PaddleFest is organized by Mountain Equipment Coop every summer in order to give visibility to watersports in general. For Quebec City’s MEC, we have a terrific site near downtown with huge beach and stuff, next to St-Lawrence river. What was different this year?…the store agreed that it wasn’t the best spot to devellop the whitewater part so they asked me to set something up at a different place.
The Tewksbury section of the magnificent Jacques-Cartier river has what it takes for this kind of event ; calm/moving water for initiations, short class II/III for technical courses and nice stretch of class IV for a friendly boatercross, less than 20 minutes from the city! The local raft company (Rafting Valcartier) offered us their big put-in as the main place for exposants.
This first edition showed that whiterwater is growing up in Quebec area. All the classes were full (we even took lil’ more than the max capacity) for initiations and technics. 12 paddlers did the race and had a blast! Hopefully the first edition to a future classic!