Being hereby contained within an account of my attempts to go with the flow, both on and off the river, the people and places i meet, and such like and so forth.
Thursday 2 November 2017
Out around the inside
Out around the inside (of Western Canadia)
The boys paddling across Clendinning lake, one of many glaciers to be seen hanging on the peaks overhead.
Another one for the books eh? How was your summer? Got any exciting winter plans? Just cosying up in front of netflix? Or spending the whole time debauched in perverse sexual deviancy? No? Just off to Chile again? Well bully for you.... im going skiing. In the meantime, heres another blog post plastered with my dodgy photography. Hope you enjoy it. I didnt actually take many pictures this summer, largely cos i was kinda down on my camera as various paddling magazines have declined to publish some of my better shots as theyre simply not high enough res. Which is fair enough i suppose, i do have a fairly basic slr with only 16mp and its not even fast enough to shoot RAW. Ooo, photo geekery and whining, just what youre reading for! If you are reading.... Well i made excuses last year so at least im consistent. And i did take some, and i did some boating!
Slimmer n Stryder enjoying the big water. We had the highest levels on the Horse since 2012, good times.
It was a super busy summer of working for me. This year i relocated (again) to jnterior BC and the town Golden to work on the mighty Kicking Horse for Alpine Rafting (Chur Jimmy). As one of the head guides i was in the thick of it all season, pushing rubber for all i was worth. Although i managed to get a few runs in here and there i was largely restricted to after work Horse laps. Could be worse eh? Whilst the the lower canyon is still (and for the foreseeable) off limits to commercial rafting it is still possible to discretely access for kayakers, and if youre happy running the bridge drop you dont even have to be discrete about it. This comes with a warning, some of the locals are very jealous of their river and if they suspect that youre a better kayaker than them, they may try to kill you in order to remain the best paddler on the Kicking Horse. I shan't name the guilty, but watch out, thats all im saying.
Jair Stolz enjoying Skookumchuck creek in the sunshine. Lovely.
Being in Golden gave me a grand opportunity to check out various runs around the interior that i have either long held an interest in or didnt actually know about, the above pictured Skookumchuck creek for one. Located a wee bit north of Kimberley in the East Kootenay, this river is a wee gem! Paddling ABC calls it "the finest class 4 that mere mortals can aspire to run" and theyre not far off. Its 16km of super continous, super fun, low stress class 3/4 boating with just rapid after rapid of big smiles and good times. We had a great time, especially the hour we spent watching Slimmer and Jair cut a log out of the one of the rapids. Good work boys, carry on ;) Thoroughly recommended for anyone on an early summer BC roady.
Thea, seen here trying to hide her face as she was ashamed to be seen with us. I would be to....
There are many fine runs to be found in the Upper Columbia valley and the East Koots, such as the Spillimacheen which i managed to get onto again in September. Thanks for organising again baby face :) Or its tributary, Bobbie Burns creek which we checked out back in June. Super fun at the high water levels we had, tho youd want a fair bit less to take on the 30' in the middle i reckon. I did get onto my after work runs tho and a couple of quick rips out to Johnstons Canyon and Pipestone were nice highlights in the calendar.
Erik Shore crushing out the best boof on the Pipestone on a very pleasant summer evening.
Johnstones is one of the wierder kayaking experiences you can find. Its a super short run, packed with gradient including the one time world record waterfall at the top. That thing is disgusting and naturally i never even considered it but walking up the run is the odd bit. Its just outside of Banff and is one of the premier tourist attractions in the area, with a nicely paved walkway out over sections of the river, railings, viewing points, the lot. Even late in the day as we were, its still packed with tourists meandering up and down and asking you questions about 'rafting' and if youre going to shoot the rapids. Wierd i tell thee. Still, some fun moves in there.
Yours truly sending a big ol' over boof on the 1st drop. Photo: Thea Froehlich
La Slimolina braapin' it up. Photo: Thea Froehlich
Aside from working i did make it out of town for a few wee trips, not least a fine day out in June to check out Sutherland falls with my man Liam "the baby otter" Fournier. We had a good ol' scout of it and deciding we had plenty of juice decided to send her. After waiting what felt like ages for Katrina to show up to help us out with a little safety we fired it up. Liam volunteered me into going first and i had a good line, waiting below for him coming after. If anything Liam had an even better line but when his boat skipped into the eddy, we noticed that the front had been bent almost 90' up by the impact. Just water mind, and altho it had been bent on the top deck before this was still a hell of a bend. And that was the end of kayaking that day.
All ready to tuck up. I was expecting a big hit, but we had enough juice it were'nt'nt too bad. Photo: Liam Fournier
Early in the summer i made a bit of a mad rally all the way to Nordegg to jump on the Bighorn. It was a wild stormy kind of a day and driving into the Saskatchewan valley i was confronted with one of the strangest sights i ever encountered. The whole valley was wreathed in bright green mist, rolling across the highway and dropping vis down to 100m. For a second i thought the Russians had finally stepped up the chem trails conspiracy (i dont credit that garbage either, do i look in need of a tin foil hat?) but quickly realised it was tree pollen. Now ive seen clouds of it before, and watched the streets running yellow after a good shower at the right time in June but never like this. Crazy, i just wish id pulled over to grab a photo but i was too intent on getting to the river.
Babyface battles the Bighorn. Ethan on Curtain Call. Its brown as they say.
The Bighorn is one of the best runs in the Rockies, one of my favourites. Its only a short run, with i think 6 rapids, each one formed by a ledge of the crumbley shale that makes up the main ranges of the Rockies. Its wild stuff, with loose pebbles of it visible in the big boils at the base of the larger drops. My pardner rocked up and we had a fun run, with the school activity group giving up on their rappelling at the put in to check us out while we ran curtain call. Ethan had been planning on staying a day or 2 as the level was good and more peepls were on the way but as i was making my way home one of the heaviest thunderstorms ive seen in a long time was hammering the area, with lightning flashing from peak to peak and wind threatening to toss me off the highway. I got a phone call to tell me the river had spiked 3 metres up the banks in an hour. Bit too much we thinks.
Ethan gettin' accelerated. Particle accelerator.
And free falling. Free fall. Told you i'd make you famous bud ;)
All of which is a round about kinda way of getting to my big highlight of the summer which was a crack at the infamous Pingston creek. Ive been itching to run it for years, and ive still got the middle and lower sections to tick off. I was really after the upper, and thanks to one last minute booking mix up i got my chance. Rallying over i managed to meet up with Adrian and the boys and we got on her. It more than lived up to my expectations, miles of super fun technical class 4/5 boating with some sick moves and sweet boofs. All in the spectacular granite wonderland of the Valhalla range of the eastern Monashees. We had a fun level, tho it could stand a little more. Adrian essentially spent a week staking it out this last year and can now rightly be considered king of the Pingston. Hope i get my laps in next year bro!
Scotty Hall getting into Highway to Hell, one of the bigger rapids on upper Pingston.
Adrian Kiernan getting his schteezy elbows up midway down the same rapid. Granite loveliness.
Although i didnt get as many laps as i mightve liked, i did at least get to run the bottom drops down into the lake. And Adrian made a sick video of his time bumping the Revelstoke classics, check it out
Me on the bottom Pingston drops into Arrow Lake. There were 3 here. Til the lake rose 20'. Photo: Scotty Hall.
All in all, a reasonably successful summer all things considered. I was far from done boating tho and come the end of the rafting season had big plans. Ive been trying to get a trip to the Homathko put together for a couple of years now and this time we had the crew and it was all good to go until just before we were due to set off and sudden spell of hot weather spiked the river and it doubled flow in 24hrs putting it well out of court. A small consolation was that although the airline didnt want to refund my deposit, they did say i could put it towards any other flight with them in future so ive got $100 down on a Homathko trip already. I guess we have to go do it sometime then, what a burden. In the meantime, since nobody wants to spend all that flight money on a portage fest we blethered away and decided a better option would be the Clendinning. For those that arent aware, the Clendinning is a tributary of the mighty Elaho which comes in some 30 odd kms above the infamous Fear Canyon section. Its a BC overnight classic tho has been more rarely run in recent years due to massive increases in the cost of the necessary flight in. In terms of the whitewater, its super fun continous boulder gardens in its main reaches with some sections that would become very hectic indeed at high flow. We had a fun medium sort of a level but there were still long sections where youre running down just thinking "i hope this all goes, cos i cant f&^%in' stop!" Largely due to the continous nature of the whitewater, i was too busy paddling to take many pics of the river itself but the esteemed Dave O'Sullivan made a nice wee video of our trip
What i did was take a bunch of lifestyle type shots of the stunning scenery on the flight into and put in at the lake. Words, nor pictures can do this place justice, easily one of the most amazingly beautiful places ive had the fortune to visit. Enjoy
All loaded up and some remote place to go.
Monsieur Reeder enjoying the view.
Some of that view. Youve never seen so many glaciers!
The put in. Flying down between the granite walls starts to give you a sense of the scale.
Looking back up towards the glaciers at the head of the lake. We had a good ol' scout round in the sun.
Da Boyz at camp in the morning, waiting for the sun to hit.
And that was that. A good trip over to the coast, with some Cheak action and a sweet overnight. I headed home after that and had a bit of time with my darling wife until our ol' buddy Kurt rocked up and i helped him getting down to the states as he had a complex vehicular ownership situation. A sweet couple of days in the gorge got me bagging my 1st ever Truss lap, cant wait to get back on that thing with some more juice! I rolled back up with one eye on the weather which duly delivered and bounced to the island for my first time out there. Unfortunately i didnt grab any pics, it was just too rainy most of the time and i didnt feel like risking my camera. The water gods delivered tho and i got a small sampling of some of the island classics. Man, there is some amazing whitewater there! Thanks again for the hospitality folks :)
Anyways, home again and about to start skiing once more. The farmers almanac has us getting another cold snowy one and it was right last year so it must be true ;) Fingers crossed.
One last thing. Its almost exactly a year to the day since my man Will Hartman was tragically lost to us on the river. I still miss him, most every time i get in my boat. Funny how some people touch you eh, but he did. If you knew him, you did good, if you didnt, he was ace, you missed out. Heres to you bud, much love
Will contemplating S-bends on the upper Jori. He barely said a word, just got in and styled it. Typical.
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