After some heavy rains in New York, a bunch of us rallied to Watertown to surf Inner City Strife.  Here’s the video:

Team Pyranha at Inner City Strife.

Photo – Craig Kleckner doing another one of his ridiculous back PanAms at Inner City Wave on the Black River

The month of August has been a mix of summer road trip recovery and northeast playboating.  Here’s a lil bloggings of Inner City Wave on the Black, low level Ottawa, and a visit to Rochester’s Lock 32.

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 Quebec is known for two things.  Poutine and Water.  On a recent trip to the eastern reaches of this candian province 9 kayakers found both to be spectacular.  The Romaine river provided us with 6 days of unbeievable kayaking in a vast setting that is threatened by a massive hydro power project. 

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With what seemed like a thousand taxis touting for our business, arrival into Kathmandu airport truly signified the start of the adventure. Having been to a few far flung destinations dragging my kayak along previously, it was music to my ears.

This March myself, Sam Clegg and Rich Kemble headed out to Nepal, with the aim of exploring the incredible culture, people and mountains that it has to offer. Following certain events, it was decided that in some way we wanted to contribute something towards the Mountain Rescue services; in our case the local Ogwen Valley team. We intended to raise awareness for the role that the team undertakes and contribute towards much needed funds for potentially lifesaving equipment within their Swiftwater Rescue services. The result was that we donated almost four-hundred pounds in funding and equipment to OVMRT.

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For me, this past summer was a lot different than the ones in the past.  After a super savage snowboard wipe out 8 and a half months ago, and an epic month touring around Colorado on the Pyranah van, I spent most of my time in Northwest Montana living at home with the fam.  My time spent there consisted mainly of fishing, tubing, countless hours of physical therapy and hardly any kayaking.  I recently  made the trek back down to Gunnison CO for my last semester of school and took a highly anticipated trip to the M-Wave to see how the new Molan performed on a big, fast wave.  After hearing good things about the Molan I was fired up to take it out on a fast action glassy wave.  I was blown away at how fast and loose the boat is considering its short length and how comfortable I felt paddling it.  Here is a short video of my first day paddling the Molan on the M-wave:

http://www.vimeo.com/14535986

Myself, Jake Holland and Will Hatt have now been in Thailand for 12 days searching out some whitewater fun.

Arriving in Bangkok we got our boats on the train and took the bus to Chiang Mai (It turned out to be the queen’s birthday so no seats for us on the train!) Here we sorted ourselves a truck and hooked up with a local rafting company, Siam River Adventures, for a run down the Mae Taeng. Normally the whole 10km section is rafted with a steeper middle section providing some class 4 thrills for the clients… Lots of rain meant our first warm up river of the trip was at a slightly higher level with the rafts portaging the middle section. We decided to paddle it.

Since this exciting introduction to Thai kayaking we have been searching the area around Chiang Mai for more drops and sections of rivers. The next stage was a 6 hour drive east to Nan where we paddled the Tard Luang, hiking into the top slide in the picture below, then paddling the rest of the river. There were some sweet rapids, drops and slides including a chunky double drop we portaged but definitely has potential…

Check out our blog for loads more photos and tales of the adventures so far!

Stoked to finally check out what the Upper Upper East Fork Kaweah had to offer.  Nathan Hunkapiler, Macy Burnham & Chris Tulley 1’st D’ed a steep portion of the Upper Upper 2 years ago that uncovered some goods, but required the team to hike out on day two due to time constraints.  This left the trio amped on the Upper Upper & wondering what the “middle” Upper Upper had to offer, as there was 6 miles unaccounted for.  Joining up with the original team +1, Cully Thomas – we dropped into Upper Upper to complete the 1st Descent.  After a quick bushwack entrance to the gorge a mile downstream of where they originally hiked out, we kicked off the trip with some wooded drops and slides, and one crux pinch drop that had a cool, must make wall move.  Upon arriving to the confluence of Horse Creek, we all couldn’t pass up the opportunity to camp at one of the coolest camp spots in the Kaweah Drainage!  Horse Creek dropped steeply into the Upper Upper East Fork and contained numerous slides and one nice big fall (*shallow landing*).  We hiked up and did multiple laps on it and laid down to sleep, only to be woken at 5am by rain.  Putting on the rising East Fork super early, we finished out the Upper Upper and dropped into the “Upper EF”…whew lots of upper stretches (as the EF continues to prove that it contains some of the best, most continuous whitewater anywhere).  The Upper EF was a real treat and had some surprising gorges and drops that had the whole team stoked and feeling it.  Here are some pix.  – video soon.

1st D of Horsecock Falls, Horse Creek California.  Chris Tulley photo

Gorgeous lighting for a late afternoon boof. Culley Thomas photo

A stout drop on the Upper EF Kaweah.  Chris Tulley photo

Macy named this one Gorneria – “if ya dropped into thar u’ed be a goner son”

Parting shot – Horse Creek and Upper Upper EF confluence.  Cully Thomas photo

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