Soul Gypsy

Recently Ive been paddling quite a bit actually. One of the better trips was a few weeks ago to Revelstoke, BC area. We left Bellingham around 9pm, and started the 7 hour drive to Revelstoke. We arrived at a makeshift campsite at around 4am. We slept, woke up and rallied the rest of the drive into Revelstoke. After meeting up with our friends Joey and Blair, we found that the Pingston was too low. After much debate we headed to one of the cleanest 60ish footers around, Sutherland falls.
And it was a good flow.

Blair Trotman ran first and had a great line.

I ran next, and did somewhat of a boof to stomp. It didn’t hurt at all surprisingly, probably one of the softest landings ever, even though it didnt look like it.

I was fired up, so i ran back up and ran it again.

This time I had a decent line, plugging but twisting a bit at the end. It hurt much more.

Todd ran next having by far the best line of the day. Unfortunately his paddle caught the water wrong and his shoulder was dislocated on impact. We got him back to the car, got his gear off, and relocated his shoulder. We headed back to Revy to recuperate, spent the night at Joey’s house, and awoke in the morning with St Leon creek on our minds.
Me, Todd and Chris on the Ferry to St. Leon Creek.

St. Leon creek has some amazing drops. The put-in is just down hill from a natural hot springs with a lot of nudity, and pachuly oil. We put in and came upon a sweet triple drop. An 8 footer to 5 foot boof with a nasty hole, to a sweet slide. I did probably the biggest aerial brown i have ever done on the top 8 footer. It was nice!
Brown!!! The first stage of the triple.
The second stage of the triple.

Me starting the fun slide. This triple drop was very fun!

Chris at the end of the sweet slide. It mellows out in-between the drops with some fun boogie water, then all of the sudden we came upon a huge horizon line. A very fast, fun slide awaits. Probably around 80 feet long and maybe 60 ft tall. It was very fun.

Me on the slide. Speeding into the pool. After the slide comes a sweet mini gorge that unfortunately was choked with wood. We portaged, and the gorge ended in a sweet 30ish footer.

The last falls, a super great, clean waterfall. Gotta love BC.
Chris chillin out with a beautiful look back up St. Leon Creek.

After St Leon we proceeded to meet up with a bunch of Mt. Bikers, and had a pretty fun night filled with lots of beer drinkings and hot springs.

I didnt feel great in the morning so i took a little nap in GnarCar. Chris thought it would be funny to take a picture.

We finally gained motivation to go kayaking. We arrived at the Kuskanax river, a sweet class 4 ish section with some great waterfalls.

Kuskanax river with some beautiful classic BC gorge scenery.

After the Kuskanax we hiked up and ran sweet park and huck 20ftr right on the side of the road called Gardener creek.
The top drop on gardener.
The last falls on gardener.

…and from the bottom.
Check out the sweet little video I put together from the trip.\

This ended up being one of the most fun paddling trips of the year for me. We were able to find some stuff that none of us had done before, and all in all it was a great trip. We are bummed about Todd’s shoulder he is having surgery in september and no doubt after that he will be back out killing it as usual. Heal up buddy.
Until Next time.

A few weeks ago was the Calaghan creek festival near Whistler,BC. Calaghan creek is a beautiful classic BC creek with sick rapids and beautiful scenery. The festival was to raise awareness about the fact that like most creeks in BC, the Calaghan has a hydropower license on it, and could be dammed soon. Being one of the most beautiful and fun creeks in BC, it would be a terrible thing to lose this river. Some of our most precious creeks are already lost to damming projects, like the Ashlu. We need to fight the damming of rivers like this. The festival itself was a great time. We camped right at the Calaghan takeout. The race was a huge success. There were 18 people in the race altogether and about 10 people paddled the creek that day running safety and enjoying the sunshine. There were about 20 spectators that hiked in to watch the race at the biggest waterfall. I was surprised to find out that Kurt and I won the race because there was some competition for sure. And just like any event it wouldn’t be complete without a little carnage, a few swims were had and only a few kayaks were broken. Here are the final race results.

Fred Norquist – Kurt Braunlich – 16:55

Matt Kompass – Ben Hawthorne – 17:09

Mark Basso – Benjamin Hjørt – 17:23

Greg Dashper – Mikael Aubin – 17:29

Jakub Drnec – Matt Mackinnon – 18:17

Jordie Mackenzie – Bryce Shaw – 18:31

Spencer Cox – Sean Allen – 20:05

Ali Marshall – Steve Arns – 23:40

Jonas Grünewald – Leif Embertson – DNF

Cold river cooled beers were had at the takeout followed by a short awards ceremony and then talk from Jakub Drnec of the BC Creek Protection Society. We then started the party up by watching huckin huge’s new flick, Haymaker. A good time was had by all, and it was all in the name of saving the calaghan. Steve Rogers shot some incredible photos of the event, check them out.

Steve Arns talking about how the race works.

The scene before the start.

Kurt and Leif chillin pre-race.

Me chillin before the start of the race.

Layin treats on the top 15 footer.

Spectators watching just a regular old spectator sport?

Jakub and Matt coming through a sweet curly rapid just below the first waterfall.

Ali and Jonas chatting about someting.

Me in front with Kurt right on my tail. We were running close.

A crumpled nose. Calaghan is not super nice to vacant kayaks.

Observing the damage.

3rd place- Mark Basso and Benny Hjort

Ben Hawthorne and Matt Kompass taking second. Nice work guys.

Me and Kurt taking the victory south of the border to Bham.

Max getting his party on!

Overall the event was a great success. Everyone had fun, and i’m excited for next year. Calaghan truly is a beautiful run!

This spring Evan Garcia, Pat Keller and Candace Sanders rolled up to the northwest on an epic stouting mission. They called me up and told me to meet them out on the OP to check out Hamma Hamma Falls, first descented by Todd Gillman a couple years back. The falls is a stout 20 footer into a 60 footer. Its stout. Pat ran first and killed it, Evan ran next and styled it as well. I ran and had a good line despite having to battle a little undercut wall on the left. It was a great day. Here is a sick Photo that Candace Sanders shot of me on the second falls.

Then a few weeks ago Demshitz came through and were ready for stouts. So we headed to Hamma Hamma once again. The video tells the most complete story. Check it out.
Demshitz represent.

Canyon creek of the Nooksack is a small tributary that comes in just below the canyon section of the north fork. It comes from high mountain valley that reaches almost clear to the Canadian border. Although all the runs on the Nooksack nearby are almost all bedrock style, Canyon Creek is much more manky. After a short bushwhack down a steep hill, you will come to the creek, which at this point consists of landslide boulders, creating terribly manky drops. We spent the first little while portaging. After running a few manky rapids we finally came upon some bedrock. The creek got better and better after that besides the loss of my GoPro HD to the river gods.
Jamie Klein on a semi-clean manky drop.
Me coming through the first drop of that good ol’ stuff we love-bedrock.

Chris Tretwold airing it out on a sweet boof.

Here is a little video I put together from the day.

It was a good day indeed.

When Todd calls and says “hey man, ive got something sweet, wanna go to BC this weekend?”, It probably means its gunna be a good old fashioned BC bushwack to a worthy creek. Then he texted me some photos they had taken when they scouted it a few days prior. Pictures of clean waterfalls and a kickass gorge met my eyes. I dropped other plans and headed up to the squamish area. We made some delicious food at Bryan’s house, and went to sleep stoked to go explore Raffuse creek. We woke up super early and drove to the creek which just happens to be crossed by the road to Skookum Creek. We hiked a few miles up the creek on a nice trail. Then we picked the least menacing spot in the dense bc hell f*@k, we did some classic BC bushwackin down to the creek. We put on, and ran through some really cool mini gorges like this one.

Bryan Smith photo.

We then reached some cool low volume boofs like this one.Chris Tretwold Photo.

The gorge started to get a little deeper and steeper we came upon this sweet Double Drop.

Boofs like this don’t suck.

Todd Gilman Photo

Cool shot of me resurfacing. TG photo

The second stage of the double, good stuff. CT Photo

Chris Tretwold charging of the first part of the double, reppin dat WA apple phat! Tg photo

MMM The second drop from above. Tg photo

Shane and Bryan in some fun boogie just after the Double Drop.

After some cool boogie and mini gorges, the Creek got quite a bit steeper indeed. We came upon this, and of course Chris Tretwold fired up some stout wood removal by walking across the big log, then sawing a smaller log in half so we could run the stuff that came below.

It was definetly brown.

The eddy just above a sweet 25ish footer.BS Photo

And Todd Launching off of just another sweet BC waterfall. BS photo

The 25r from downstream, with the crack rapid soon afterwards. CT photo

And me dropping in on a really cool boof to crack drop.CT photo

From Downstream, Photo TG

And Bryan exiting the crack.TG Photo

Shane getting a nice boof into the pinch, stylie! Shortly after these quality drops, there was another waterfall in the 25-30ft range with a weird crack entrance that then proceeded to land on rocks. With higher flow, it would probably go, but the rest of the creek would be terrifying.

Shane Peering into the crack.

The creek then proceeded to throw a few walled-out, woodblocked smaller drops, so we had a couple proper BC portages.Up, out of the gorge, then yes right back down in through spikey plants and moss-covered rocks.

We then proceeded to meet the bridge that we had decided to take out at. We started the day at 8, and ended at 7:30 or so, it was a solid day of kayaking indeed.

Here is a short video I put together of the day, Check it out

Overall the creek was not quite a classic due to the amount of work required, but there were some great waterfalls and beautiful scenery.

Check back soon for more!

The Ashlu box canyon is one of BC’s best kayak runs. It runs through one of the most beautiful gorges I have ever seen and unfortunately it is not free-flowing anymore. This past winter it was dammed. After the local government denied the building of the dam, the government of BC created a law to over-ride the local squamish governments power to deny the project. The dam was built. Luckily kayakers fuaght for releases. Keep our rivers free flowing.For more info make sure to check out http://www.therangelife.com
Here is a short teaser from just another great day kayaking in BC.
Stay tuned for more.

A few weekends ago, I left Bellingham, WA to go home for the weekend. The 5point filmfestival was happening in Carbondale,CO my home town. It was a great weekend with lots of great films. My Metlako falls short played, along with some other very good paddling films. Tyler Bradt came and played Dream Result, which is a great film and has some epic kayaking indeed. My favorite film of the whole festival though was Anson Fogel’s film Wildwater. Anson uses state of the art technology to create the best kayaking footage I have ever seen.I flew into denver and of course right when I hit the mountains the snow started.

A snowy spring drive in CO.

Rolling into town getting a good view of Mt. Sopris, damn it was good to be home.

I spent some quality time on my trampoline making brown flips and such.5point filmfest.

Brie, Julie and Beda 5Point filmfest girls who organized the whole event. Thanks a bunch!

Introducing my film, Metlako falls.

This is a slightly shorter version of my film in a bit downgraded quality.

Here is a teaser of Anson’s incredible work. This guy inspires me to make films, best footage out there.

And of course, Rush and Tyler’s Film Dream Result was super good as usual.

Overall the weekend was awesome, make sure to check out http://www.5pointfilm.org and come to next year’s festival!

Alrighty well i’ve been sitting on this footage for sometime, and I finally decided to get it up on the internet. So here it is…

The 2nd Robe Canyon Downriver race was a huge success this past weekend in Granite Falls, WA. Todd Gillman put on a great race, and there was a nice turnout of 16teams! The weekend started out nicely.. I finished classes on friday, and was stoked for the weekend to come. Saturday came and in the evening we met up with a great crew for some of their first times down Robe. Rodrigo, a good friend from Pucon, Chile even made it up for the fun.
The crew after a great saturday evening run. Left to right, Rodrigo, Mike, LJ, me, Kurt, Louis, and Niko. Photo:LJ

We drove back to Bellingham that night where we met with the largest of burritos! Casa Que Pasa is whats up(if ya know what i mean)
LJ diving into a class 5 burrito. Lj is used to stouts so it was no problem for him, he styled the line and ate the whole thing! Damn thats a burrito right there! Photo: Rodrigo

The morning dawned and we drove down to Robe with the flows looking higher than we expected(which was great, 5.8 might be the best Robe level out there, and we got to race on it!)

A super good showing of kayakers at the take out, ready for the day’s festivities.
Photo:Rodrigo
Racers walking to the put-in. Photo by Ethan Smith. It was great to see so many teams fired up to race and tons of people just plain stoked to be out there. Gotta love events like this.. brings out the true kayakers. People are out there to have fun and run the river not to win any money at the end. I love the passion people have for our sport to all gather for such a fun grass-roots event.
Racers putting in on the flatwater above the run.There was a great showing! Photo: Ethan Smith.
The Racers getting ready for a great day. Somehow Niko and I missed this shot… Demshitz is out to lunch.
Lj looking onto Last Sunshine rapid, the third rapid of the run and indeed one of the sweetest.
Ethan Smith, Portland boater running last sunshine on a beautiful day.Photo: Cody Payne Thanks to Ethan for running safety/taking some great photos!
Chilean Paddler Rodrigo Tuschner running “da real shit” with that chilean estilo weon!
Rodrigo kills it and is always fired up to go kayaking, gotta love this guy, never seen a frown on his face when he’s out on the rio. Check out his website, Kayak Pucon. If you ever go to chile, this guy knows the rivers super well and has a great shop in Pucon so make sure to visit his site before your next south american paddling adventure!
Rodrigo immersed in frothing brown that is Robe canyon.
Brian and Aaron Johnson, the winning team amidst some fun boogie just after last sunshine. Photo: Cody Payne
Kurt and Louis, the third place team killing it just below last sunshine, these guys are incredibly fast with some insane slalom skills. Photo: Cody
Me approaching last sunshine. Photo:Cody Payne
My teammate, Niko Peha killing it in the race on only his second time down the river! He styled every single rapid except for the last hole which got him good…. He did insanely good for only running it twice. Unfortunately he swam out of the last hole, but we had a great run otherwise and it was really fun running the rapids right after each other with Niko right on my tail. Good times.
Brian and AJ the winning team running super close at Last Sunshine. Photo:LJ
Kurt Braunlich lining up for last sunshine… This guy is such a stylie kayaker, absolutely crushes it.
Tretwold getting some vertical in Last Sunshine, the gnomes are strong here.
Me boofing Hotel California, a pretty big hole with Niko right behind me. Photo: Ethan Smith
Todd Gillman and Bryan Smith at Hotel California photo:Ethan Smith
Bryan Smith charging into the bottom of Hotel Cali… sick shot by Ethan Smith
A new-zealander boofs hotel california. Cool shot by LJ
Downstream view, LJ photo
Racers Paddling down from the finish line.
The Awards ceremony. It was great to have everyone there, a good group of paddlers for a super fun event.
Ben Hawthorne hands his Robe over to Brian Fletcher.
Chris Tretwold and Way-rad Mcgnarly got the Gnome to take home after swimming into the finish with pure style.(The gnome is the prize for the slowest team) Ethan Photo.
Here are the Final Results. an (s) means there was a swim involved.
(1) Aaron Johnson / Brian Fletcher (27:56)
(2) Rob McKibbin / Ben Hawthorne (28:45)
(3) Kurt Braunlich / Louis Geltman (29:07)
(4) Jon Prentice / Darren Albright (30:38)
(5) Sean Bozkewycz / Adrian Kiernan (31:59)
(6) Bryan Smith / Todd Gillman (32:52)
(7) Hale Hannaway / Jon Dufay (33:58)
(8) Brad Xanthopoulos / Marco Colella (34:23)
(9) Jonathan Ehlinger / Andrew Oberhardt (36:10)
(10) Scott Waidelich / Nick Hinds (36:41)(S)
(11) Steve Arns / Matt Kompass (36:50)
(12) Fred Norquist / Niko Peha (38:03)(S)
(13) Ken Olivier / Sam the Kiwi (40:27)
(14) Shane Robinson / Brock Gavery (40:54)(S)
(15) Don Beveridge / Darcy Gaechter (41:30)
(16) Chris Tretwold / Ryan Bradley (55:15)(S)

Overall it was a great weekend. Big thanks to Todd Gillman and the TRL boys for putting it on.
Photos by LJ, Ethan Smith, and Cody Payne.

Check back soon for a Robe Canyon Video

Well the past couple weeks I have been paddling hard, “training” for the Robe canyon race which went down this past weekend(check back in a few days for a write-up). The snowmelt finally started up here in northern washington and some of my favorite rivers bumped up to decent(but not ideal) flows. I have been spending the last week on some of my favorite runs, Robe canyon, Middle Fork of the Nooksack, and the Horseshoe bend section of the North Fork of the Nooksack. It has been great to be able to paddle almost everyday. At one point this week, I paddled 6 out of 7 days while still being in school… that aint bad, although I wont mention how it affected my grades haha. I paddled robe 3 times, Middle Fork twice and The North Fork once. So in other words life is good right now. being able to kayak this much is awesome. Here are a few pics from a sunny day on the North Fork, the home class 4 run.

Me entering Bench Drop on a sunny afternoon on the NF.
Oh yea… BROWN.
Entering a lower in between rapid.
Soul cruisin’ in a shiny new Jefe Grande… Lovin that boat.
Boofing into SAT.

A fun boof in the middle of SAT.

I then met up with Cody(demshitz made star) and took him down a nice class 3 section with a beautiful view of Mt. Baker Cody loves Demshitz.

It was a good day on the Rio! The NF is beautiful. Pics by Cody and Fred.

I shot some great video of Middle Fork that will be out soon.