This last weekend saw another epic NSR.

For the first time in years we were blessed with sunshine, which made the early mornings on the water much more manageable after the world famous NSR party nights.

A beautiful Saturday morning

Pyranha were down with a fleet of demo boats, and the Nano and Loki were getting a lot of love from everyone.

The Loki loves the eddy lines!

In between events some of the team boaters took to the looping pool in their creek boats and went huge!

Sam Ellis dry head looping Pyranha’s greatest playboat- The Everest

But the highlight of the weekend had to be the two classic events: Old School and Duo.

Niamh Stack going old school

Dave Burne was able to re-claim his title after missing out on last years competition due to a knee injury, showing he is Mr Old School, with some epic pop outs, deck grabs, and even a paddle spin on the hull of his boat whilst upside-down!!!

Mr Old School himself. Dave Burne- born 20 years late

The Duo event also didn’t disappoint, with some awesome mystery moves accompanying all the classics.

Hopefully everyone is starting to recover from another epic weekend, the countdown for NSR 2014 starts now!

Uganda,

Hi Team,

I was fortunate enough to spend a month over X-mas in the whitewater paradise that is Ecuador. I pretty much paddled every single day (except when the volcano erupted in Banos), as I couldn’t get enough of the super fun continues rivers in the country.  We Spent most of our time in the Quijos valley, staying in Baeza. This is a great base for anyone who wants to explore the hundreds (literally) of rivers Ecuador has to offer. Otherwise we explored rivers around Tena, Banos, and a few other places. The first week I paddled with fellow Canadians Greg Daspher and Chris Ryman. Later I teamed up with Oregon’s Seth Swallen and a few of his buddies (thanks guys!)

I couldn’t recommend Ecuador enough. For bang for your buck quality river running this place can’t be beat. Below are a few pictures that do a better job explaining what the place is about.

Lastly, huge thanks to the team at Small World Adventures, Chris Ryman and his wonderful wife Andrea of Endless River Adventures International, and local Rockstar Abe from Ecuador Paddling for showing me around and welcoming me to this great country. If you want to explore this part of the world, contact anyone of those guys.

Maxi Boofing, Rio Oyacachi. photo: Greg Daspher

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When I first got invited on this trip, I thought to myself what an awesome opportunity, mid ski season kayak trip, nice and mellow, not too stressful white water, perfect for when your body is not finely tuned for hard kayaking. But little did we know what we had in store.

It seems that I seek out trips that hit the category ‘mission status’. Both physically and mentally challenging seems to be the backbone of what I deem an inspiring idea. For example, The Triple Crown and the Homathko Ski and Kayak trip (which I unfortunately had to miss due to injury). Trips where a successful outcome is a little harder to achieve provide me with a greater sense of accomplishment and it is usually partnered by a far greater sense of adventure.  In this instance it turned out that ‘mission status’ seeked me out involuntarily.

The time frame we were working with was a little too small. We only had 7 days to complete the 226 mile section, making this 3 times faster than the average raft trip. As it turned out the first two days were a little unproductive, we only covered 36 miles. We all got into the Grand vibe, sit back enjoy the views, late starts and plenty of beer were all helping to shake the fatigue of the 36 hour drive from Whistler. That evening we were still a little blasé, “Arrr, we will just crush a 70 mile day tomorrow then the rest of the trip we can chill out”. That morning we were up at 6:30 cooking breakfast getting ready for a big day. We were on the water as early as possible and set out with the intention of making some serious ground. We paddled through to 6pm just before dark. We had only covered 43 miles. It quickly dawned that to be at the take out at 2pm, 4 days later we had to cover this distance every day. Early start, late finish, head down, crush miles was the tone of the trip from now on.

As it turned out this was somewhat beneficial. Arizona was experiencing a deep freeze, -36 degrees F was the lowest recorded temperature up at the canyon rim some 1500 meters above. It was easily the coldest kayaking I have ever experienced. As the photos show we had some 5mm of ice glued to our helmets causing large icicles to form in front of our eyes. Our dry suits and life jackets were encased, our shoes froze solid within 5 minutes of the being off your feet! The second you stepped out of the kayak and stopped moving you began to get instantly cold. My favourite conversation prior to the trip was with Louis he said, “ I’m not going to bother bringing my winter sleeping bag were heading to the desert, the temperature is usually up in the 50’s-60’s this time of year, that way I can bring more beer!”. He wore every piece of clothing he had and spooned a hot water bottle each night to see him through, what a trooper.

The scenery on the Grand is second to none, words can’t describe so I’m not going to even bother just check out the photos.

The team was awesome, myself, Steve Arns, Louis Geltman and Tom Janney. Great banter and awesome morale resulted in an incredible trip, cheers boys!

For the trip I used a Delphin Surf 155, this boat was awesome. I loaded it to the brim with everything you could possibly need for a week long self supported trip. Paddling a fully loaded sea kayak down class 3-4 whitewater is awesome fun, check out the photos! I would highly recommend this boat for any trip of a similar vibe.

Thanks for reading, enjoy the photos

.

Ric Moxon