit of a low level so we decided to go and check out one of the creeks on our hit list. Due to the lack of a massive rainfall the night before we decided to be someone conservative and go with the creek that was most likely to be running. We drove about 30 or so minutes to Glade Creek AKA Upper Manns Creek, in Babcock State Park. It was a little low and bumpy, espescially Grist Mill falls which was a 13 foot waterfall that pretty much lands on a big flat rock slab, except for maybe a 2 foot wide slot. Which after running it twice before dylan and thought it was impossible, then ofcourse, finally, dylan, getting the guts to run it hits the line perfectly off the 2 inch deep lip and boofs the Sh%& out of it. The rest of the rapids, even though low and scrapy were pretty sick. There was a nice little 5 foot boof onto a kewl little rock slide. Then a neat double ledged drop totaling about 8-10 feet, a 2 footledgeslide to a 5-7 foot drop. Straight into a weird little manky rapid straight into a boof where 80 % of the water flows straight into an undercut rock and the other 20% lands on a rock. Dylan had 2 laps on it and I managed 3 on this .5 mile run.

Day 3: On day 3 we woke up and headed to the Dries again to check the level, a bit higher but we decided to give it some more time to rise some more. So we headed to nearby Mill Creek, which flows into the New River Gorge right above Hawk Nest Dam. Mill Creek was also pretty low, but we managed some sketchy lines down F*&^ Up falls and made it down some neat little slides and a few other smallish drops. We made it to Mill Creeky falls, spent about an hour clearing a log out but after we cleared the log out determined it to be to sketchy due to what appeared to be a very shallow landing. The possible deep spots were not very wide and it was obvious that there was very shallow(2-6 inchs under the surface) rocks pretty much everywhere around it. So we choose to just hop out there and head back to the dries.

Dylan Evans

F&*^ Up Falls

The Dries were at a near perfect level of 9.5 feet when we got there. Put in waves were SICK, we met Dave Fusilli there and threw down some seriously big tricks there. I managed to get some Big pan ams, blunts and a few blunt nastys. Definitly a sick day.

Day 4: This was our last day and the New had droped but we had checked the gauge of Glade creek and it looked higher than the first day we ran it so he just headed back there for a few more runs before heading back home.

Jordan P

New Year, New places to go.

2010-03-26T18:38:00.006-04:00

Sorry it's been such a long time since the last post. I hope to begin posting every other week.

Since January 1st, I've been up to quite a lot. For the most part untill March I have been sort of taking a little bit of time boating. I tried to get out to Ski Liberty as much as I could this winter for some snowboarding.
During March I got back into boating and have been hitting a few creeks here and there, includeing a possible first D on Marl Creek down near charlottesville VA. My friend Dylan and I have also managed to catch the gorge on the Potomac at 12 feet or 200,000 cubic feet per second. At that level the island between the chutes is completly underwater and creates a MASSIVE hole over 200 feet wide. The water level in the gorge is probably about 50 feet up the cliff walls compared to regular summer levels.

Last weekend was NAWFest(north alabama whitewater festival) which was definitly one of the sickest events I go to all year. The Huckfest, one of the main events at NAWF was an amazing specticle. It was too bad however due to land issues, no spectators were alowed. Though I managed to get a ton of video and will try to post some of it soon. The waterfall huckfest consists of two evens. The main one being the huckfest itself which consists of everyone trying to throw the craziest trick off the 14 foot waterfall, the second being a boatercross down the waterfall around a rock and behind the curtain of the waterfall and touch a rock on the other side.
I managed to get 2nd in the c-1 boatercross, Probably would have gotten first if I hadn't forgotten to go behind the curtaino the waterfall.
The next event I did was the Freestyle competition. I barly got second scraped out by Dane Jackson by about 10 points for the first place spot in the c-1 catagory.
They had a ton of other events including a mountain bike race , which they had some absolotely sick courses set up, a slalom race, a pro wakeboarder competion, and a rock climbing competetion. There was tons of free swag geting thrown, launched, or tossed all over the place. Overall definitly one of the best events I've ever been to.

Today is the first day of Spring break so I will be running loads of creeks in this nect week. Will post hopefully by the end of the week again.

Will also try to get some pictures and video up sooner rather than later.

Bye for now,
Jordan P

Center Chute Comes Back In!!

2009-12-12T19:13:00.004-05:00

For the first time since earlier this spring the potomac rose above 5 feet and one of the best waves on the potomac came back in. My dad, dylan, and myself decided to go hit it up despite the cold conditions. I was really the only one who was having much luck, the other two werent trying much because it was so cold out. I managed to hit a few pan ams, a bunch of blunts, one blunt-nasty( a blunt combined with a mcnasty, and a semi accidental blunt-airbackloop combo.

Heres a very short video, showing one of my pan ams, and the blunt-nasty. This video is also the start of a series of short videos called "A Moment Of Brown" by TP Productions.
Enjoy!

A Moment Of Brown from Jordan Poffenberger on Vimeo.

Season Video No. 1

2009-11-18T17:08:00.001-05:00

Summer Video No.1 from Jordan Poffenberger on Vimeo.

Gauley Double Marathon

2009-09-28T00:22:00.003-04:00

[ Upper Gauley (10 miles) + Middle Gauley (5 miles) + Lower Gauley (11 miles) ] x 2 = Gauley double marathon (52 miles)

THE WHY

I've wanted to do the Gauley double marathon ever since I heard that kids from the World Class Kayak Academy did it during the 2007 Gauley River Festival. When I tell people this, the response I usually get is "Why?" or "You're crazy." For them, a single marathon sounds bad enough, and a double marathon sounds like torture. But that's not the way I see it.

There's something really cool about running the whole river in one day. It gives you a different perspective. As boaters, we sometimes forget that the river sections described in our guide books (e.g. Upper, Middle, Lower) are arbitrary designations, and we talk about them as if they were completely different rivers. But that's not the case at all. The Gauley doesn't hit a dead end at Panther Creek, and it doesn't bubble up from nowhere at Bucklick. Every point on the river is connected. And if you do the Gauley marathon, it gives you a greater understanding (and appreciation) for the river as a whole.

I say the "whole river" with some reservations, because obviously the Gauley doesn't start at Summersville Dam. It starts many miles upstream on Gauley Mountain and picks up several tributaries that are interesting in their own right before reaching the dam. They are unaffected by the fall releases, so they're not included in the Gauley marathon. But if the dam wasn't there, I'd start higher up!

OK, so that explains why I'd want to do a single marathon, but why a double? That question is more difficult to answer, but I'll try.

For the whitewater. If I'm going to drive 5 hours each way, I want to get my money's worth. I want to run as many rapids as possible. 26 miles of whitewater is great, but 52 miles is even better. I think the Jackson Kayak crew has the same basic idea when they do an "all day play run." It's all about going home tired and happy.
For the challenge. I'd never paddled 52 miles in a day before, or even close to it. Could I do it? Was it possible?
For the novelty. When you run the Gauley every weekend in September it gets a little bland, and you start looking for ways to spice it up. I'd never run the Gauley in a long boat before, and I'd certainly never done twice from top to bottom, so the double marathon was a way to make the Gauley feel new again.
For the solitude. As everyone knows, Gauley Fest weekend is a circus. With the right mindset it can be a fun atmosphere, but boaters who enjoy the wilderness experience usually stay the hell away. However, I discovered that you can still find solitude on Gauley Fest weekend. You just have to work a little harder for it.

THE HOW

If I was serious about completing the double marathon, I had to do some research first. Here are some of the questions that I had:

When does the release start?
When does it end?
How long does it take the water to get from the dam to Bucklick?
How long does it take for the water to get from the dam to Swiss?
How long does it take to do a marathon in a long boat?
How long does it take to drive from Swiss to the dam?

Fortunately there are a lot of resources on the internet that helped me answer those questions. The Army Corps of Engineers posts the whitewater release schedule every year. Saturday releases are normally from 6AM - 2PM, but on Gauley Fest weekend the release ends at 3PM. That extra hour is crucial for the double marathon, as you will see. Chuck Brabec has written an excellent overview of Gauley River hydrology called Gauges 101 - The Gauley River. This is where I learned that it takes 3-4 hours for the water to reach Bucklick and 8 hours to reach Belva (which is about 4 miles downstream of Swiss). It usually takes me 5.5 to 6 hours to do the Gauley marathon in a playboat, but I'd never done it in a long boat before, so I asked some friends. They told me 4.5 hours was a good estimate. Finally, I got directions from Swiss to Summersville Dam on Google Maps, which told me the drive took 33 minutes.

With this information in hand, it was easy to determine that if the release started at 6AM and took 8 hours to reach Belva, it would get there around 2PM. And if it took 4.5 hours to do the marathon in a long boat, I couldn't start before 9 or 9:30 or I would catch the bubble. After finishing the first marathon around 2, I would have to quickly load my boat on the car and hightail it back to the dam before the water shut off at 3. Then I would paddle another 4.5 hours and take out between 7 and 7:30 (just before sunset). Getting the timing right was very tricky business. It was reassuring to know that the water never really turns off completely on Gauley release weekends; the Army Corps of Engineers releases 600-700 cfs overnight to prime the pump for the next day. But a double marathon on 600-700 cfs would go a lot slower than 2800 cfs, so I didn't want to miss the bubble.

As it turns out, the hardest part of the Gauley double marathon is setting the shuttle. Not many people do it (the kids at WCKA are the only ones I've heard of) so you'll probably have a hard time convincing your friends to join you. Nor do you want to impose on anyone by asking them to sacrifice their own festival plans to pick you up. Furthermore, it would be very difficult to hitch the shuttle -- even on a busy weekend like Gauley Fest -- because the first shuttle is so time sensitive and on the second you're trying to retrieve your car from the dam when everyone else is heading straight to the festival.

There are two ideal situations for setting the double marathon shuttle: either have a shuttle bunny, or have two cars and two friends willing to drop them off at Swiss on their way to running the Lower Gauley (that way you don't have to set shuttle at all and they don't have to go out of their way to help you). Billy Armstrong wanted to do the double marathon with me, so we drove down to the Gauley together. Our shuttle situation wasn't ideal, but we made it work. First, Jeff Kahn and Sean Devine gave us a big assist by dropping Billy's car off at Swiss for us. (Thanks guys!) That took care of shuttle #1. But we didn't have a second car, and we didn't have a shuttle bunny. We decided to wing it. If Billy wasn't feeling up to a second marathon, he'd run shuttle for me. And if he was feeling up to it, we'd try to hitch back. We both left changes of dry clothes at the festival in case we couldn't hitch back to the dam, and I brought my cell phone and some money which I could use to entice people to give us a ride.

THE FIRST MARATHON

We got off to a late start because of the delays that always go hand in hand with Gauley Fest. It was nothing major, just a minute here and a minute there. Billy saved us some time by running down the put-in road instead of waiting for the park ranger's shuttle, but we didn't put in until 9:39 AM. Once on the water, we made quick work of the warm-up rapids. A common misconception is that you have to paddle hard the whole way to do a Gauley marathon. That is not the case. All you have to do is stay in the current and pace yourself. It is generally a good idea to paddle the flatwater and rest in the rapids. But you don't have to sprint. In fact, you shouldn't sprint or you'll wear yourself out.

Below Pillow Rock Billy got out of his Dancer to adjust the outfitting because his feet were being rubbed raw by the foot pedals. I was sensitive to the lost time, but I knew that 4.5 hours was a long time to be uncomfortable, so it made sense to take care of it right then and there. Unfortunately that wasn't the end of it, and Billy had to adjust the outfitting again below Lost Paddle. In addition to the foot pedal problem, he was sliding around on the seat, which threw him off balance and made him feel out of control in the rapids. It was clear that he was getting frustrated with all the outfitting issues, because he's a great boater and he just wasn't himself in that boat. I was impressed by how he toughed it out and did everything he could to make the double marathon happen.

When we got to Panther Creek, we both knew that we were running behind schedule. In fact, we were so far behind that we were jeopardizing our chance to finish the double marathon. So we started paddling faster to make up for lost time. If we could make it from Panther Creek to Swiss in 2:45, we just might be able to pull it off. Somewhere in the Middle Gauley we crossed paths with Jason "Paris" Hilton and John "The Rudler" Rudland. It was John's bachelor party, and they were doing the marathon too. (Congrats John!) We told them what we were trying to do, and Jason told us, after looking at his watch, that we'd better hurry.

Shortly afterward, we pulled over at a beach to eat a quick snack and stretch our legs. I started peeing next to a rock, and jumped back when I realized that I was peeing on two coiled copperheads! They weren't very pleased with me.

The Lower Gauley went by in a blur. We kept passing people and passing people. We didn't stop anywhere. We saw people that we knew, and we shouted hi, but we didn't stop. After Diagonal Ledges the river was empty. We saw a boat floating upside down below Lower Stairstep with nobody in sight, so we pushed it to shore, drained it, and propped it up on a rock so the owner could find it. We saw two river boarders below Rooster Tail, and they were the last people we saw. We arrived at Swiss around 2:15. I don't know if we were the first people off the Lower Gauley, but it seemed like it.

Billy decided that he'd better not do the second marathon. He was coming off a shoulder injury and didn't want to reaggravate it. But he was happy to run the shuttle for me. As Billy drove me back to the dam, I devoured a banana and three peanut butter and honey sandwiches. Then I drank straight from a gallon water jug to rehydrate. We made it back to the dam by 2:50. I reloaded on granola bars and Gatorade. After agreeing on a rendezvous time, I headed down to the put-in and slid into the water. It was 2:56.

THE SECOND MARATHON

The second marathon was almost eerie. There I was, on Gauley Fest weekend -- the busiest weekend of the year -- and I was all alone. The river felt like a ghost town. Nobody was at the dam. No rafters, no kayakers, no rangers. It was quiet. All I could hear was the rushing of the water. Nobody was fiddling with their spray skirt at the put-in. Nobody was surfing the wave in the first rapid or hanging out in the eddy. Nobody was doing flatwater tricks in the first big pool. Nobody was warning the newbie in their group not to surf the wave at Initiation. Rafts weren't lining up like school buses. It was just me and the river.

With only a 4 minute head start, I knew that I had to keep paddling to stay on the bubble, so I just got into a rhythm and went. Left blade, right blade, left blade, right blade. Splash in the chest. Stay in the current. Left blade, right blade. When I got to Geek Wave, I saw Adam Johnson throwing down like it was nobody's business. He had it all to himself. I don't know who was more surprised to see who. I also don't know if he paddled out after me or just stayed there until the water was gone and hiked back to the put-in. I just nodded my head and kept paddling. When I looked back over my shoulder, he was throwing loop after loop after loop.

I didn't stop paddling or see another person until I reached Pillow. Luke Hopkins was standing on the rock, and there were a few other people as well. I was getting tired and sloppy, so I flipped in Pillow, which was a wake up call that I needed to pay more attention to what I was doing.

Paddling through the pool above Lost Paddle with nobody else around caused some anxiety. I feel very comfortable on all of the Gauley rapids -- including Lost Paddle -- but I was tired, alone, and worried what would happen if I flipped in 2nd drop, hit my head on the rock shelf, and lost consciousness. Talk about a worst case scenario! I eddied out on the right to catch my breath and to make sure I had a good line. It was probably the first eddy I caught on that second marathon. I was able to block out the bad thoughts and everything was fine.

A little later, I saw a guy portaging around Tumblehome. He was paddling a C-1 for the first time ever and had gotten his @$$ handed to many times that day. My hat's off to him, that takes cajones. I asked him if he was OK and he said yeah, his buddies were waiting for him below the rapid.

I passed a group at Iron Ring and another group at Sweet's. From there it was smooth sailing until Backender on the Middle Gauley with not a soul in sight. There I saw Kevin Vesely and crew. It was around 5:15 at this point. They had a car at the dam and a car at Wood's Ferry, but nothing at Swiss. They also had playboats and a guy with them who'd only paddled three times before. It sounded like they'd be getting off the river really late. I told Kevin we could probably take a driver back to the dam if he could make it to Swiss by 8 PM, which is when I was meeting Billy. But that was the last time I saw them. I heard the next day that they'd made it out alright.

From Koontz's Flume to the flatwater above Swiss I saw nobody else. Nobody. I had the whole river to myself. If you go outside of Gauley Season, that's what it's like. But on Gauley Fest weekend? That was amazing. I just kept chugging along, and made it to Swiss at 7:22. I walked over to the Church to see if they had any food left, but they'd been sold out for over an hour. So I stretched and I waited for Billy. Fatigue set in on the way to the festival. When we got there, I ate some more sandwiches, did one circuit around the festival grounds, and then crashed. Despite all the surrounding noise, I slept like a baby.

CONCLUSION

I don't know if the Gauley double marathon will ever catch on, but that's part of the allure. To paddle 52 miles, you have to really want it. That said, it is very doable, and I think it's worth doing -- even if it's just to get the river to yourself on a busy weekend. The only drawback is that you're too tired to really enjoy the festival on Saturday night (I was never much of a partyer anyway). The single marathon is a good way to train for it, and I see more and more people doing that every year.

Thanks to Jeff and Sean for setting our first shuttle, and special thanks to Billy for doing the first marathon with me and setting my shuttle for the second. You guys made it happen!

2009 Freestyle World Championships

2009-09-13T15:29:00.004-04:00

I just got back from the 2009 Freestyle kayak world championships in Thun, Switzerland. Thun is an amazing little city on the edge of the alps. The wave is made by the gates of a bridge dam that allows water into one of the two canals on the Aare river that passes through Thun. Even though the water is glacier melt from a massive glacier that you can see on the mountains practically overlooking Thun, the water is still about 65-70 degrees Fahrenheit, mostly because of the huge beautiful neon blue lake in between the glaciers and Thun where the water sits in the sun all day.

In the event itself there were over 250 competitiors from 30+ nations. The competition was held with 3-4 stages depending on how many people were in each class. For Men and Womens there were 4 stages, Prelims( 4 rides 2 count) Quarter Finals (3 rides 2 count) Semifinals( 2 rides 1 counts) and Finals ( 3 rides 1 counts). For the rest of the classes, c-1, junior men, oc1, and junior women, there were only Prelims, Semifinals, and Finals.
The results of the ICF 2009 Freestyle kayak World Championships are:

K1 Men
1 Troutman Nicholas 1.510,000Pts Final CAN
2 Jackson Eric 958,333Pts Final USA
3 Wright Stephen 790,000Pts Final USA
4 GALLAIS Jules 466,667 Final FRA
5 Kowalski Joel 410,000 Final CAN
6 Meyers Jonny 633,333 SemiFinal USA

C1
1 Bainbridge David 465,000 Final GBR
2 LaRue Guillaume 381,667 Final CAN
3 BESSEAU Alexandre 376,667 Final FRA
4 Hummel Markus 193,333 Final GER
5 Areta Odei 40,000 Final ESP
6 Jackson Dane 310,000 SemiFinal USA
13 Poffenberger Jordan 251,667 Prelims USA

K1 Women
1 Jackson Emily 553,333 Final USA
2 Gordon Ruth 348,333 Final CAN
3 Faux Tanya 340,000 Final AUS
4 SAETHER MARIANN 263,333 Final NOR
5 Wegman Martina 160,000 Final NLD

K1 Junior Men
1 Craig Jason 873,333 Final USA
2 Jackson Dane 670,000 Final USA
3 DEVRED Sebastien 640,000 Final FRA
4 Fontane Joaquim 560,000 Final ESP
5 Rowlinson James 493,333 Final AUS

K1 Junior Women
1 Newman Nouria 400,000 Final FRA
2 Hornhardt Sandrina 50,000 Final GER
3 Häberling Leoni 33,333 Final SUI

OC1
1 Laucks Jeremy 115,000 Final USA
2 Pätsch Stephan 90,000 Final GER
3 Areta Odei 25,000 Final ESP

K1 Squirt Men
1 Reeves James 127 Finals GBR
2 Toru Ishihara 93,33 Finals JPN
3 Laucks Jeremy 88 Finals USA

K1 Squirt Women
1 O'Hara Claire 80,23 Finals GBR
2 Runciman Emma 47,6 Finals GBR
3 BERTRAND VALERIE 46 Finals NOR
(for full results go to http://playak.com/article.php?sid=1448 )

Here is a short video I made of Worlds, I hope to make a few more because I have over 1000 minutes of video and I don't feel 3 minutes is enough to show even a little of Thun. Enjoy!
(Turn on HD for much better video quality)

Worlds Video No. 1 from Jordan Poffenberger on Vimeo.

Labor Day Weekend at the Upper Yough

2009-09-08T22:40:00.041-04:00

This past weekend I ran the Upper Yough with Katy, Bion, Ally, Dan, and Jim. The weather was perfect and the river wasn't very crowded because a lot of people went to the Beaver and Raquette releases in New York. Below are some pictures of our run.

Bion boofing Bastard	Katy boofing Bastard
Katy paddling the runout in Bastard	Dan running a narrow slot in Charlie's
Katy lining up for the Mushroom Cloud	Katy running the Mushroom Cloud
Bion running the Crack at Triple Drop	Dan boofing National Falls
Ally running National	Jim running National

There wasn't a release on Sunday, so Katy and I hiked into the Upper Yough to see what it looks like at low water. Needless to say, it looks a lot different! On our way out we removed the log in the river right slot of Triple Drop, which has been the scene of at least two close calls this summer. Now Gauley season is upon us. Be safe out there!

Charlie's Choice from above	Charlie's Choice from below
Mel's Toilet Bowl	The Crack at Triple Drop from below
Triple Drop from above	The log we removed from Triple Drop
National Falls at 57 cfs	A field of sunflowers in McHenry

Potomac Fest 2009

2009-08-07T10:10:00.004-04:00

The 2009 Potomac Whitewater Festival was a great success. Team Potomac Paddlesports eagerly participated in numerous events and helped with coordination, setup and cleanup. Below are descriptions from each of the major events we took part in.

Great Falls Race

The Great Falls Race was held on the Virginia Lines for the first time since 1993. We were blessed with relatively cool weather (for DC in July) and blue skies. As always the race had a great turnout and it was one of the closest races ever, with only twelve hundredths of a second separating 1st place from 3rd. Jason Beakes eked out a win with a time of 51.85 seconds in the finals and Geoff Calhoun won the short boat class in 57.37 seconds. All the big dogs (and many of the smaller ones) were firing up the super-fast (and photogenic) right line at the Spout. Team Potomac Paddlesports eagerly joined the large group of competitors. Jordan rocked the C1 class, beating out Seth Chapelle for first place, after just having run the Spout for the first time the night before. Maggie once again represented as the only female racer. Scott and Pete held there own, both finishing in the top ten in the short boat class. Scott also held the distinction of being the only racer to run the center line on the Spout. Cherie wisely chose to save Falls racing for her 2nd full year of paddling but plans on giving Maggie a run for her money next year! Congratulations to all racers and special thanks for Tom, Nathan, and all those who organized the race and vigilantly set safety to ensure everything went smoothly. For complete results and photos, visit the Potomac Fest website.

Scott firing up the center line on the Spout, photo: Thilo Rusche

Pete boofing bottom of U-hole, photo: Maggie Snowel

Maggie heading into S-Turn, photo: Jeff Smith

Jordan conquers the Spout, photo: Thilo Rusche

Community Gorge Paddle

After the Falls race Scott headed down to Sandy Beach to coordinate the Community Gorge Paddle. The turnout was great, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 participants. Ed Ruiz convinced 17 of his closest friends to come dressed as cows, which was truly a sight to behold! After handing out the costume prizes (you HAVE to see Gilligan and the U.S.S. Minnow!) we paddled down Mather Gorge as a group, stopping to do a kayak boom run, squeeze 8 people onto a Dagger Green Boat, play a massive game of kayak basketball (cows vs. everyone else), and hold a sunken boat race through Maryland Chute. It was quite possibly the best Community Gorge Paddle ever!

Following the Community Gorge Paddle Scott held an "Eddy line Play" clinic for a few adventurous souls. They practiced stern squirts for a while, and then filled their boats with water and practiced stern stalling. There were some wide eyes at first, but everyone had a blast.

Boatercross

The boatercross was held Sunday afternoon. Normally people don't show up because it's the last event of the weekend and everyone is tired, but this year 24 people found the energy to compete, and it's a good thing they did, because this year's boatercross was awesome. The first round was held in the Feeder Canal, with a devilish course devised by volunteer extraordinaire Emily Cohn to test the competitors' mental acuity as well as their stamina: all even gates between #2 and #14, plus an unnumbered upstream gate between #6 and #8 and another upstream gate at #9 (which wasn't red). After narrowing down the field, the second round was held in Z-Channel, with two beach ball buoys and a tight turn around the rock at the bottom. The finals were held in Little Falls, with a very challenging course that forced competitors to run a steep chute into the big river right eddy, ferry out, split the island and Meatcleaver rock, and punch the big hole at the bottom. In the end, it was Jeremy Laucks, Steve Graybill, and Collin Swan finishing 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

A big thanks goes out to Scott for coordinating the Community Paddle and the Eddy line clinic and to Cherie for doing a fabulous job of coordinating registration and the silent auction!

~ Team Potomac Paddlesports

A Colorado Tour Review

2009-07-04T13:40:00.008-04:00

My Colorado Tour started out May 13th, 32 hours of driving later and we reached Denver Colorado. We kept on driving past Denver to reach Glenwood Colorado the location for the 2009 USA Freestyle Team Trials. I spent a week training there and then went back to a little town on the outskirts of Denver for the annual Golden Community Rodeo, the goes on once a week for 4 weeks starting in the middle of May. Then over to Beuna Vista for the BV Pro rodeo, which I placed 10th in the Men's Pro k-1 class. Then back to Glenwood for a week of training before Team Trials. I managed to secure 2nd place and a spot on the USA Freestyle Team. Then we went to Vail for Teva Games, probably one of the largest paddling events in the world. Then after that we drove to lyons for lyons fest, and after that over to Salida to begin training for FIbark. Also securing 2nd at Fibark we then went to our last competition, the Gunnison River Fest, managing to grab 4th place in the Men's Pro K-1 Division. After a quick stop at the M-wave, 2 days of driving later, back at home on July 1st.

Colorado was definitly an awesoume trip this year, I got to meet many really cool new people. I definitly have a few people to thank for helping us out during this trip, including Gary Mullins, Elain and Jeff Cambell, Johhny Meyers and Lief Anderson. There was alot of ups and downs but overall the trip was a sweet deal, ran lots of new creeks like Oh be joyful, homestake, and South Boulder Creek. And learned a bunch of new tricks like the Blunt-nasty and clean pan ams.

Heres a short video on some of the creeks and places I got to go in Colorado, Enjoy!

Colorado Tour Video from Jordan Poffenberger on Vimeo.

US Team Trials

2009-06-12T13:19:00.002-04:00

May 30th-31st was the USA Freestyle Team Trials to pick the paddlers that will represent the US in Thun, Switzerland for Freestyle World Championships.
Here are the Results:

Competition Results Sunday May 31st

Adult Men's FINALS
Place Bib # Name Score
1 7 Bryan Kirk 910.00
2 27 Stephen Wright 820.00
3 9 Jonny Meyers 445.00
4 36 Chris Stafford 300.00
5 59 Rush Sturges 125.00

Adult Women's FINALS
Place Bib # Name Score
1 30 Emily Jackson 175.00
2 88 Adriene Levknecht 85.00
3 53 Elaine Campbell 75.00
4 92 Jessie Stone 60.00
5 50 Devon Barker 50.00
6 83 Lauren Burress 35.00

Junior Men's FINALS
Place Bib # Name Score
1 81 Jason Craig 655.00
2 6 Dane Jackson 475.00
3 76 Michael Palmer "LP" 445.00
4 22 Quinn Connell 290.00
5 39 Isaac Holden 160.00

Junior Women's FINALS
Place Bib # Name Score
1 93 Tracy D'Arbeloff 30.00
2 75 Emery Tillman 20.00
3 48 Hannah Kertesz 15.00

C1 FINALS
Place Bib # Name Score
1 6 Dane Jackson 650.00
2 92 Jordan Poffenberg 330.00
3 43 Jeremy Laucks 175.00
4 77 Eric Jackson 40.00

I am still on tour in Colorado and will post lots of pictures and video when I get back in about 2 weeks.

Red Creek ELF Run - June 6, 2009

2009-06-10T20:37:00.026-04:00

Each time I run Red Creek I tell myself that I'll never run it that low again, and each time I run it lower. Last weekend I ran it at the lowest level yet with Sean Devine, Bobby Miller, Seth Chapelle, and Jeff Wolfram. Despite having virtually no water, the creek was still remarkably enjoyable.

Red Creek drains the Dolly Sods Wilderness of West Virginia and is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. I still remember hiking into the creek for the first time in October 2006, when the fall colors were at their peak and I felt like I was walking through a gumball machine. Last year I caught it during blueberry season and gorged myself on the way in. Basically whenever you go to Red Creek it's a special occasion. This time we had 75 degree weather and sunny skies, which made the lack of water less bothersome.

Sean Devine on the 2.2 mile hike into Red Creek via the Blackbird Knob trail.

Sean and Seth at the put-in. You can see a rock dam that hikers have built to aid stream crossings.

Seth on the first big rapid, Super Slide.

Bobby running the Clapper, a 15 foot waterfall onto a rock slab. The rest of us walked it to save our boats from unnecessary abuse.

Seth and Sean airing out the boof at Improvement #2. This rapid used to be a mandatory portage until a hurricane rearranged the boulders in 2003. Now it's one of the best boofs in WV!

Bobby running the Devil's Cauldron (aka Mood Ring). He put together a cool video of the creek, which you can watch here.

After grabbing a delicious meal at Hellbender's in Davis, we bumped into Louis Geltman as he was biking the Upper Blackwater shuttle. He and Andrew McEwan had just run it at around 700 cfs. Yikes! We camped at the North Fork and joined them for another lap on the Upper B the next morning before heading back to DC. It was a great weekend in West Virginia (as usual)!

Colorado Trip Week 1 & 2

2009-05-30T23:16:00.002-04:00

For the first 5 days in Colorado I spent all my time in Glenwood Springs training for the US freestyle team trials. Most Potomac locals have been on center chute wave, Glenwood is like center chute wave and a half as far as speed and size.

After that we headed down to Golden for a small competition that is part of the Golden Comunity rodeo. I placed 1st in juniors and 3rd highest overall score in the entire competition.

Then a few of my friends wanted to run a creek called South Boulder Creek. South Boulder is 7 miles of class 4 continous whitewater with 4 class 5s and one log portage. The first class 5 drop was called Moist Slot, it looked plenty easy but after seeing one of my friends swim right on top of a dangerous sieve i decided to walk it. The next big drop was a very sketchy V+ drop that looked kind of like Puke on the Upper Blackwater in WV. We decided to walk it. The third drop, called Bridge drop, was a bit manky in the middle and looked like it has a flipper hole right above the mank, I decided to walk that aswell. The Forth Drop was a 30 foot dam drop. The first guy styled it and everyone was pretty pumped to run it, then the secound guy runs it, gets worked in the hole and swims and Colorado whitewater does not stop, we chased the boat down about a mile until it got pinned. We did manage to get everything and no one was hurt, but no one ran the dam after that. A few more miles of boogie water and we were at the take out.

Next we went down to Beuna Vista for the BV Pro rodeo, first they put me in with the juniors because there wasnt enough c-1ers to make a class, then there wasnt enough juniors to make a class so they stuck us in with the mens pro. There were about 20 competitors and I managed to secure 10th place.

Now im back in glenwood training for the US freestyle team trials which is just in a few days, sorry for the lack of pictures, I will report back after team trials with the results.
Time to go Paddling!

Biscuit Testing Video

2009-05-11T12:34:00.001-04:00

Biscuit Video from Jordan Poffenberger on Vimeo.

A video of my first few weeks in the Biscuit 45
Enjoy!

Beautiful Day...Big Splat

2009-05-10T15:13:00.005-04:00

HOLLA! I am posting on behalf of Pete as he is off running the Grand Canyon for the 2nd time... if only we were all so lucky!

I joined Cherie, Trope, and Stacy for a day on the Big Sandy River in West Virginia. It is such a great run that it has become a classic run, and one of my favorites. Big splat is a pretty challenging triple drop combination with some significant risk to it. I had never run the triple combination before, only running the last drop by itself. (Its amazing what one can do for the camera.) After my first run fright of finding myself perilously to far left, I was pretty psyched to make a really nice second run. Thanks to Trope and Cherie for shooting the video.

Cheers ~ Pete

Pete's 1st Run

Pete's 2nd Run

Pete...Putting it All Together

2009-04-29T15:40:00.002-04:00

Let It Rain...

2009-04-29T14:57:00.002-04:00

Hey Y'All-

The rain has been falling and the weather has finally turned so this past weekend I headed to West Virginia. I met up with fellow team member and Potomac Paddlesports Instructor "Professional" Pete Morey and some other friends and set out for laps on the Lower Big Sandy. The LBS is a gem of a creek and the day could not have been more perfect- 75 degrees and sunny! I was pretty excited about the opportunity to paddle with Pete and to spend some on-water-time with the man behind the legend. Pete is not only a super talented paddler but also extremely skilled and technically proficient at analyzing both the water and the paddler. Wonder Falls is extremely straight forward and easy to access making it the perfect drop to analyze and work on boofing technique. Check out the video below; definitely not my best boof, put with Pete's feedback I know exactly what I need to work on!

Approach - speed is not as important as one may think; stay a little ahead of the speed of the water and focus on timing..
The Stroke - the boof stroke is a vertical stroke but is not a forward stroke. If you look at my top hand in the video you will see that it is significantly in front of my body- this is NOT necessary for this drop. Bringing my hand closer to my body will allow me to use my paddle more effectively in launching my boat by acting as a pivot point.
Stroke Placement - although my paddle is in the right place I don't actually do anything with it in this video. I am not grabbing the water but rather turning a forward stroke into a draw stroke. Working on keeping my lower hand in the "power alley" will lead to a more effective boof.
Body Position - Reaching for the stroke moves your weight forward and prevents you from falling into the backseat when thrusting your hips forward. In addition, unwind your body in the opposite direction of your boof stroke.
Check out Pete putting it all together...

The Maryland Chute-Out

2009-04-27T17:59:00.006-04:00

Looks like MD Chute-out will be held at Center Chute ledge.

Registration will be from 4:30-5:30 at anglers inn parking lot.

The MD Chute-Out is a very fun, very low key freestyle competition. It's free and any one can come. It's also a great way to get to know paddlers in the community and hone your freestyle skillz. You don't have to be an amazing freestyle paddler to win prizes either, after each competition there's a raffle and many awesome prizes are given away.

The competition is held on the last Thursday of every month April-September. The next chute-out is this Thursday, April 30th. Registration is in the parking lot 4:30-5:30 and the competition begins at 6. Feel free to show up and register at the hole.

Come back Wednesday night or Thursday morning to check where the MD chute-out will be held this month or check http://www.boatertalk.com/forum/BoaterTalk

NC/WV trip video

2009-04-15T15:31:00.003-04:00

NC/WV trip video from Jordan Poffenberger on Vimeo.

Just a little video of what I've been doing for the past month.

Enjoy!

Junior Team Trials

2009-04-12T17:30:00.003-04:00

Junior Team Trials

This past weekend was the USA Junior Team Trials for Slalom. Kids froma all around the country showed up to try and make it onto the US junior team. Inorder to make it on the junior team the competitiors had to come with in 20% of the top racers time. The Junior team trials was held at the Nantahala, April 4-5. Here are the results.

K-1W

1-Kate Lewkowicz

2-Hailey Thompson

3-Chelsea Bornemann

K-1

1-Michal Smolen

2-Petter Lutter (Local)

3-Nick Wilkening

4-Simon Ranagan(Local)

5- William Farmer

C-1

1- Bug Lokken

2- Tyler Hinton

3- Liam Malakoff(Local)

4- (yours truely) Jordan Poffenberger(Local)

C-1W

1-Hailey Thompson

2-Rebecca Moore

3- Chelsea Bornemann

And congratulations Petter Lutter and Simon Ranagan for representing the Potomac on the US Junior Team.

(will post pics later)

Webster Springs Festival '09

2009-04-07T23:18:00.013-04:00

Last weekend I went to the Webster Springs Festival, an annual event that is held in the mountains of West Virginia. It's always lots of fun. The main attractions are the "Fruitbasket" rivers: the Cranberry, the Cherry, and the Williams (nevermind that the Williams isn't a fruit). This year we got some rain and I was able to catch the Back Fork of the Elk for the first time. It starts out on Sugar Creek for a quarter mile, then joins the Back Fork and floats along lazily for a while before getting down to business. The meat of the run is the "Three Falls" section, which consists of six ledges ranging in height from 4-12 feet. I ran each of these three or four times because I didn't know when I'd get another chance!

I'm thankful to have met up with such a great group of people to boat with. I didn't know any of them before the weekend began, but spending a beautiful sunny day on a great river is a sure way to make friends. Below are some photos from the weekend for your viewing pleasure.

Scouting the biggest ledge on the Back Fork of the Elk	Craig running the ledge
John	Katy
Steve	Joel
Jim	Joel bow stalling in the pool below

Group strainer, er, photo. Left to right: Joel, ???, Steve, Katy, Joel, John, Craig, Jim, ???

On the way home we caught Wills Creek outside of Cumberland, which was another first for me. I didn't take any photos because we bombed down it, but the continuous III-IV whitewater had me smiling from ear to ear. All in all it was a great weekend!

Sandy Beach Graffitti Removal

2009-03-29T21:20:00.001-04:00

A few months ago I noticed that someone had spray painted a giant pot leaf on the rocks at Sandy Beach. Now, I can appreciate graffiti on a bridge abutment or a highway overpass, but NOT in a national park -- especially when I see it almost every day. Sandy Beach is a river access point for boaters running both Great Falls and Mather Gorge, so we have a particular responsibility to keep it clean. I decided to organize a graffiti removal effort.

I spoke with Dan Filer, the volunteer coordinator for the C&O Canal NHP, and he enthusiastically supported the idea. Because the graffiti was so close to the river, we agreed not to use chemicals. I mean, we're trying to clean up the river, not pollute it some more, right? That meant we had to use wire brushes and elbow grease. Undeterred, twelve brave volunteers showed up on the morning of Saturday, March 21 to do battle with the graffiti.

For four hours we scrubbed, and scraped, and scratched, and shouted obscenities at the graffiti. We poured water and then sand on it, hoping it would act as an abrasive. It was slow going, but we made some progress. And it was actually pretty fun, thanks to the continuous banter of the volunteers! Finally we grew tired, and decided tha we had made as much progress as we were going to that day. It was time to step back and rethink our strategy.

The graffiti is still there. It's significantly duller, and worn away in places, but it's still there. We're looking into other ways to remove the graffiti besides wire brushes. So stay tuned... the graffiti removal effort is only just beginning!

* Thanks to Dan Filer, Dan LaFrance, Kyle Anderson, and everyone at the NPS who helped me organize the clean up and provided us with tools.

* Thanks to Craig Campbell and Maggie Snowel for taking photos.

* Thanks to Grayson Taff and Tom Veratti for providing refreshments.

*And most of all, thanks to all the volunteers who showed up on Saturday morning to help with the clean up: Craig Campbell, Nancy Fechnay, Bion Kim, Dan MacGuire, David Ritchie, Jen Sass, Jerry Stezer, Grayson Taff, Tom Veratti, and Bob (sorry, I didn't catch your last name), as well as Team Potomac Paddlesports members Jason Beakes and Maggie Snowel.

~Scott

There it is	Getting started

Washing off the residue... starting to look better	Showing off how green my brush is getting...clearly progress is being made



	David making great progress

Graffiti Removal Gallery

Graffitti removal at Sandy Beach by Maggie Snowel

Team Potomac Paddlesports and a wonderful group of volunteers help remove graffitti at Sandy Beach

NAWFest/Occoe/Duke's creek/Chattooga section 4

2009-03-26T18:52:00.034-04:00

NAWFest
Thursday 19- Saturday 21

(Photo- Rob Beckman)

To start the boating season with a bang, my dad and I decided to go down to the North Alabama Whitewater fest down in, well, Northern Alabama. The festival started off with a little freestyle competition over a 15-20 foot waterfall on short creek. After 20 runs (at least 14 of them landing flat, and 4 of them flat on my head) I had a very sore back, though still very satisfied. Then there was supposed to be a boater cross, though due to some land owner issues and some people parking where they weren't supposed to, we were made to walk out prematurely.
--------
Saturday was the Freestyle competitions at king's bend on the Locust fork of the Warrior river. The c-1 class was made up of 3 people, me, dane jackson, and this sick open boater named dooley ( I think). Dane coming in first, second went to myself, and third going to dooley.
--------
Here's a bunch of pictures, all taken by Ned P, enjoy!

Ocoee
Sunday 22

After driving all night from NAWfest to Greg Garrard's sweet cabin in the northern Georgia mountains we slept in still about 11 and then headed out to the Ocoee. I managed to convince Greg to take my dads c-1 fluid flirt down the Ocoee ( my dad had a bit of a stomach ache so he didn't feel like paddling). Greg makes it all the way down the river with only one swim ( which is pretty amazing). He even managed to get a nice surf on hell hole! Give it up for this guy! This is his 5th time in a c-1!

Duke's Creek

Monday 23

After a long weekend and a super fun day on the Ocoee Greg, my dad, and myself decided to take a rest day and go check out this sick creek. Duke's creek is this beautiful little gem in the Georgia Appalachian mountains. The run is only about half a mile long though drops nearly as much as it runs. The crux section is probably about a 45 degree angle. This is also one of the few creeks that is runnable with 30 cfs. Based on what I saw 100 cfs would make this creek nearly unrunable. Maybe in a few months.

Chattooga Section 4
Tuesday 24

After a nice restful day of hiking/scouting the class 5 gnar Greg Garrard and myself decided to go hit the chattooga for some sweet southern creekin'. This was an amazing run with beautiful crystal clear water and some sick little drops. Greg was an Awesoume guide and kept me from doing anything stupid. Though probably the major adrenaline boost of the day is when a goose decided to dive bomb us and continue to either attack us or dive bomb us for about 500 yards. We also got to see some very large trout at the bottom of the run, so I guess we're bringin our fishing rods next time. After a long day of paddle who would not want a bacon cheeseburger pizza at a sweet Italian place about 15 minutes away from the river.

Fayetteville fun

2009-03-22T09:09:00.004-04:00

Last Monday I woke up thinking I would clean my place, do my taxes and do an attainment workout on the Potomac at a ho hum level. Boy was I wrong!

By chance I looked at Waterwatch and saw that rivers were rising in Southern WV. A call to Bryan Kirk confirmed this so i dropped everything, threw my gear in the van and began driving South. 5 and a half hours and 2 Red Bulls later I met Bryan Kirk and Kelsey Thompson at the Lower Meadow put in. It was almost dusk, the level was perfect and we fired it up. As soon as we dropped into that beautiful gorge and started bombing through must make moves, all thoughts of the DC area and petty responsibilities were replaced with gratitude and moment to moment awareness.

Tuesday was even better! Mann's Creek at a perfect level with an amazing crew and 70 degrees! Check out Bryan's trip report and spectacular photos: http://www.doubleyouess.com/currentNews.php?news_id=392

Wednesday brought fantastic levels on the New river Dries, one of the world's best playboating runs. A few hours of big water play on the New left us all tired , happy and grateful for the paddling life.

Check in again soon for video from this mission!

SYOTR

Jason

Impacts and Remediation Methods of Acid Mine Drainage

2009-03-06T20:13:00.001-05:00

AMD in Red Mountain Creek, CO

At some point, most paddlers have come across one of the greatest threats to our nation's streams: Acid Mine Drainage. Paddling on many of West Virginia's creeks and rivers the effects become quite evident. The Cheat River watershed is especially affected.Acid Mine Drainage is a mixture of sulfuric acid, ferric compounds, and other heavy metals. It degrades water quality tremendously, posing severe threats to aquatic life, surrounding ecosystems, and humans. It results from the oxidation of pyrite during the mining process. I did a research paper on AMD for one of my first Environmental Management classes. The abstract is below followed by a link to the full text of the paper for those interested in learning more about this devastating phenomenon. A synopsis of AMD in the Cheat watershed follows.

ABSTRACT: One of the most significant land management issues facing the U.S today deals with hundreds of years of abandoned mines. Prospecting for coal, gold, silver, nickel, and other precious metals has left many regions of the nation literally littered with abandoned mines. These sites that once held the riches of a thriving nation now leave behind a legacy of destruction. Thousands of miles of streams are polluted with acidic mine waters that drain from these mines, bringing with them high levels of heavy metals and acids. These substances are highly toxic to aquatic life leaving many streams entirely devoid of life. Surrounding ecosystems are thus also highly affected; acid mine waters can leave behind tree-less, lifeless moonscapes. The ecological and public health impacts of acid mine drainage and its affect on recreational activities are discussed here. An overview of historic mining practices, legislation, and remediation methods are also studied. Successful remediation projects on key river reaches are examined.

Click here for a link to the full text:

Impacts and Remediation Methods of Acid Mine Drainage

(If you'd prefer a pdf version let me know and I'll email it)

Helmet Cam Video

2009-03-04T19:14:00.002-05:00

Hey everyone, for some reason with 5-8 inchs of snow on the ground me and Jason Beakes decided to go hit up the falls. This was a perfect chance to test out my idea of duct taping a waterproof camera to my helmet. I must warn you though, if you have motion sickness, this is probably not the best video to be watching. Enjoy!

Helmet Cam Video from Jordan Poffenberger on Vimeo.

Spanking the Monkey on Valentines Day

2009-02-20T22:12:00.010-05:00

Photos by Eric Orenstein

No. It's not what you think, I swear! I'm talking about Bitch Monkey, a notorious drop on the Fishladder section of Great Falls. On Valentines Day Bryan Kirk and I decided it was finally time to give this line a shot. This drop is rarely run. I've heard about Two instances of people being shoved off of it unintentionally while running the normal Fishladder line. The crash landings that occured hadn't made this drop seem very enticing to the local Falls boaters. I love this drop! It's probably the most technically demanding move on Great Falls, and you definitely don't want to screw up the landing, It's full of sharp rocks . From now on I plan on spanking the Bitch Monkey on a regular basis!

SYOTR

Jason

First Time Fun at the Fish Ladder

2009-02-14T12:00:00.012-05:00

I can still remember when I first started paddling and was doing Cheat Training with Tom McEwan; for those of you who are not familiar with Cheat Training it involves weekly attains and down river workouts. I had only been paddling for a few months and was having trouble making the elevator move at the top hole of center chute. In addition to the other attainers there were also quite a few people play boating as well. After a few missed attempts my frustration and embarrassment were building when a young C-1er gave me some pointers and encouragement. On my next attempt I messed up my entrance and completely missed the spot I was aiming for in order to the make the required move. The young man and his father, also in a C-1, encouraged me to go right back at it and finally I made the attain. Almost a year later I now have the privilege of paddling with Jordan as a member of Team PPS and this past weekend Jordan showed me down the fish ladder for the first time. I guess the point of this story is that I can still remember what it felt like to be a beginner paddler on the Potomac River. I was so grateful for the advice and support I received from time-to-time even if it was from a complete stranger. I am a better paddler because of it. So if you are a more advanced paddler and you see someone struggling don't be afraid to speak-up. If the person prefers not to listen that is up to them! Bottom line...beginner, advanced, or expert- we can all be supportive of one another. I mean after all that is what community is all about. Here are some pics of my fist time down the fish ladder...Enjoy!

Jordan P and I...TEAMWORK...

Lining Up the 2nd Slide... Dropping In...

Pushing Through...

The 3rd Slide... In the thick of it...

Jordan Leading the Way Down the 4th Slide...

Charging the Hole... Punching It...

Following Jordan's Lead Down the 5th Slide.....

Photos by Ned Poffenberger

2009-02-09T19:37:00.001-05:00

Think Rain - A Video for Maggie from Craig Campbell

For my birthday Craig put this great video together for me. Seeing as how all i'll be doing for the next couple of weeks (I broke a bone in my foot) is watching it rather than actually paddling, i thought ya'll may as well too! Enjoy.

~Maggie

it's a revolution! a few words on Vibram 5 Fingers. yip! yip!

2009-02-07T01:04:00.001-05:00

"hey you, flatfoot!"

my tale starts about 4 months ago when I rolled into PPS 2 days before leaving for Nepal and unable to find my river booties anywhere... so shop-master Scott suggested a pair of Vibram 5 Fingers. they were the only thing the shop had in my size, and well, you know, beggars can't be choosers.

so here i am, 4 months into my relationship with my Vibrams. despite feeling like an 'arranged marraige' (barf) i love the damn things like a fat kid loves cake. like hot kids love kool-aid. like beetles love poo. i loooove them.

we'll start my dispelling the myth that 5 Fingers are river shoes. they're not. they're a hybrid type do-whatever-the-mmmm-you-want-in-me shoes. after getting back from Chile I was working in the shop for a bit and I can tell you that these things sell like hotcakes. especially with runners. you'd be surprised how much traffic these shoes brought to the shop--PPS is one of the only retailers in the WDC metro area.

the Vibram niche has got its own culture almost... like people who have green homes, iPods and networks. they're chic. i've noticed that having the Vibrams seems to elicit a certain 'instant approval' from some people. haha, and vice versa, i find myself judging other people by how they comment on my shoes. people who say "whoaaa rad shoes!" rate much higher than those who say things like "those are weird". bo-nus.

sooo the gist behind 5 Fingers is that it's just like being barefoot, all the time, without the feet-mank. there have also been a few articles out and about that suggest the 'barefoot phenomena' is better for us in the long run (no pun intended); that walking barefoot as we were born to could help avoid ACL tears and hip problems. I'm no expert, but I found this article pretty insightful.

baby Jake Holland, aka Cupcake, experiences the miracle in Nepal. getting the toes in their sockets eludes him at first.

fear not, he conquers the situation. nice legs, Cupcake! ow ow, ladies he's still on the market.

so back to the versatility point. that's the best thing about these shoes. they're my only river booties while traveling, and while I definitely wouldn't suggest them for expedition kayaking, they'll do the job anyway. i put the things through trekking in the Himalayas to Class V portages and they've done pretty well. they're also not so bad for climbing. and great for running, as we mentioned earlier.

doing a little climby climby outside Queenstown. Photo by Billy Powell

alright i think that about sums up my brief and hopefully-helpful synopsis of the Vibram Five Finger phenom. if you're into funky fresh gear that does it all then these are a must-have.

one more piece of advice... if you do get yourself a pair, break them in slowly, your feet will need a bit of time to adjust.

catch yinz on the flipside!

Great Falls: Streamers for the first time

2009-02-06T20:56:00.004-05:00

Today, Geoff Calhoun, Nathan Sass, and myself got out to the falls for a nice chill run down the falls. Me being a righty c-1 I decided to skip Grace today, and just run the ledges and the streamers. So we got down to the falls, I hopped out to walk around Grace and put in at the bottom, while the other two ran grace. Popped down the ledges and sat above the index finger waiting for Geoff to get out his camera. Overcoming the butterflies I managed to shove myself off the lip. It was definitely worth it!

After that I went up took video of Geoff and Sass runing the VA lines, then watched them run the MD lines as well. Geoff came back up for one last run and we came rolling down over the fingers and down around the bend to the take out. It was starting to get dark but we decided to go do a quick run of fishladder and hopped out just below the 4th slide. All in a days fun.

Here's some pictures from today, all taken by Ned Poffenberger

Great Falls on a snowy day

2009-02-04T23:18:00.010-05:00

Running the crack in the Diesel 80

Last week I took out the new Wavesport Diesel 80 for a spin on Great Falls. I wanted to see if the production model was as good as the prototype I’ve been paddling for the past few months. The Diesel 80 is definitely going to be my boat of choice for creeking and river running. The peaked deck sheds water and allows the boat to surface quickly after drops. It has a more hull speed than any creek boat I’ve paddled while being loose enough to flat spin on waves! That’s a pretty amazing combination of traits to find in one boat. Potomac Paddlesports has demos of the Diesel 70 and 80 in stock.

Geoff Calhoun and I put in during a snowstorm and paddled towards the Virginia side of the river. The level was around 3.5 . A nice stout level for the Virginia lines. Our first run was great. We bombed over Norman’s, Leap S-turn ( does the Potomac need 2 S- Turns? ) and finally dropped through the crack next to the Spout. Carrying up the snow and ice covered rocks was at least as treacherous as the paddling but we made it to the top for a second run.

The second run was a little more interesting than the first....

.....thank god for drysuits!!

Photos by Michael Kircher

UGANDA at the movies!

2009-02-03T17:43:00.004-05:00

flashback to Uganda.

Ash Bullivant and Freya Pearse are a wicked funny couple from the UK that i met towards the end of my stay in Uganda and they just put together an awesome little video summarizing their epic Ugandan adventure.

Oh please take me back... I love that place like a fat kid love cake. I flippin' love cake too. Especially African chapati cake... mmmm ... and African space cake. Everything is better in Africa!

all hail in NZ

2009-02-02T21:18:00.010-05:00

dear blogosphere, hey guys, it's been awhile. just thought i'd drop a quick update here with the latest and greatest from down under. internet is a bit too expensive to do trip reports, but in general, here's a brief synopsis of my existence as a traveling kayak bum.

1) Hot Wheels. this is Big Brown Betty. She butters up tarmac like biscuits and gravy, baby, gravy. she set me back about $475 USD but i love her to death and would take her back if i could. pimp wheels are a must.

2) the Kaituna. the Kaituna is a classic on the North Island... it's uber-short but has some of the best rapids you could ask for, including Tutea Falls, pictured below. I was lucky enough to be around for the Andy Duffs Memorial Race... which is a mass start (picture 50 or so kayakers) tearing down a river that is as wide as Difficult Run. Kind of scary, but really flippin' fun.

And here's a pic of the Weir. super deep, better boof.

3) Endless park n' huck. if you look, you shall find. Karen drops her first waterfall.... 24ft isn't a bad start, hahaha.

4) Heli runs. When Big Brown Betty can't make it to the put in (which is most of the time), we just call up the local heli pilot! I've only done one heli... it's a super-quick way to get to the put-in but at about $55USD per ride they really break that "daily budget" thing I try to keep to. I love it, novelty has definitely not worn off yet.

5) Nevis Bluff. I've been staying around Queenstown lately with some friends from Nepal and the Kawaru river is the closest backyard thing-o. it starts with a crazy-scary rapid about 1km long. I walked the crux and put in for the outflow and it still makes me cry inside. haha, greaaaat. but more than the kayaking Queenstown is just an amazing place. Here's Colin Hamilton, Scotland's finest, in the pit at the crux of the Bluff.

alright there you go... fun times in NZ. soooo good. anybody want to send me some money?

A Rather "Difficult Run"

2009-01-27T14:39:00.004-05:00

It was a hot day in August and the Potomac had just been hit with substantial rain, so Jason Beakes and I decided to hit up Center Chute. The gauge read 4.2 and rising, so we packed up our gear and headed to Angler's. Paddling up to Center Chute we noticed the run out from Difficult Run was really pumping. At over 10,000 cfs, Difficult Run was backing up the Potomac making Center Chute, which should have been a beautiful wave-hole completely flat. The options were limited so we took the opportunity to explore Difficult Run. Hiking up the path that runs alongside Difficult Run, I could hear the riverbed rumbling as huge boulders were rearranged by the powerful water. It was an awesome phenomenon to behold. We ran into fellow team member Scott Anderson as well as a few other expert Potomac boaters who were contemplating lighting it up. I on the other hand had no intention of making this my virgin run. The entire gorge had become one big slide with entire trees floating right down the middle of the run. After some aerial reconnoissance by Pete Morey the group decided that the hazards were too great and called it a day.

Jason and I returned the following day to more inviting levels for a first time run. Difficult Run is short and sweet with the most challenging rapids coming at the end of the run in the gorge right before its confluence with the Potomac. We scouted the gorge and I watched Jason and Greg (another first timer we met at the put-in) run the final three drops before deciding to attempt it myself. I was nervous but confident I could make the necessary moves and have a successful run. The first two drops were smooth sailing but I knew the third drop would be the most challenging. As I approached the third drop I could see Jason setting safety and a crowd of onlookers cheering me on and then everything went black as I messed up the entrance to the drop, flipping above Difficult Run Falls. I don't recommend running drops upside down. The force of the water pounded me into the rocks but luckily I stayed on the right line. I walked away unscathed and as they say all is well that ends well....ENJOY THE SHOW!

PPS Outfitting Clinic a Success!

2009-01-25T08:37:00.018-05:00

This Saturday the Potomac Paddlesports shop held an Outfitting Clinic to help anyone interested with boat outfitting. Scott, Jordan, and I came out to help Tom and Matt run the clinic. We had several people come in with help outfitting both sea and whitewater kayaks and had a great time cutting up foam, discussing the finer points of outfitting cement, and generally explaining outfitting methods. If you need help with outfitting your boat keep an eye out for the next clinic or just feel free to email one of us or stop by the shop.

Thanks very much to Craig Campbell for coming out and taking all these great photos!

~Maggie

Talking about boat fitting	Matt helps out with sea kayak outfitting
Jordan adjusts the backband on a sea kayak
	Tom hard at work

Explaining how to glue foam to the boat	Scott helps make things comfy

Picking out foam for a new footblock	Explaining the intricacies of Wavesport outfitting

Showing off some new boats for future reference	I'm sure i am saying something very important

"Great Falls and Mather Gorge" by Roy Sewall

2009-01-23T11:30:00.006-05:00

Now available at Potomac Paddlesports! Roy Sewall's great new book "Great Falls and Mather Gorge". This is a beautiful coffee table book of amazing photography of the Falls and gorge. It focuses more closely on whitewater boating than Roy's previous book "Our Potomac" and features many local DC area paddlers including several PPS team members including yours truly (back cover!), Scott Anderson, and our gracious sponsor Sunny Pitcher himself! Come by the shop and check it out!

http://www.roysewallphotography.com

~Maggie

Potomac Paddlesports Outfitting Clinic!

2009-01-21T20:56:00.004-05:00

January 24th, Potomac Paddlesports will be holding an outfitting clinic to help teach people how to use the different kinds of outfitting in our boats. Not only will we be helping every one understand how to use the outfitting in your liquidlogic, dagger, and wavesport kayaks, but you can also learn how to convert any of your boats to c-1!

Come learn how to use and make your own outfitting! Learn how to make C-1 creek, C-1 play advanced, and C-1 Play begginer outfitting!

January 24th, 6 pm, Potomac Paddlesports Retail Store

http://www.potomacpaddlesports.com

Jordan P

January 7, 2009 - Otter Creek

2009-01-15T23:29:00.002-05:00

Since knocking off Seneca Creek last March, Otter Creek has been #1 on my hit list. I thought there was a good chance it would run on Wednesday, so I started calling people. Most of them had to work, of course, but I was able to convince Billy "Strong Arm" Armstrong and Ian "Buck Nasty" Buckley to join me on this adventure. Billy currently resides in the very cool town but whitewater purgatory that is Charlottesville, VA, and Ian hails from the teeming metropolis of Poolesville, MD.

Due to Otter Creek's difficulty, length, and remoteness, it has a reputation for being "epic-friendly." We agreed to sleep in our cars at the take out so we could wake up at dawn and get an early start. This is the approach we took to Seneca, and it worked out well for us on that occasion. But before leaving on Tuesday night, Billy had to replace the bald front tires on his Corolla hatchback so he wouldn't skid off the road while crossing four mountain passes in the middle of a winter storm.

Meanwhile Ian and I met up at the Urbana park and ride to carpool out west. Somewhere outside of Cumberland the gas light came on in Ian's Subaru Outback. Assuming that we still had a couple gallons of gas left in the tank, we kept driving. Shortly thereafter we lost power on the uphills and the dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree. We pulled onto the shoulder around exit 46 (across from Puccini's) and cursed the river gods for our rotten luck. Was there something wrong with the engine, or were we simply out of gas? Ian broke down near Grantsville last year while driving a van for the New River Academy, so he was having flashbacks. We brooded for a while, then tried the ignition again. We were able to sputter off I-68 and under a carport at the Cumberland Motel where we could get out of the rain, pop the hood, and exercise our comprehensive knowledge of engine mechanics. After checking two dip sticks, we were stumped.

I called and left Billy a message explaining our predicament, but his phone died in Harrisonburg, so he was incommunicado. I had nightmares of spending our "day off" getting car repairs in Cumberland and drinking our sorrows away while Billy waited for us indefinitely at the Otter Creek take out. I called AAA, and the operator told me apologetically that we'd have to wait 90 minutes due to the inclement weather and the number of stranded motorists. Not wanting to wait that long, we tried the ignition again, and miraculously made it to the BP station at exit 45. After filling up the tank with gas and adding a bottle of Fuel Dry, we were on our way again. Thank goodness there was nothing wrong with the engine!

Ian was getting tired, so I took over on Route 93. We had to deal with snow, ice, and impenetrable fog to get onto the plateau. It occurred to me that the only people on the road were salt truck drivers and a couple bozos with kayaks. After what seemed like forever, we passed through Thomas, descended the other side of the plateau, and pulled into the Otter Creek take out at 1:30 AM. We said hi to Billy, tied a rain fly over the Subaru's hatch, and laid out our sleeping bags. Before going to sleep, Ian muttered that we must be crazy to take a day off work to drive six hours through a winter storm and sleep in the back of a car next to another dude. It rained all night.

We woke up at dawn, made some coffee, and walked across the footbridge to get a visual on Otter Creek. According to the guidebook, the last rapid should be "well padded, with no rocks showing. However," it adds, "this is a pushy level for Lower Otter Creek, so watch out!" We didn't see any rocks, and it was still raining. We knew the level would be rising, but we reasoned that it wouldn't be rising too fast because the rain was light and steady, not torrential. Game on! We geared up and packed our drybags to the gills. I carried a throw rope, a breakdown paddle, a first aid kit, a space blanket, hand warmers, winter gloves, extra fleece layers, an all-weather lighter, the Canaan Valley Adventure Map, Snickers bars, and a headlamp with extra batteries. Billy and Ian were similarly equipped. Better to be overprepared, right? Especially with daylight at a premium and a cold front moving in...

A short hour later we found ourselves at the Condon Run trailhead. Condon Run is a tiny tributary of Otter Creek that you're supposed to "scrape down" for a quarter mile until you reach the marsh. We put on around 10:15 AM and didn't scrape anything. It was less than ten feet wide -- of which approximately eight feet were occupied by rhododendron and mountain laurel that we had to duck and weave our way through. We pulled our hands out of our pogies to fend off branches and slow ourselves down. Before very long we emerged from the rhodo and arrived at the five foot dam and limestone drums, which were built to reduce the natural acidity of the water and make the creek more hospitable to brook trout. Here we found the first gage, which read between 1.3 and 1.4. According to the guidebook, the minimum is 0.7. Clearly we had enough water, but did we have too much? The guidebook didn't really specify a maximum level. The general consensus between Billy, Ian, and myself was "We've come all this way to run Otter Creek, so we're not turning back now." After running the dam, we found the second gage, which read 2.2 (minimum 1.5).

The marshy section of Otter Creek is stupefyingly beautiful. The creek meanders lazily back and forth, sometimes turning 180 degrees back on itself. Sometimes it's enclosed in a thick hardwood forest; other times it opens up into bogs. Like many of the creeks in the area, the water has a brownish color due to the tannins leached into the river from decaying plant matter. At one point, another tributary that was even darker brown entered on the left, and the sight of the two creeks mixing looked like a black and tan! We made our way quickly but cautiously through this paradise, keeping our eyes peeled for strainers, but we were able to get around most of them. We only had to portage two or three times.

About four miles into the trip, things started picking up speed. The riverbed turned from marsh to bedrock and started tilting downhill. Each tributary added more volume to the creek. None of the rapids were blind, but each was a little bit steeper than the last, and there was less space between them. We were still able to boat scout everything at this point, but we started feeling apprehensive because we hadn't even gotten to the real gradient yet. After a mile or so of this, steadily ratcheting up the speed, we came upon the first horizon lines. I felt like the proverbial frog in a pot of water that has been steadily brought to a boil. Up until this point, I could see the bottom of every rapid from the top as I drifted toward it. I just had to wait longer and longer each time. Well, finally there came a time when waiting long enough to see the bottom of a rapid meant that I was already committed to running it. Realizing this a little too late, I had to pony up and run down the gut of a juicy slide. I eddied out below the slide and waited for Billy and Ian. After what seemed like a long time, they fired it up too. Before letting it happen again, we discussed what we would do if our group became separated. We agreed that if anyone got separated from the group, they should hike downstream along the trail to the first stream crossing and wait there for the others.

Just below the confluence of Yellow Creek we got out to scout another slide, which we all ran without incident. The eddy below it on the left reminded me of the Kettle below the Spout because of all the foam in it. We continued downstream and stayed on our toes because we knew the waterfall was coming up. Finally we saw it. I had to scramble and surf a wave to catch the last chance eddy on the right. What we saw was pretty impressive. I don't know what the waterfall looks like at "normal" flows, but at this flow the landing zone looked like a maelstrom. It was definitely runnable -- there was just a ton of water. I decided to fire it up and got rocketed straight toward an undercut boulder on the right, which I exchanged pleasantries with before elbowing my way past. After running the slide below the waterfall, I regrouped with Billy and Ian.

Ian's watch said 1:30. We thought we were making good time, but apparently it wasn't good enough. My rule of thumb for unknown class V creeks with a small, strong group is two miles per hour. We'd covered six miles in a little over three hours, so that was ok. However, we'd just gotten to the class V, and the next four miles were the hardest on the creek. With high water, and without a guide, we thought we could run the crux section safely or quickly, but not both. There simply weren't enough eddies to pick our way down. We'd either have to scout a lot of rapids from shore or fire them up blind. With seven miles still to cover, less than four hours of daylight left, and a cold front nipping at our heels, we didn't have the luxury to spend a lot of time scouting. Nor did we savor the idea of boat scouting continous class V boulder drops that may or may not have had wood in them. In the end, we made a difficult group decision to shoulder our boats and hike most of the crux to save time.

We hiked the crux in about two hours. I kept looking over my shoulder at the creek and wanting to put back in. It didn't look that hard... There just weren't many places to stop. I got to thinking: sometimes walking a rapid -- or a section of rapids -- is the wise thing to do. After all, safety comes first, and the river isn't going anywhere. But what if the river only runs a handful of times a year? And what if you can only catch it one or two of those times because of responsibilities like work and family? That's what makes the decision to walk a rapid so hard: you don't know when you'll get another chance to run it. When you're standing above a new rapid, you feel the same sense of urgency that caused you to take the day off from work in the first place.

When the rapids eased up to class IV around Big Springs Gap we put back in. The time was around 3:30, so we still had almost two hours of daylight left. I vaguely remembered Lower Otter because I had done it once the year before, so we were able to blitz it pretty fast. Fun, splashy wave trains and boat scoutable boulder gardens rolled out before us like a red carpet. It felt so good to be back in our boats again! When we finally emerged on the Dry Fork of the Cheat at 4:30, we let out a collective sigh of relief. It had been a long and cold but very rewarding day.

Looking back on the trip, I'm not sure what we could have done better. We slept in our cars at the take out, woke up at dawn, drove straight to the put in, didn't dilly-dally anywhere, had no carnage, hiked the crux, and still didn't get out of there until 4:30! I guess Otter Creek is an all-day affair any way you slice it. A guide would have saved us time, but I really enjoy figuring out new runs for myself, and I'm sure Billy and Ian would agree with me. You just learn so much more that way. There aren't many first descents left to be had in the Mid-Atlantic, but if you treat every river like a first descent, you can get that same sense of adventure. I also think we made the right decision to hike the crux. When we retrieved Billy's car from the put-in, the temperature had dropped ten degrees and there were two inches of snow on the ground. Mother Nature doesn't mess around.

Goals For 2009

2009-01-15T14:50:00.004-05:00

Jordan P Hiking to Hermosa (photo-Nedp)

A good thing to do before starting off a new year, or even right after the new year, is to come up with some goals that you plan to accomplish this year. Like running a new creek, or even just hitting your roll. 2008 was a pretty sweet year, but now it's time to look forward to what 2009 brings us.

Jordan P on Ohiopyle falls (photo-clarap)

Sometimes it is good to make a list of things you would really like to accomplish in this new year. You don't necessarily have to write it down, just thinking about it is a good idea. Here's my hopes for 2009

Make it to Freestyle world championships in Switzerland
Start running class V/V+ whitewater
Get over my fear of highs and start hucking waterfalls
Figure out my offside boof
Learn to do every freestyle trick in the book
Run a bunch of new creeks
Work on my slalom skills
Feel comfortable on Great Falls
Get a bunch of new people into the sport
Have a whole lotta fun

Jordan P surfin into Buseater (photo- clara p)

Try to make a lot of reasonable goals, and maybe even some slightly unreasonable. The more the better. If you have A LOT of goals, maybe don't expect to get them all done this year, but try to get as many as you can and always make sure you have fun doing it.

Jordan P

Sandy days

2009-01-14T21:50:00.004-05:00

Showing a good friend down a great run

Having used up all my time off on various trips throughout the year I've been staying closer to home. Finished off 2008 with some trips on Big Sandy Creek and had the pleasure of leading Craig down on his first LBS run. Team trip next time?

Snowy bridge at Rockville

Craig running Wonder Falls

Maggie running Zoom Flume

Craig running Zoom Flume

All photos by Jeff Macklin

December 26, 2008 - The Delaware Water Gap

2009-01-12T21:54:00.022-05:00

All I really wanted for Christmas was some good creeking, so when Sam Burk told me the Water Gap was running I shook off the hangover I incurred on Christmas day and woke up at 4:45 AM to meet him in Baltimore. His enthusiasm is contagious. We added Brenten Petrillo in York, and made our way to the Gap where we joined forces with Jeff Ackerman, Art Barket, Aaron, Garen, and Scott (whose last names I didn't catch).

First on the menu was Hornbeck's. Hornbeck's is nothing but sweet slides and cascades the whole way down. There are two distinct mini-gorges. The first one ends with Goliath, a monster of a drop that has only been run by Joe Stumpfel and Eli Landis. When you see it you'll know why. Alden Bird describes it as "kayaking down a building." The second gorge has seven or so drops and ends with David's Falls, a clean but intimidating 60 foot cascade in two tiers. Once you enter the second gorge you're committed to running the whole thing. Everyone fired it up with varying degrees of success. The hit at the bottom was pretty hard, and everyone was holding something when they landed -- back, ribs, elbows -- but it was worth it! Thanks to Art for showing me down.

After Hornbeck's we sped over to Raymondskill and put on around 4:15. We were racing daylight, so I didn't get to scout anything. The ones I remember are Hacker's Falls, Rottweiler, Iron Staircase, Flirting With Disaster, and a sweet flare boof near the bottom. Running Flirting With Disaster blind was one of the stupidest things I've ever done, but it worked out fine. It's basically a 20 footer into six inches of water, with another 6 foot drop in the run out. There's a slanted rock at the bottom that deflects you out from the base so you don't break your ankles, but that's a lot to take on faith. I just rolled up to the lip with no speed and melted down... Sam talked me into it. Like I said, his enthusiasm is contagious!

Bottom line: Hornbeck's and Raymondskill are awesome, but they're also very abusive. I felt like I'd been in a bar fight! Special thanks to Jeff Ackerman for being our river guide, photographer, and gracious host for the weekend. Jeff probably knows more about the Water Gap than anyone, and he's one of the coolest guys you'll ever meet. Enjoy the Hornbeck's photos below, courtesy of Jeff.

One of many sweet slides

Sam cashing in at Slot Machine

Garen resurfacing

Sam with a perfect line at David's

Art going airborne

Scott styling it

Garen keeping it straight

Brenten tucking for impact

Aaron showing off

2008 Review

2009-01-12T17:21:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year all! I thought I'd start off 2009 by quickly reminiscing on 2008, boy what a great year! Here's a quick recap of what I did this past year, some favorite moments, and associated trips (click on the photos) by season.

This past fall i started grad school: MS in Environmental Management. Yes i am hoping to save the world for a change of career pace! So expect to see some posts on topics such as Acid Mine Drainage in the near future. I'm definitely looking forward to what 2009 will bring. So far in the mix: Another trip to Oregon coming up in May.

~Maggie

Winter: Icy days on the Upper Yough

Spring: Scouting on Canyon Creek, WA; Part of a great Pacific Northwest Trip

Boofing with Pinky on Little Antietam Creek

Summer: Boofing off Grace Under Pressure during the Great Falls Race

Hiking the Zion Narrows as part of a great Southwest adventure

Fall: Launching off Pummel (with cat ears) for Halloween.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, BIG WELCOME!

2009-01-11T18:08:00.001-05:00

in being a hemisphere away i think i'm usually the last to hear about new news. but, it looks like there are a few more folks on the team this year ---- heya, the more the merrier!

round of applause, out of your seats for Mr. Scott Anderson and Ms. Cherie Bartozzi!

i think Scott is the epitome of the Washington D.C. boating scene, in fact, if there were a Mr. Potomac Pageant, I think he would win. Calhoun or Beakes might give him a run for his money, but I think Scott would come out on top. pretty sure. we should try it sometime and take bets.

anyway, Scott is one of my favorite people to boat with, along with the rest of the PPS crew. most people don't know how good a boater he is because he's always dropping in first and picking up the pieces of your [and my] s$!t-ass lines. here's a pic i found from Grace Under Pressure this spring. boof it.

I only know Cheri a bit from Gauleyfest, but if she started on the Zam, then I'm sure she's got big-ass brass balls (or ovaries I guess?). high five!

[insert pic of Cheri killin' it here... have none in my arsenal]

alright----there you have it----two more familiar faces on the 'Po! Welcome peeples, welcome! now... i think it might be time for someone else to post -- you guys have got to be sick of hearing from me.

BLISSfully-STICKin'-it-to-'er!

2009-01-06T05:26:00.000-05:00

hi friends! i'm just celebrating my 10 day aniversary in NZ, and you know what? this place is pretty fabulous. no joke. hahha i've been able to do a bit of kayaking, but am now hanging around Blisstick for a bit making those big plastic things we enjoy so much!

i'm on a borrowed computer... so courtesy begs that i make this quick, so here are some quick photos. today was full of camera time!

Taking the buns out of the oven. hot hot hot.

the goods are lookin' gooood! seats and backbands... Karen and I are all over it.

Karen pours plastic pellets in the Mini-Mystic mold to get her own hunk of burning plastic.... complete with a spider stenciled into the hull, look out! bringing that puppy back to South Africa fo' sho'.

Another beautiful day at the factory! Fallen compadres make up the welcome fence, vewy clever these kiwi characters.

aaaand a look at the finished product, iddn't she purrrrdy?

so there you have it... just a quick peek into Blisstick. you will definitely be seeing more of these kayaks in the future, they're made with heart and soul! the people here are amazing, big cheers to Andi, Collin, Charles, Coke and company---you guys rock rock.

cheers to Blisstick! aaaand it's newest quality control black belt... yours truly, hahaha. signing off! quality control is my zen. ommmm

White Nile, UGANDA

2008-12-28T05:57:00.000-05:00

AFRICA!

This is, by far, one of the most remarkable (if not THE most) paddling destinations in the world. As I alluded to earlier, this was somewhat of an impulse trip, but it was so worth it, and I'm hell bent on going back before the Silverback section is dammed. In the time that we were there the rapids were already changing from blasting. Nothing short of a tradgedy (I know, I sound dramatic).

So let me tell you about the White Nile... it's MASSIVE. From the moment you get on the water, it's a bit like staring down Great Falls, a dozen or more different channels, so it's imperative to go with someone who knows the ropes. Luckily there are a plethora of kayakers, so it's easy to meet fun people and rally.

I don't think words can do justice to exactly what goes on at the Nile, so here is some eye candy to get your visuals in juicin'.

Monica dropping into Bujigali Falls, one of the epic rapids soon to be drowned. Photo: Daryl Balcombe

The mighty UK's Pete Smith drops into Bladerunner, one of the back channels about 2 minutes before a massive thunderstorm. Photo: MonicaG

Francie takes a boda boda back to camp... she was office queen. Nile locals are fun people, they can drink a whole lot of booze. Photo: Andy McMurray

We took one day off of paddling to visit an orphanage that Alison had been volunteering at. It was definitely a memorable experience. There are about 15 kids who live with Susan and Jeoffry, a Ugandan couple who take in kids off the streets and who've been orphaned by the AIDS epidemic. The orphanage also includes a number of widows, who help look out for the children. Everyone makes paper beads and weaves straw mats to help generate income for the small community, but they still rely heavily on foreign benevolence to feed everyone. We learned how to make traditional African samosas (mmm about 120 of them in fact) which made for full bellies by the end of the day!

Nini and her fan club, haha! Photo: MonicaG

Making paper beads! They come out really pretty though, don't they? I tried the weaving but I was pretty shit at it... the mats are beaut'iful! Photo: MonicaG

The kids are amazing. They're so loving, so generous with affection that they can't help but sneak their way into your heart. Geoffry, age 2. Photo: Nini Bhondus

On the Nile there are two key sections, Silverback and 'Day 2'. Silverback has better rapids, humungo! Day 2, however, is home to the infamous Hairy Lemon and Nile Special wave. The wave is INCREDIBLE. I would definitely say it's faster than Skook.

Have a look at Leigh throwing down---see? It's a biggun'.... better each'chyo breakfast o' beans & chapati!! Photo: MonicaG

It's a big challenging to get on, and has a shoulder that kicks like a donkey. Needless to say, the feeling of bouncing big on the wave is incredible. It's one of the first times that I've been able to clearly see my progression in playboating... I'm usually pretty shit at it. More than ever I'm stoked for Center Chute to be in upon return home... look for some baby blunts and backstabs! Yeeehaw!

Monica loving the Nile, bounce bounce baby, make it graaaavy. Photo: Andy McMurray

Hopefully the photos explain themselves... Uganda is a very special place. Very very special. I'm definitely planning to go back... you know when i make millions of dollars and stuff. But really, what a sick place. Get there, friends. Get there.

Leigh leaves us with a final message. Don't forget it peeples. Photo: Andy McMurray

THIS IS AFRICA

...i miss the rains down in Africa...

PeakUK Himalayan Whitewater Challenge & 'dem Nepali Girls!

2008-12-28T05:02:00.000-05:00

The 8th Annual PeakUK Himalayan Whitewater Challenge - woweee! this was definitely one of the best kayak events I have ever been to. EVER. it rivals Gauleyfest in every respect -- good music, good people, wild parties... but what was even better was the sick-ass event format. Here's the other catch... for all three events (Extreme Slalom, Freestyle, and Downriver Racing) you can only elect ONE KAYAK. By default I had the Nomad 8.5, and she steered me pretty well!

Check out the scene, hells yeah!

Day 1 was an Extreme Slalom on the Trisuli River, and the course was amazing. It was extremely challenging and the competitors who did best were the ones who simply completed all the gates without drama. I was lucky enough to tweak out third place in this one... I can definitely say that this is my favorite kind of kayak race, good stuff!

Day 2 was the much anticipated freestyle event. This is the highlight of the event. The Nepali competitors especially train for this all year. The first prize for Nepali Men(and for the first time ever, Nepali Women) is a brand spanking new kayak -- which adds up to mucho ruppees!

Unfortunately I was eliminated in the first round of this one... but Christie-cakes did a big-ass loop in her Nomad to lock-down 2nd place in the Freestyle --- womp womp putting the guys to shame!

Lilli and Christie in the eddy getting ready to dance

The freestyle event really showcased just how far all the Nepali Women have progressed since Christie and I first met them all in Kathmandu for swimming lessons. For only having kayaked for a few weeks, these girls dropped into one pretty big hole for the sake of the competition; mad props!

There is a documentary in the works on the Nepali Girls program... the cameraman takes note of any pre-comp jitters.

AND, what was probably the most exciting part of the day was PeakUK paddler Babu paraglided into the event course while in his kayak. As soon as people saw him coming in by air I think every Nepali within a mile radius ran to the landing zone to welcome him in like a celebrity. Hahaha, only in Nepal! If I ever go back to Nepal, I'm definitely going to do this flying thing!

It's a bird... no, it's a plane... no! It's Babu!

And last but not least, everyone was hung-over for Day 3, the downriver race. This event was also pretty great, haha, the start consisted of running down a beach to your kayak, then launching as fast as possible into a 12k stretch of river. The finish line is similar... you have to run across with your kayak (no small feat after paddling like a bat out of hell). I guess I was a little less hungover than the rest, because I managed to finish first. Good deal, that deserves a beer I think. Or 10.

Susmita, one of the Nepali Girls who went on to win the whole event, actually beat some of the Nepali Junior Men. High fives all around! Kaaaa-pow! That's amazing, really... one of the rapids in the race was pretty stout. Coming into it I was thinking "Shit this is the type of thing I usually scout"... and the girls styled it!

Susmita with a characteristically big smile -- proud new owner of a red Jackson 2Fun! Photo: Whitney Hansen

And, since the downriver race definitely wasn't enough, we managed to assemble an all-girls team for the raft race! The raft race was on a slightly longer stretch of river and entailed a mandatory flip below the spectator bridge. Nini Bhondus, from Norway, was our Captain and kept us going fast whilst chanting "Boys, and Beer. Boys, and Beer" for every stroke. Hahahaha funny cats out here in Nepal, lol. And I guess we weren't really going that fast... but we weren't last!

Anywhoo, can't thank the PeakUK and Mountain Dew folks enough for throwing down such an amazing event. This is exactly what I needed to tucker me out for the 48 hour land bus from Kathmandu to Delhi... lol.

Nepali and International Girl Kayakers during their 10-day 'boot camp' on the Sun Kosi... massive group! Many thanks (and pats on the back) for those who donated their gear/money. This has really been an incredible program! Photo: Whitney Hansen

The Mack

2008-12-20T22:53:00.000-05:00

Well, I got to open one of my Christmas presents early today, and was very exited to find a new drytop! Of course i wanted to test it out so we headed out to Potomac's own Center Chute hole. Being 2 degrees above freezing and the water not much warmer this was quite a first test for my new level six mack. And yet it passed with flying colors. It turns out the reason i got so much water in my boat was because of my old drytop. Well the mack fixed that. Even though i flipped probably over 20 times doing mcnastys, loops, backstabs, and windowshades, when i finally took my drytop off I was still completely dry underneath. And only about 5 drops of water managed to get into my boat.
Other than the neck gasket the Level Six Mack is the most comfortable drytop out there. Though i don't know any one who can make a top of the line drytop with a comfortable neck gasket. When your paddling you can barely recognize that you have a drytop on. The wrist gaskets are awesome, they are so easy to take off and without any hurt. The seal around your skirt is amazing, once you tighten the straps the rubber seals it up and no water can get in. So if your looking for a new drytop that's comfortable and near completely waterproof, check out the Level Six Mack.
Merry Christmas
Jordan P

Last Descent : Mighty Marsyangdi

2008-11-05T01:41:00.000-05:00

[since the writing of this post, the next kayakers who went to the Marshyangdi found the reservoir filled ahead of schedule... making our experience truly one of the Last Descents. well, poop. on the upside, we're pounding out as many runs on the upper part of the White Nile (Silverback Section) before it's filled in January. wheeee!]

Marsyangdi -- my fav so far... this post is a little out-dated, but it's definitely one of the finest quality rivers in the world. Big volume, steep gradient, fun around every corner, a few 'oh shit' moments, haha... pretty much everything you want out of a run. Regrettably, the Marsyangdi is condemned to be dammed, fully under water in a few months. All so sad, but there's a rad project/film called The Last Descent with some more info if you're interested. Nepal's finest. R.I.P.

Anyway, about that trip report! Hahaha pretty much everything that could've gone wrong did go wrong, and it still turned out fab. It's about a day's traveling from Pokhara to the Marshyangdi valley. We had a major hassle getting the kayaks on buses for reasonable fare... one bus even pulled over and refused to move until we paid more than the agreed price. SNAFU #1... Then on the way up to the put-in a bunch of kids stole all our carabiners and chocolate from our bags, that was a Baby SNAFU compared to what morning would bring... when morning rolled around the guards at the trekking station demanded a $25 fee (mucho dinero in rupees) to enter the park. After about 2 hours of arguing and a failed attempt to sneak on, they sent us packing down the valley, kayaks on back. So naturally we walked until they couldn't see us and started our great adventure from there.

Dave and Sonia keeping the bus situation on lock-down. All photos by Jake Holland.

MARSHYANGDI --- WHAT A BEAUT! As I alluded to earlier, the river is AMAZING. It's so much fun to rally with a group of international kayak huck-stars and watch each other do massive back-enders (back loops?) when they un-intentionally hit the belly of the beast. Hahahah such good fun. Internet is way to slow to upload pics, so do your best to visualize por favor... will add some eye candy later.

Yours truly keepin' the bow up on the rapid 'Kiwi Cupcake', bow chicka ow ow. This was one of the first rapids to be swallowed by the reservoir.

We had an awesome party night in an itty bitty highway town before finishing the rest of the run on Day 2. Day 2 is a bit mellower but still packs a good punch and is totally worth staying for. Plus we saw some tiger tracks---first sighting!

This river is truly a gem, one of the best for whitewater kayaking. It's a shame to see it go but I feel pretty lucky to have had such an awesome experience to seal it into my brain-chambers as one of the world's finest rivers.

Sonja Jankowfsky, our favorite German chick, stares down the gun barrell on one of the rapids that starts off Day 2. Photo: MonicaG

Speaking of "world's greatest rivers"... it's only recently that I've come into the knowledge that the White Nile (Uganda) is staring down it's own d-day (end of 2009 at the latest)... so in the name of fiscal irresponsibility, I swiped the 'ol credit card for round trip airfare from Delhi to Kampala for most of December. And you know what the best part is? Hahah, I suckered Andy into coming too! Party in Uganda! Jeeez... wish it was under better circumstances though, all the world's best rivers under fire... gotta hit them all!

We ran the Marshyandgi awhile ago now... have been in western Nepal for 10 days on the Karnali (pictures pending, I promise) and are now coming off some down-time before the Peak UK Himalayan Whitewater Challenge starting tomorrow. Ukukuuuuk extreme slalom on 'Delhi-belly' is going to be an interesting one for me. Antibiotics are my new best friend here, haha. After the race we're rolling out to Delhi to catch our flights to Uganda, pending safe transit via Bombay. Alright enough words, no fun without the pics! Thanks for reading and wishing you all a great Thanksgiving dinner that passes through your digestive system without pain or misery.

Kali Gandaki... Bhote Kosi... Balephi Khola... and MORE!

2008-11-03T07:55:00.000-05:00

hey hey just checking in real quick. we've just gotten back into Pokhara after a five day trip on to some glamorous rivers in Nepal. so naturally that means a day of copious internet... breakfast cocktails... and general lounging by the lake and feeding. in an effort not to bore you with the boof-by-boof details, here are a few snippets of our trips, enjoy!

Ali and Christie on the way to Balephi Khola... haha we seem to travel almost exclusively by bus roof.
super-safe! definitely Class V, hahah

Cameras are always a novelty for the kiddos. Usually the conversation goes like this...
"Namaste! I really really like your camera! You give it to me?" hahahaha... urrrr

Packin' 'er up, packin' 'er in

Scouting on the Bhote Kosi, one of my favorite rivers yet. You have to eddy out just to catch your breath. Here we are at one of the biggun's. Probably our stoutest run yet, round 2 for meeee!

Photo shoot after the one-day trek into the Modi Khola... here's Christie and I, but look out for our new young British friends on soyathinkyourehot hahahaha

early start the next day walking into the river... note the massive Himalayas and our porters in the foreground trudging for the put-in. love it.

THE BUSES ARE OUT OF CONTROL!!!!

one of the best parts of nepal... the FOOD. oh my god, they make some really amazing things here. "dalbhat" is the kayaker favorite... keeps the tummy-machine pacified all day long! enough food for you and your tape-worm.

Nepal is just so much flippin' fun!

Sun Kosi... a few rapids above camp with some pretty incredible people

OK there's a tidbit more... looks like there were some fun times on the 'Po this Halloween! we were actually on the river for Halloween... the sacred Kali Gandaki river, where we pulled over at the favorite cremation site to tromp on some human remains to get our spook on.

alright---enough from my end---hope you all are having fun adventures back east! much love from nepal :)

Halloween Falls fun

2008-11-02T15:38:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to share some sweet shots Craig Campbell took on the MD and VA lines... and yes those are cat ears! Happy Halloween!

Mike

Scouting U-Hole with a friend

Middle line on U-Hole

Maggie on Pummel

Sweet boof off first drop of S-Turn

Mike heading into U-Hole

Maggie on the Spout

(all photos by Craig Campbell)

NGK - Getting This Show on the Road!

2008-10-28T12:02:00.000-04:00

After rolling back into Kathmandu to pick up zeee Amurrrican friends, Christie and I got wind from Inka that the Nepali Girls had already started training for the program. So we met them at the city pool (I reckon there's only one) to help out for a day before heading back to Pokhara.

Getting to meet the girls was amazing... of the eight working hard at the pool when we got there, only three were fully comfortable in water. Sylvia, their swim coach and a badass climber chick from Sweden, gave us the low down on the swimming situation and let us take the group for a bit to introduce them to the kayaks. FIRST TIME IN A KAYAK! Waaaaa! It was also the first time the girls had used life jackets, so we did a few laps warming up to the big floatation things. Being at the pool all afternoon really gave me new perspective on the audacity of this project. Here we have some girls who can barely swim, completely committed to the core, working their asses off for the chance to be a raft guide/safety kayaker.

Swimming with Buoyancy Aids

From NEPAL 2008

These women are fearless. With Slyvia's consul they spot each other swimming laps... some of them are swimming laps while we're drinking tea. You gotta want it to win it and these girls want it bad.

Anyway the kayaks were a huge hit---and Christie and I were both able to concur that there's a pool of hidden talent in these petite-framed women. We saw a few naturals who fell in love with the boats. They went in time and time again... and their enthusiasm has definitely given me a fresh drive to maximize my time here.

From NEPAL 2008

So there you have it... the modest beginnings... the baby steps of NGK. Thank you thank you thank you to those who donated their equipment or money -- it's definitely going to a fantastic project. Aaaaand for those of you with heavy pockets, it's not too late to shell out a little love :) see here

More to come! Next time we see the girls is at the PeakUK Whitewater Challenge in a few weeks on the Trisuli River. Get ready to rock rock. For now I'm off to do Modi Khola and Kali Gandaki for 4-5 days with the crew.... we've done heaps of other rivers but I seem to have acquired a virus (actually like 12) on my memory card so those photos are hostage until I find a computer with good anit-virus software. More trip reports pending. Over and out. Give the 'Po my love!

2008-10-28T09:07:00.000-04:00

OK! So the goods are coming in... Nepal is a world-class kayak destination, no doubt. I was lucky enough to rally with the Scottish and English crew up to the Modi Khola and it was definitely the best trip yet. Quality low volume technical whitewater, not unlike what we have on the East Coast at home. Except for it's like 70K and there's fantastic food and sleepings all along the way.

We left Pokhara at dawn's asscrack and started the one-day trek in the Anapurna Sanctuary up to the river with our trusty porters. The porters are amazing... small statured, but far more athletic than they let on. For about $7 per day these super-heros in disguise will lug your boat to the moon and back. We rolled into a tea house just as dark was setting in, indulged in dalbhhat, fended off some abnormally large insects, and hit the hay for the wild river on Day 2.

Beautiful Trekking!

From NEPAL 2008

Sneaking in before Dark

From NEPAL 2008

Day 2 we finished the trek to the put-in, which coincidentially is at the largest sieve I have ever seen. Observe with horror, nearly 2/3 of the river spirals down this thing.

SIPHON!!!!! aaaaah!

From NEPAL 2008

Simon lines up for the flume.... the boys ran the upper mank, meeting us at the bridge for more fun.

From NEPAL 2008

The rest of Day 2 was a little hellacious... we had a bit of an 'epic' early on... but managed to recover alright and continue on down for camp, where we reunited with the friend who had opted to walk out. Camp was fantastic. This is the secret to why Nepal is so great... is you can paddle sick-wicked-nasty whitewater all day, then pull over in a village and sleep in a warm bed [of varying quality] and stuff yourself full of as much food as you can afford. In the morning, it's wash, rinse, repeat.

We started paddling the next day as early as possible to try and catch the rest of the group (we were pretty big so we split up at first). We ended up passing them at their camp and then finding them later on when we were scouting something. The second day on the river was much closer to what we anticipated, strong Class IV eddy-hopping bliss.

Tim Burne is lovin' it!

From NEPAL 2008

With our massive crew of 10 finally re-united we sped off to the dam and took out. I carried on with the English to run the Lower Modi Khola... just a little easier and wider open than the Upper and it was definitely worth it. We rode the bus roof all the way back to Pokhara... feasted on massive $3 buffalo steaks, had too many beers, and then conked out. Such a good trip... I'm lovin' it! I'll definitely be back to this one when Christie and Andy get back to town, yeeeeehaw!

World Series Race at ASCI

2008-10-12T14:22:00.000-04:00

One of the World Series races for slalom was held at ASCI about a week ago. It was incredible being able to watch and race against some of the best slalom paddlers in the world. Here's a video of some of the insane paddlers that competed at the US World Series race.

Jordan P

Great Falls - Fun on Center Lines

2008-09-30T20:59:00.000-04:00

mmmk... 'Po come up enough for Center Lines, which is maybe the best way to start the week. I rolled on over after work, met up with Sean Devine for one lap, and then headed out... for my last week in WDC, this is truly a treat. Anyway, I don't have much else to say, so here are a few quick photos:

Sean runs Grace Under Pressure, cleans it.

yours truly feelin' the stomp love

on our way out we saw local legend Tom leading a young compadre down Fishladder. They both slayed it -- I picked a weird spot to shoot from... but here ya go:

Putting the 'Tom' in PoTOMac

and Simon staring down the gun barrel

alright, that wraps up the falls sesh from my end.... good times, love 'dem Center Lines!

LVM #27 Premiere: The Rockies

2008-09-22T12:26:00.001-04:00

hurrrro DC peoples!

Mark your calendars for this Thursday, September 25th because at 7:00 there'll be a premiere of the new LVM #27, featuring The Rockies, aka Land of the Super-Gradient, right here in our little metropolis. In this segment there'll be clips from the Demshitz boys on Yule Creek, the LVM Giant Slalom on the Payette, and other quality footage from Colorado and such.

"LVM helping to spread the whitewater love"

see you there folks! Thursday 9/25 at 7pm... be there. free food!

Potomac Paddlesports shop: Rockville, MD

View Larger Map

AT Eddy - Spawned of Dieties

2008-09-17T17:12:00.000-04:00

Ok... this one has been a long time a'comin' - I've been meaning to post something on the new AT Eddy paddle un-veiled at OR this year. Let's start with a haiku poem:

red blades go windmill,

exuberate lightning from gods,

baby hit cruise control.

If the whole kayaking-bum thing doesn't work out then I'm banking on a future in literature. Future = dismal.

I got the chance to use one of these bad boys when I was out west for my mini-epic-Oregon adventure (props, AT, take a bow). My initial reasoning was something like "sweet, don't have to use the break-down I smuggled into my carry-on..." but I started to like the thing by the end of the week.

I've always used a straight shaft paddle, but given the opportunity to switch to a bent shaft I'd do it in a heartbeat. The difference to me is mainly that my torso feels less rigid. Whenever I plant a stroke I usually try and move my boat/body to meet the blade---using the bent shaft makes it easier to do that. My forearms and wrists feel like they're in the right place at all times, and it all adds up to some good hustle and flow.

Alright, that's enough banter from me. Looking forward to Gauleyfest this weekend! Go try a bent shaft... pick up an AT Eddy if you can. I'm pretty sure everyone is going to like this paddle. a lot.

quick, find someone with $329 to loan you.

Ohiopyle Falls Race 2008

2008-08-29T19:34:00.000-04:00

OK I thought I'd throw up a quick post on Ohiopyle Falls Race---Geoff, Maggie, Jason or Jordan might follow up with their own takes on the weekend. Falls Race in Ohiopyle this year was pretty much, as Jason put it, a 'PPS team meeting', hahaha. And we tweaked out some pretty good results in the mix! aaand i think we all came to the conclusion that none of us took any good pictures. but Ohiopyle Adventure Photography did!

anyway, it was a b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l day in Ohiopyle and the crowd was bigger than i can ever recall. everyone from our crew had clean lines for their race runs and we made a good showing on the podium. i had a personal feat in the freestyle competition, two lefty freewheels were feelin' pretty good and were enough to seal 6th overall. especially the second bugger!

geoff swept first place for the third time in a row--AMAZING. AND, he broke the one-minute barrier, sealing the victory in a phelps-ian fashion. beakes was right up there too, as always, and with the kiddies rooting him on! can we say... "my daddy rips it"...?? hahaha, and maggie kept it strong in the ladies class.

right before the race (like 9 minutes before) i asked Geoff if he wanted to do a K-2 run... and in typical Calhoun fashion, he said 'fuck yeah'. it was so much fun, we'll be back next year, folks. 8th fastest time overall is what you get when calHOOOOSE is pushing from behind! which kind of makes me feel like dead weight, haha, but i tried to turn up the heat, i swear.

here are the rest of them results... for those interested.

Men's Long Boat
1. Geoff Calhoun 0.57.16
2. Jason Beakes 1.02.85
3. Jesse Shimrock 1.04.41

Men's Short Boat
1. Geoff Calhoun & Jesse Shimrock 1.14.40
2. Jason Beakes 1.14.60

Women's Long Boat
1. Kara Weld 1.14.09
2. Monica Gokey 1.16.80
3. Maggie Snowel 1.27.00

Women's Short Boat
1. yours truly 1.24.38
2. Susan Hollingsworth 1.31.96
3. Maggie Snowel 1.45.16

C-1 Sprint
No competitors, but to be DOMINATED by Jordan Poffenberger in 2009.

K-2 Sprint
1. Geoff Calhoun & Monica Gokey 1.11.38
2. Jesse Shimrock & Kim Alexander 1.27.80
3. Ron & Jocelyn Metzger 1.46.00

Freestyle
1. Adam Johnson
2. Dave Fusilli
3. Geoff Calhoun
Women's
6. Monica Gokey (pretty stoked not to be last this year, haaa)

it really couldn't have been a better weekend. falls race is kind of like an annual yough river reunion... people come from far and wide, and if the race doesn't bring them together then the after-party does. it's one of the best times to celebrate each other's company and the boating community in general.

this past Tuesday we lost one of kayaking's finest. Isaac Ludwig passed away while creeking the gnar and though he wasn't from this area, i think the whole boating community feels a hit when we lose such an amazing spirit. i had the privilege to work with Isaac on the Lower Yough for a few seasons, and he is easily one of the most compassionate, genuinely-good hearted souls i know. i'm so grateful to have paddled with him and family all weekend, good times i'll never forget.

cheers to isaac; freewheelin' into the sky, we're gonna miss you buddy

thanks for reading, everyone. cherish your kayaking buddies and go have fun!

Buseater in August

2008-08-26T16:56:00.000-04:00

I got to go to canada for about 5 days to work on my wave tricks, I was expecting low water waves like garberator, but instead I got to get on buseater for my first time and surf one of the best waves in the world.

and in august too!

Jordan P

Nepali Girls Kayak

2008-08-25T19:57:00.000-04:00

helloooo peeples! i have something really exciting that i've been involved with... something amazing, inspiring, and beautiful---Nepali Girls Kayak. i'm headed to Nepal in Oct (eeeep 6 weeks!) for the boating season, and this is definitely the ice cream on my apple pie---so excited!

the idea of the program is to teach a few Nepali women the kayaking and guiding basics they need to get their guide licenses so they can pull some mad rupees in the whitewater tourism world. what's even better about it is that it's an international team of female kayakers coming together to introduce other eager women to the marvels of the sport... and the amore of the river.

here's our magical collection box... out at the PPS demo at Angler's a few weeks ago:

the box is now at the Potomac Paddlesports shop in Rockville, MD. If you have any river equipment to spare, there are some eager girls ready to get some more life out of it half way across the world! helmets, PFDs, paddles... tops, anything you've got! and thanks to those who've already donated generously... you're making a huge difference.

let me give a shout to SkirtworkS in Friendsville, MD---they've stepped up in a really generous way and donated 10 spray skirts to the program. these people really have a great thing going, and i've never seen so much heart and soul go into a sprayskirt!

to stay updated with the program, check out the blog the kiwi girls are keeping: Nepali Girls Kayak . if you'd like to make a donation, there's a Paypal account set up on Inka's site. to get the month-long kayak boot camp off the ground it's costing about $8000-9000 dollars. that's mucho mucho... anything you could give makes a huge difference to some. to bulk up the funds, click here:

here

Click through to the "Donate" button on the right

Potomac Paddlesports is going to match whatever you folks contribute... so whip out those Visas, Mastercards, and let 'em rip here. anything you can give would be fabulous--it's definitely going somewhere that needs it!

here's some media clips from around the world:

Spot in Outside Magazine, Sweden

Reference in Paddler Mag,

thank you for all the support! great things are happening!

PPS Free Demos

2008-08-24T10:29:00.000-04:00

Thank You to all who showed up to sample some products for FREE!!

Potomac Paddlesports monthly free demo for August was fun with a twist of Anxiety due to the awesome rain and thunder storms that started the day off. The day started pretty poopy but turned beautiful and great to paddle at Anglers due to everyone writing the day off because of inclement weather. Monica, Jordan and myself arrived with boats and hopes for better weather and the day would turn out to be a great success. Once unloaded I began to prep the grill....

Next demo wrap up a burger or something and throw it on the grill with us, you can look over boats while your lunch is cooking then decide what you would like to try next .

No hassle, no strings attached, PPS demos. First Saturday of every month in the summer, Did we mention it's FREE?

-Simon

P.S. Thanks to all who contributed gear to the Nepali Girls Kayak Program!

"Cleanin' It"

2008-08-14T18:19:00.000-04:00

Cleanin' up on Great Falls---literally and figuratively!

Geoff and I headed out for some after-work laps and we got the crazy idea to steal a bunch of those State Park trash bags and evacuate as much filth from the Flake as we could. Ian Buckley met up with us and he got suckered into helping as well. Poor thing.

A snippet of the "Before"

some interesting bounty

Boys playing Captain Planet

aaaaand then there's the sweet stuff! Geoff and I did one quick lap on Pummel and then headed over to VA side for some more kicks.

Pummel love!

Here's one of Ian cleanin' it on the Spout. Cleanin' it, truly our theme for the day.

Overall we packed out six bags of trash (had to go back for two the next day). someone in the parking lot said "it's sure good to see someone cleaning up out there". No joke! We found all kinds of 'treasures'... from fuel cans to footballs... if you need a vintage kitchen sink or something else random, check the Flake.

Some of you may or may not know... but the PPS shop does a pretty good job with sustainable business endeavors. Since re-locating to the area, I've been thoroughly impressed with their commitment to "green". I like to consider myself an eco-naut too, haha, and minimizing their ecological footprint is definitely something the shop does well.

Alright, enough blab for you folks. Thanks for checking the blog---and see you all out on the water!

Gorge Games 2008: Oregon/Washington

2008-07-21T19:16:00.000-04:00

hello, readers! welcome to this new blog thingy we've got going... hope you like it! great bunch of folks these potomac people are, no joke!

last week i was out to Oregon for a little Gorge Games action. Oregon is like a second home for me... i spent last summer pushing rubber on the Middle White Salmon and absolutely fell in love with the area... its got amazing rivers, great people, and a funky fresh vibe to life.

for those not familiar, the Gorge Games is a multi-sport event encompassing everything rad n' bad that you can do in the Columbia River Gorge. The big-box events are definitely the wind sports: windsurf and kite-boarding have the largest cash purse and draw the most spectators by a mile. But kayaking is fun too, eh!?

Friday started out with time trials for Saturday's Extreme Race on a groovy little class IV rapid called Maytag. The stretch of river for the extreme race itself is pretty extreme, haha, and hence I decided to post-pone my Gorge Games debut until I can style drops like Big Brother without shitting my pants (28 whopping feet). Time trials narrowed the competitor field down to 17: 2 ladies and 15 gentlemen, enlisted for combat duty on the Truss.

The two girls, Heather Herbeck and Lana Young are two super-standout locals---they fire up the gravy all year long. My first time meeting them was on the Truss... that's one thing I love about Oregon, it's completely normal to see all-girls groups running the mank.

Saturday morning there was a mass exodus to the Truss (Green Truss section of the White Salmon River). Since I wasn't racing I joined the safety troops and sat like a momma duck at Bob's while everyone fired up the course.

media love for the Kiwi crew

Photo: Monica G.

Heather starting things off right at Bob's

Photo: Monica G.

Lane Jacobs styles Big Brother in a KENDO (really, a kendo)

Photo: Luke Spencer

I didn't get to see everyone fire off Big Brother, but I heard rumors that the cave was hungry that day! No surprise in the results, Tao Berman took 1st, New Zealand's Sam Sutton nabbed 2nd, and the Czech Republic's Honza Lasko stole third. Great showing. Heather came out on top for the ladies with Lana not too far behind. After the Extreme Race came BoaterCross! BotoX was also held on Maytag rapid... which is a pretty awesome place for a race. You can fly down that thing like greased lightning if you pick your line right. Gravy, baby, graaavy! I had a helluva good time throwing elbows with the girls and tweaking it out for third place. Here's a shot of yours truly trying to go fast:

Photo: Kate Wagner

i flippin' love BoaterCross... such good fun. i can't wait to come back next year! and of course the awesome events are always followed by awesome event festivities... 3 hour dance party say whaaaat?! aaand thus concludes another epic adventure in the Pacific Northwest! a million thanks to Kate, Christie, Rachel, Jesse, and the boys at the Beaverlodge for putting me up for the week. you guys rock rock.

Over and out, team, over and out.

Photo: Jennifer Hart