Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Local Video


Heres a delightful little nugget by none other than Louis Bissonette from past season. Oh heck yea.


Update from Terrace



Ran into an old paddling buddy ben Pittman at a music festival couple weekends ago. Convinced him to come to Terrace for some weekend boating. It wasnt that hard.. . Shwabinga!

 

pittman 



benny on first slide


entering crux of rooster rapid

bottom of slide number 3



rivers aint the only big things up here!

More to come soon from Northern bc

Yes Please Kind Sir.


Checked out Zymagoetz river late last night and after a few big surfs at Roadside in near dark we decided that this wave took precedent over basically anything planned for today. Left at 630am and drove the 45min up a logging road to this beaut. We also hit up the section above and a big rapid at KM15. Their ain't just creeks up here!
I've also included a few choice visual nuggets from a session 2 weeks ago on Dogdish, another local wave.
samuel drouin, roadside attraction



photo:     s.drouin

photo:  s.drouin

photo:  j.timmerman

zymagoetz slide rapid

big f-off hole


DogDish
photo: g.thibodeau



Until next time, from Terrace, BC......

Northern BC Creeking: T Town

Photo: Jean-Francois Bisson

Every time I think this place can’t get any better, I get a full face-slap of awesomeness in the form of new and challenging whitewater. I am not sure what is harder these days, deciding which runs to do out of the large list of surrounding potential, or keeping myself motivated with my studies. Ill let you know when I find that balance, pass or fail....
I have been fortunate in having a solid group of Yukon residing Quebecois in town for the past couple weeks who are always up for boating. My lawn is littered with boats, tents and gear; wouldn’t have it any other way. This is perhaps a different story for my landlord... I am halfway through an Emergency Care practicum in an out of town hospital, so every day off I race back to Terrace to keep boating with these guys.
In the past two weeks we have covered all the classics around Terrace, as well as many not-so-classics. These include some higher than recommended runs of some out-of-the-way creeks, and a few park and hucks. The day before yesterday for example we spent almost 7hrs total of hiking for a first D of pretty remote creek. Turns out the water was mucho high, too much in fact to run the big boys which included a curling frothy crap-your-pants 50footer, and another beautiful clean 40 footer with technical class 5 lead up (at current river level). Both of these falls occur within a couple hundred yards of each other, and will be good to go when levels drop, mark my words. It is worth a mention that a few kilometers down river of those two falls is another 40-50 footer, but that one looks horrible and lands on rocks. Definitely more walking than boating on that trip, but is an example of what is to be discovered in ‘em hills with a little effort. Each of the runs shown in the following pics are each worthy of a write-up, but pictures will have to do for now as I am currently back to work.

Headed to Butze Rapids, Prince Rupert

Granite Creek
photo: d.schwartz

T-cup, Granite Creek
photo:d.schwartz

Kleanza Creek, a T-town classic

Put-in drop, Blue Fungus, East Boulder creek (low!)

Maintenance in Rockstar Canyon, Williams Creek

Guilluame running lead up rapid, which sets you up for the first major Rockstar drop

worth the work, Rockstar Canyon


2nd main drop in Rockstar

below Rockstar canyon

well worth the hike, Location X

all up in it, with Louis looking on - first drop on Khatada River
photo: Jean-Francois Bisson

Louis on Khatada, first drop

Last drop, Khatada
photo: Jean-Francois Bisson

Wesache falls
photo: Jean-Francois Bisson

Scissors beats Paper, Louis goes first and ops for the ol' paddle toss
photo: Jean-Francois Bisson

after Louis's little mishap, I decided to hang onto my paddle!
photo: Jean-Francois Bisson

Sam Drouin on a fluffy rockstar drop
All in all, pretty solid 2 weeks! Until next time..........

Winter Ecuadorian Goodness


2012 has been very generous thus far! Since January I have been fortunate enough to paddle many new places with a whole lot of great people.
 Things started out with a Christmas break surf trip to my home-town on Haida Gwaii, in the true NorthWest of BC. As per usual, the Islands offered up some class swell. This gave me a chance to put some new carbon surf boats acquired in November at the world championships in North Carolina to the test. Highlight was one solo afternoon where the only thing bigger than the snowflakes obscuring my vision was the perfect pitching 6footers. I also enjoyed making snowballs from what accumulated on my deck between sets and pelting my mates freezing their asses off lying in the water on their surfboards.

After my trip to Haida Gwaii, I spent a few days skiing at home in Terrace BC, then packed up my car, slapped on some studded winter tires and drove the 14 hours south to Vancouver where I wrote my Nursing registration exam (which I passed!). Immediately after my exam I crossed the border and drove to Seattle where I spent a sleepless night at the airport before hopping on a flight bound for Quito, Ecuador where I was to meet up with a crew of friends for three weeks of South American whitewater.

some warm water boating
Kevin meshing with some locals
Dusty-Bear protecting the bags......... at all costs.


















 It’s hard to summarize my trip in Ecuador. The crew I was with was the raddest group of people possible. Kev, Dusty, Dan, Aliye, Daphnee, you guys rock and roll! When not running beautiful (boofy) rivers we spent in jungle missions, experiencing new culture, and yes... partying our faces off. We primarily based ourselves out of a town called Tena, and I was surprised at how set up things were for international kayakers. In Tena we stayed at El Welcome Break hostel, which caters to boaters, is clean, and cheap. It also is home to numerous hammocks which we logged considerable hours in when not on the many surrounding rivers.  The whitewater was all good to go around Tena, and we managed to find some tasty nuggets to fall off. Ecuador carnage consisted of a popped out shoulder for Kevin Whiting who managed to pop it back in under water and hand roll back up, and one massive impact to the back of my head on a rapid called Dos Huevos. I won’t go into details, but was very much thankful for having a reliable brain-bucket. Even such, I was treated to an underwater comet-show and had to concentrate extremely hard to remember how to roll back up.

El' Welcome Break Hostal, Tena
myself on Hollin Chico        Photo: Kevin Whiting
Dusty-Bear, in charge and going large    Photo: Kevin Whiting
Kevin Whiting following his brother
Dan Whiting with a big stroke off the lip   Photo: Kevin Whiting
After Ecuador, I flew back to Seattle and power-bombed my way back North to Terrace as the snow reports were huge and all my friends back home were raving about conditions. February and March were filled with some days in the mountains and two more trips to Haida Gwaii for some surfing.

Haida Gwaii sunset
My first river run in Terrace was my birthday present to myself on March 20th. After a half hour of waist-deep snow hiking to the put in, I was then held hostage in the middle of the river by an angry momma moose who was rather upset with me and would not let me away from the rock I was cowering behind. After almost an hour of mock charges, I decided enough was enough and crawled myself and my boat up the snow filled river bank to portage around the moose and put in below her. I’ve portaged a few rapids in my life, but that was my first wildlife induced portage.  And, after putting back in and floating down river a few minutes, I almost made a mess in my drysuit when the baby moose (that mom must have been trying to protect) ran out of the woods to check me out. Needless to say I survived, but it was a close call for my underwear...

 In the past month, the rivers around Terrace have been steadily increasing in volume and awesomeness. The most consistent run lately has been the Kalum river, home to Slapwave, which right now feels like surfing on the back of a herd of hungry stampeding vampire grizzlybears. Other highlights of the past month include a run down the notorious Copper km8 canyon labelled by a brand new Northern BC whitewater guidebook as: “not for the faint of heart, intense, violent, chaotic”.  It’s basically a 150m continuous big volume rapid with 4 or 5 must-make/significantly consequential moves in quick succession, which leads into a big dark (but short) canyon. I love Northern BC, and mark my words, with the snowpack this year, it’s gonna be a doozy.
Samuel drouin with an icy scout of the stout, Copper 8km

the bottom of the entrance rapid
 Until next time.......