Each Spring the entire paddlesports industry (or at least it feels like it anyway) descends on the small town of Old Forge, New York for a weekend full of all things paddling.  The event is Mountain Man Outdoor Supply Company’s Adirondack Paddlefest.  Myself and fellow Team Pyranha paddler Tony Gianfagna held down the fort for Pyranha at the event.  We got people psyched on the new Burn, and answered every question under the sun about whitewater paddling.  On Saturday afternoon Tony and I teamed up to teach a very well attended rolling clinic for paddlefest participants.  We showed different types of rolls, got some cheers with hand rolls, and then someone asked the question, “what do you do if you can’t roll up?”  I lost the rock paper scissor decision had to demonstrate the wet exit.  We had a lot of fun with the folks who were watching.  There were certainly a few new whitewater paddlers in the crowd.

Friday of Paddlefest was almost a total “wash” due to the torrents of rain falling from the sky.  We got up really early on Saturday morning to see beautiful blue skies and the gauges on Tug Hill Plateau sky high.  We rushed out the door, loaded up the truck, and we were in the water before 8:00 AM.  Our good friend Eric Adsit provided us the necessary local knowledge to make a run of the seldom paddled “BrokeBack Gorge” (yes that is what it’s really called).  This unique gorge is a shale/limestone crack in the middle of dairy farms as far as the eye can see.  It is a dreamy steep-walled canyon smack in the middle of farmland.  It is a bizarre geological anomaly that makes for some really fun paddling.  We made a quick run  of the multiple small drops and slides all the down to the super committing 35-footer that signifies the end of the gorge.  It was an unbelievable way to start the day.

Supporting Pyranha and Mountain Man Outdoor Supply Company at this year’s Paddelfest was probably the most fun yet.  It is always a good time getting to hang out with paddlers from other parts of the industry, getting people psyched on Pyranha, and  getting to do some awesome paddling at the same time.

Arrival to the Mountains- Team Tour in Innsbruck

After the Markkleeberg festival we began the drive across to Innsbruck stopping in Augsburg for a good nights sleep.  We arrived at Source 2 Sea HQ late afternoon and left immediately for the river with our host Bernie and brother Dan.  We had been told it was a mission to take trees out of the river prior to the race on Saturday, so laden with multiple saws and ropes we set off down the river clearing all the trees from the winter.

After a cool night at the campsite we left for Oetz. Described as paradise by the many paddlers, climbers and bikers that have moved there never fails to disappoint with evening SUP trips down the Inn, Wellebrucke laps and even a bit of downhill biking to spice things up! It really is a super full on area, and definitely a place that should be on everyone’s trip list.

On Friday morning we headed back over to the S2S camp where we paddled the river Sill, which was a little on the low side but we had a successful run non-the less.  Saturday brought the start of the festival along with some better weather!! Both Matt and I played on the lake in the morning doing some polo, and then in the afternoon I left Matt running his extremely popular ‘come and try it’ sessions on the lake, and went to do the Melach Race.

The race was rocky and narrow but fairly fast with the team event times coming in around the 15-minute mark, and individual races at 4 minutes. I came in second place behind Daniel Haller with Daniel Klotzner coming just behind in third place.  This race really got me fired up and can’t wait until our next show down in Val Sessia.

Sunday came around and everyone headed off for a days paddling before driving back home.

The van has now come back to Augsburg in preparation for our event on Wednesday evening.

Stay tuned – Pyranha Team Van on FB

Video link – http://vimeo.com/95655957

Author – David Bain

Reno, being the wonderfully weird place it is, inspired Demshitz to try out some new tricks in the Reno River Festival’s freestyle competition. Dave arrived in Reno a day before my self, and managed to slip a quick practice session into his fully loaded schedule. I came flying into Reno the next day, and then boogied down to the competition feature to get in a little practice before the event. After spending a bit of time shaving down the ends of our Jed on the bottom of the feature, we felt like we’d really gotten the feature dialed in.

The next day started off pretty chilly, and the horizon wasn’t looking particularly friendly. Once it was time for the men class to go it had gone from chilly to flat out cold. That didn’t slow us down, though, and we ended up heading into finals with Dave in 4^th and myself in 2^nd . But, as we were finishing semi’s, we got hit with cold dirt rain mixed with what looked like snow. Faced with such a situation we decided the only reasonable course of action was hit the hot tub and have a beer while we waited for the rain to stop before finals.

Demshitz came out swinging in finals, and laid down some big rides with real weird tricks all while sharing the same boat in the same heat. After the first round Jacen Craig put together a huge 1300 point ride, and Dave and I decided that we’d have to get real weird to match that number. Dave, on his second ride, put together one of the strangest combos that I’d ever seen, a back phonix to mcnasty, and then proceeded to stick the shit out of it. He salted that ride with a space godzilla to loop and few other tricks to rack up an 1100 point ride which was enough to secure him solidly in second. I managed to put together a few tricky tricks like tricky loops and back loops to mcnasty’s, but never managed to put link everything up enough to move past 3^rd.

The next day, while recovering from celebratory night, we took part in the boater cross. I ended up getting knocked out in the semi’s, but Dave managed to come back from the losers bracket to take 3^rd.

Overall, Reno puts on a pretty awesome festival!

Demshitz on the podium

After a week and a half of training, the GB rafting teams were fired up and ready to race!

The GB ladies laid down an awesome time to win Gold in the Sprint!

With a great crowd cheering them on, the ladies team gave their all in the Head-to-Head races but were knocked out by the eventual winners, Slovakia.

Whilst the rafting teams were preparing for their next races, Team Fluffer (the boyfriends and husbands) managed to find time to paddle the lesser known Awesome and Smokey Gorges of the Kaituna.

Next up was the Slalom where an easy section of river was made much harder by an extremely challenging course. Both teams posted great times with the ladies narrowly missing out on a medal.

Last of all was the Endurance race where the teams paddled flat out for nearly an hour down the beautiful Rangiteiki river. Again both GB teams paddled well but weren’t quite fast enough to get on the podium.

The fluffers took it at a far more leisurely pace.

With the competition over, the group split up to do some exploring, making plans to meet back up on the South Island. We headed first to the Tongariro national park to hike up some volcanoes, but it chucked it down with rain so we went boating instead!

After that we got our geek on, went to see Frodo’s house and had a pint in the Green Dragon!

With heavy rain filling up the rivers we went for a high water paddle on the Mohaka with the locals…

then headed across to the Rangitikei for a blast down the river with the local rafting company…

After a brief encounter with Bert the Troll, we made it to the ferry for the next leg of our adventure in the South Island!

Welcome to the Pyranha Team Tour 2014.  Our first stop this year was the XXL Paddle Festival at the Kanu White Water Park in Markkleeberg, Germany between the 2 and 4^th of May. (May the 4^th be with you :-).

Main centre and terrace overlooking the course

This event really kick started out tour with over 500 kayakers and a total over 1500 people attending.  The weather tried to break us but we all prevailed.  The days were mild but quite windy and the nights sleeping in the van were at times, desperate.

Our journey out to XXL was broken up with a nice ferry cruise and a hook up with fellow kayaker and friend, Eric Walter.  Eric is a German freestyler who is now residing with David Bain in Nottingham.   On this occasion, Eric was staying at his hometown in Dusseldorf.  We spent the night there before continuing our journey to Markkleeberg.

Lake at Markkleeberg

Our stand was situated in a prime location at the festival next to the white water along side Jutta Kaiser from HF and Ollie and Ingrid Grau from Werner / Sweet.  We also had Haglofs father and daughter combo next to us who were quite friendly offering us sweets and warm jackets all weekend.

Trade stands alongside the white water

It was a real pleasure to see so many people enjoying paddle sport.  I mean there were hundreds of people on and in the water doing one thing or another in boats ranging from modern day white water kayaks to some of the first kayaks ever made mixed with innovative inflatable kayak and raft designs.

White water fun on the intermediate course

We had a great time representing Pyranha demoing over 70 of our kayak fleet over the weekend and selling a fair few tee shirts and caps.  We spent most of the time however providing the general public with information about our latest boats and giving advice on which boats they should be looking to try in 2014.

Future team members

This was a really fun event with lots going on.  As well as the paddling and trade show their were events in boater x, freestyle and raft racing.  On Saturday evening Olaf Obsommer made a nice talk and presentation on some of his recent kayaking adventures.  All in all, a really well organised event that we will strive to be a part of again next year.  If you are in the area, I would highly recommend a visit.  For more information visit Paddelfestival Markkleeberg on facebook alternatively visit http://www.paddelfestival.de

 Saturday night Boater X

After the event was drawn to a close on Sunday afternoon, we drove to Augsburg for a few days rest and to catch up on life.  We stayed with fellow team paddler Thomas Funke and managed to get a nice paddle on the slalom course where we would be visiting again in a week’s time to provide an event.  We are now cruising to Innsbruck, Austria for the S2S Kayak Festival over the weekend.  Our next Update will be in a weeks time showing what we have been up to in Austria.  Keep you eye out for the Team Van if your in the area and come say ‘hi’ and come try one of our new boats, they are selling like hot cakes!  Until then, Ciao.

Pyranha Team Van 🙂

You can also check our progress on Facebook.   Images : David Bain & Matt Cooke

I’m just back from a trip with a difference to Romania, where we’ve been paddling and exploring the Carpathian Mountains, with a Romanian team of paddlers, arranged by one of Pyranhas’ newest dealers, the excellent http://www.barciinbagaje.ro/.

We found some excellent quality Whitewater, in a fairly unexplored and very friendly and extremely pretty area of Europe.

We ran a coaching week for Romanian Paddlers, sharing some of our various experiences with them, as well as educating people on river safety and rescue protocols. We were also fortunate enough to take part in their biggest white-water festival, the excellently run Mures Marathon!

All in all, an excellent week with my fellow team paddler and coach Chris Eastabrook, and it was a real pleasure to visit a country and spend a substantial amount of time with the residents of the country.

As Baino mentioned in an earlier post, Pyranha were up in Glen Etive for a sweet weekend of boating for the British Universities Creek Race.

Video Time!!!