Labor Day Monday saw the first ever Raquette River Race.  For years paddlers have fantasized about how sweet a race on this northern gem would be.  It wasn’t until the five 2 nine crew stepped up that it actually happened.  When six Americans and and six Canadians showed up, we realized we had a real international barn burner on our hands.  Read the rest of this entry »

Review by Adam Goshorn
Action Photos by John Kern

Having entered the sport after the introduction of edges and flatter hulls, the majority of the boats that I have owned have had simi-planing hulls, including most of the creekers. Perhaps it is because of my introduction to planing hulls early in my paddling progression or perhaps it is just my paddling style, but I have almost always preferred boats with an edge I can use for ferrying, staying on line, and snapping into and out of eddies. The original Burn series was the natural progression from its predecessors (the H2 and H3) and certainly fulfilled my desires for snappy handling. As to be expected, the new 2010 Burn furthers the progression towards perfection with noticeable design changes, but none that are radically different from the original series.

I never like to review a boat until I have really spent a lot of time in it and gotten to use it in a variety of situations. I paddled the 2010 Large Burn a TON in the last 6 months (80+ river days) and I have had it in almost every type of whitewater. I spent lots of time on low volume creeks like North Carolina’s Green River and Johnnies Creek here in Alabama. I have also been able to paddle it quite a bit on the pushy, higher-volume creek style that characterizes Little River Canyon (AL) at a healthy flow. In June I was able to get a great feel for the Burn in a high volume river running environment when I spent 14 days paddling it down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. I feel that I have thoroughly gotten to know the new Burn design over the past 6 months and can now provide an informed opinion of its features and the differences from the previous design (which I also paddled extensively).

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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!