Well it snowed yesterday and the Ottawa river has been at -3 for over a month now which means that play here is not too great. Soooo I've been spending my time traveling elsewhere. A few weeks back a bunch of us headed to West Virginia for the Gauley Festival which by far was the biggest festival I've been to. The weather was amazingly hot and thousands of people flocked down the Gauley River, I've never seen that many people on one river at the same time. On Friday I competed in some parts of the Wave Sport Open on the Class IV section involving a down river freestyle on a rapid called 'Pillow Rock' and Down river mass races down a few of the other rapids. Jesse Shimrock took the overall win (in his creek boat), it was a good time all round as it was more about the carnage than being the first over the line :) On Saturday night it was party time, Vendors from far and wide were peddling their wares and it was a weekend warriors paradise...tents & tents of beer, freebies and bargains not to forget the pole dancing, karaoke and FEAR FACTOR. So I went to visit the guys in the Bliss-Stick booth but their booth was pretty deserted, weird I thought...then I heard a raucous behind me and turned around to find a massive crowd yelling & cheering. I push my way through the crowd to discover a line of people swallowing live Goldfish!!!!!! I soon find out that this is the second eliminition round of the Bliss-Stick fear factor. I don't know about these americans, whoever won, certainly deserved the brand new Bliss-Stick kayak they took home. A couple of weeks later, I'm off to the states again but this time to New York and the Moose Festival. The Moose river is super fun. It's a class IV+ run that has a tonne of clean slides and drops but still a fair bit of carnage potential. The very first rapid is called 'fowlersville' and it's a sweet 40ft slide but if you get it wrong you end up in a gnarly hole at the bottom, one rafter was in there for about 15 mins before Billy Harris pulled him out. We were pretty lucky as this year was the first time the sun came out for the festival in a very long time. It was still so cold that you have to wear every single piece of gear you own including mitts & skull cap but it didn't snow this year...bonus!!! The party for this one is a bit more toned down, there are about a dozen vendor stands, a band, beer tables set up in a building but the real party begins at the local bar (conveniently located next to our hotel room) after the vendor stands close up. So now that the festivals were over and Garberator still isn't back in on the Ottawa, we headed where the wave's were prime, Lachine. Lucky for us a friend of mine, Dave has invested in a jet ski so we were ready for action. Big Joe & Pyramid Wave were both wicked and we surfed our butts off for a couple of days before the Jet Ski died. The starter motor ceased after a spill and a couple of the guys ended up swimming/paddling with the jet ski for miles down stream before they got it to shore, so that was the end of that. So now I'm back at the Ottawa, praying for rain. I'll probably do a couple more trips to Lachine before I head to Costa Rica on the 19th Nov. I'm definitely looking forward to the paddling & sunshine there... I'll be back in NZ just after xmas for the rest of the summer, trying to get more footage for a vid we're doing.
Gauley Fest Sep 07
Tyler Gauley Fest Sep 07
LU Moose River Agers Fall 07
LU Crystal Rapid Moose River
Deuce Agers Falls Moose River
Moose River Fall 07
Paul Moose River Fall 07
Moose River Fall 2007
ON THE ROAD - FALL 2007
 
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