by Tyler Curtis.

With days flying by and the Ottawa at prime low water levels the surf just kept on providing amazing sessions. As the water dropped lower I moved my surfing from the goods of McKoy’s to the famous Garb Wave. This thing is so sweet! You can do every trick and with it being in my back yard I could paddle two and three times a day!

I managed to get some time surfing with some of my great friends and also did some shit talking in the eddies to keep everyone motivated to go bigger and crash harder. Thanks to the Ottawa River Crew for pushing me and reminding me of how great it is to be playboating on the Ottawa. A few photos from the numerous super sessions at the GARB:

We are proud to hear that Astral’s Phil Curry (Philip’s dad) has successfully completed his cross country bike ride.  Phil has been sending us updates from across the US for the past few months and we are inspired to see him standing at the finish line!

By Rafa Ortiz

They say happiness is only tangible when shared. Like good music that flies straight to your soul, a breath-taking adventure to the other side of the planet wouldn’t be as exciting alone. And I couldn’t imagine a better way to finish 2009, a year of hard sweat, than with my friend Daniel and both of our fathers on a weeklong journey down the mighty waters of the Siang River.

I’m not going to lie; I just couldn’t wait to see my dad’s expression when paddling into the 20foot giants of the Siang. Ever since my first visit to the furthest flung state of India, Arunachal Pradesh, I wanted to share the feeling of remoteness with my family. I remember looking at these emerald Himalayan-fed flows and imagining what my father would do in such awe. But as soon as I found myself on the water back then, the humongous rapids felt inconsiderable for a family trip. Nevertheless I knew we’d find the way.

Three years passed and my dad kept talking about the possibilities of the trip. By then my friend Daniel and his dad Jaime, were on board with us. On November 2009, a positive answer from my good friend Roland Stevenson, owner of RiverIndia.com, appeared on my Inbox. He assured me that the lower section of the Siang would be an outstanding run in our kayaks, as it is for the rafting trips he’s been delighting adventurous Americans and Europeans with for the past couple of years. So enough being said, we spun the globe around and left home in search for new stories.

When you sign up for a trip of this magnitude, you are in for a journey. Several flights and a couple days of ‘jeeping’ up the mountains spice up the trip like masala on the rice. And by the time you make it to the put-in town of Tuting, you are ready for the water.

The first splash on the face quenches the thirst for adrenaline and drips cold down the nerves. Setting off into the main flow, the four of us are reminded promptly that we are only particles of sand taken for a ride. The 30′000 cubic feet per second of this green monster come from Himalayan ice melt, and now run free into the Brahmaputra plains. As we pinballed down the first crashing waves, we started getting the experience that we all came for.

Apparently we had cut a deal with Indra, the Hindu God of weather, because we got to enjoy weeklong clear skies. Every night we cooked warm dinner at our campfire and relaxed: just laid back on the sand and sailed away into the deepness of a star-punctured sky. When you leave behind your watch, TV, phone, and go back to the simplest human basics, you realize none of these are necessary, but enjoying yourself, Nature and the good company.

Paddling finally calm water one exhausting day, we heard Pulsing rapid on the distance and felt an upbeat on our hearts. Expecting it as the biggest rapid on the run, we got out to look at it with our own eyes. A two-story high wave thundered right in the middle of the line, and many other big ones followed it. I looked at my dad, who assured us that the wave we were about to crash into was the biggest he’d ever seen. First would go Daniel and Jaime, followed by us.

Jaime is one of the very pioneers of kayaking in Mexico and a world-round tripper. Today his son and pupil Daniel would lead him down the spine of the monster, into the maze of whitewater. Watching them from shore, we got to experience our two great friends turning into ants on the flow, Daniel punching waves with Viking skills, then Jaime holding the right strokes and his teeth tight together. We eventually heard them shout in excitement and success.

And then was our turn. I looked at my dad. He looked back. I could feel he’s nerves and anxiety turning into concentration, so we silently walked towards the boats. Paddling upstream and into the flow we could hear nothing anymore, not even the roaring ahead. As we started taking the first strokes that sent us onto the right line, we took charge.

I couldn’t really stop looking back, as we rode down this beast. Seeing my dad’s expression made me feel the adrenaline of the moment through his nerves too. The first hit was wild. I came out with my heart at full-speed, to see my dad take an unexpected flip. The freezing water and the turbo-currents make the situation tricky. His right blade came out first. Then with a big jolt he managed to flip the boat around, and kept taking down the beast. Half a minute later we met at the bottom and then had to wait another half to get our breath back.

Six days and plenty of intense rapids later, we managed to reach the promised destination. After many nights lacking TV’s and phones, unfortunately you start missing the traffic and the chaos. Before we knew it, we’d be sitting again in our regular lives, with a slight taste of chai remaining in the very back of our mouths.

So if you’re mourning a damn controlled planet get over it, it will be years till they burst. You can keep working hard on building yourself a time machine to fly back before the damn era, or simply book a ticket to India and find yourself an adventure in a place where time doesn’t run that fast.

For further information visit www.riverindia.com , and find your own journey.

video by Gareth Tate

Tucked away in the Great Smoky National Park lies one of the southeast’s premier steep creeks. Adam Bixby, Evan Garcia, Gareth Tate, and Adriene Levknecht head out to the Raven Fork on a sunny spring afternoon.
Shot March 30 2010. Level at the bridge was around 9in.

Note- This video is in HD format, for slower internet connections select “HD Off”

Ravens Fork Spring Update from Gareth Tate on Vimeo.

video by Gareth Tate.

Last November an Asheville crew went to check out what Mexico had to offer. Mexico turned out to be a beautiful country full of wonderful people, food, landscape, and whitewater.

paddlers:

Laura Farrell, John Shannon, Gareth Tate, JJ Shepherd, Ben Stone, and Toby MacDermott

Photos and text by Kyle Dickman.

For the last week, we’ve been in Laos kayaking portions of the Mekong River to research the effects the proposed Don Sahong Dam will have on the main stem of the river. To see exactly where the crew spent their time paddling, check out their SPOT Messenger map. This dam has the potential to stop fish migrations up Khone Falls, with potentially disastrous effects on the region’s fish populations and as a result, food supply.

EP National Geographic Mekong Expedition

Share your Adventures with SpotAdventures

From National Geographic Adventure:

At Khone Falls, the river divides into hundreds of different channels and drops off a 60-foot cascading waterfall. Which channels fish use to migrate depends on the size of the waterfall. Basically, the bigger the vertical drop, the fewer fish use the channel to migrate.

We’ve outfitted Trip’s kayak with a depth-finder and a GPS to map water velocity, depth, and gradient. We’re hoping to figure out what the migration parameters are for different species of fish (as in, big fish migrate up this channel because the water velocity is less than 20 mph, or whatever the case may be). What we find, will tell us if other channels share the same characteristics as Don Sahong, the site of the proposed dam. Don Sahong is hypothesized to be used most by migratory fishes because of its relatively mild whitewater.

We’ve been at Khone Falls for four days now. The first two days we rode mopeds past water buffalo and monasteries to scout waterfalls. On Sunday, we decided to run Somphamit Falls, a difficult stair-stepping 60-foot drop with fish traps lining the banks. Trip fired it up, recorded the data, and sent it to Sea Floor Systems, the California-based company who designed the system we’re using to process the data.

The fish traps suggest fish use Somphamit Falls as a migratory channel, but the data will show us whether they’re making it past the waterfall in dry season or being turned back. Does this channel share some of the same characteristics as Don Sahong? I’ll let you know what we find out.

See more photos from this expedition in the Gallery

Volcan Villarica

by Todd Wells

Photos by: Candace Sanders, Erik Parker, Jason Cohen, Hannah Kertesz, and Ben Kinsella.

Spending the last semester of my high school career with the World Class Kayak Academy (WCKA) has been unlike any of my previous academic experiences. WCKA is a traveling college preparatory school that focuses on whitewater kayaking. One quarter of each semester is spent studying and kayaking abroad, while the other is spent traveling along either the West Coast or East Coast.

My journey with WCKA began at the airport in Dallas, Texas where I met with my nine classmates and four teachers from all over the country. After our brief introductions we left for the eight hour flight to Santiago, Chile. In Santiago we loaded our kayaks and gear onto our 17 passenger van and its accompanying trailer and set out for the two hour drive to the Rio Maipo.

The next day, in the town of Banos Morales, I began my first day of the WCKA lifestyle. Waking up at 7:00 in the morning we started off the day with an hour of work out. Shortly afterward we sat down to a beautiful spread of traditional Chilean breakfast prepared by our local cooks, Israel and Estrella. After breakfast we all prepared for our first of five one hour classes. At first sitting down to a class of five students seemed awkward, but within the first hour of class I grew to appreciate the small and interactive classes. At noon we took an hour break from class for lunch then finished the last two periods of the day. As soon as all of our classes were finished we loaded our boats into the trailer and drove to the put-in for the Upper section of the Maipo River. At the put in we geared up, chose a buddy for the day, and talked about safety precautions and communication on the river. Between the big waves and high volume rapids of the Rio Maipo we all enjoyed getting to better know each other. After a couple hours on the river we returned to our camp for a hearty dinner where we discussed plans for the next day. Finally, before going to sleep, we each spent what free time we had finishing our homework and preparing for the following day.

For the next few days we followed a similar schedule, keeping each day fresh with different classes, original workout programs, and new sections of river. On one of our days off from school we all hiked to a lush valley beneath the towering peaks of the Andes and enjoyed a refreshing swim in a beautiful spring fed lake. After enjoying all that Banos Morales and the Rio Maipo had to offer we packed up our gear and moved south to the Rio Claro.

Though we spent less time on the Claro, we all had plenty of fun between the perfect waterfalls of the Siete Tazas (Seven Teacups) section and the crystal clear swimming holes less than a hundred feet from our campground. The Claro is one of the most beautiful rivers that I have ever visited, but it is a very popular tourist destination and its banks are heavily littered in trash. As part of WCKA’s dedication to community service all the students and teachers spent four hours one afternoon removing litter from over a mile of the river. In those four hours we removed over 20 full trash bags, and at the end of the day rewarded ourselves with a dip in one of the pristine swimming holes. At the end of our stay at the Rio Claro we packed up our gear and drove even further south to Pucon.

Here in Pucon I continue to enjoy living the World Class lifestyle of school, kayaking and culture, and I only look forward to what the next four weeks here in Chile have to offer.

For in multi-part Chile update and more whitewater stories visit toddwellswhitewater.blogspot.com

Capo Retig boofing on the Siete Tazas

The team in between classes

Falling off the Middle Palguin

picking up trash on the Rio Claro

Miestro Capo on the Palguin

photos © Kyle Dickman

text courtesy of EP and Under Solen Media

Epicocity Project is known for paddling some of the world’s most endangered rivers to promote conservation. But last week they kicked off an expedition on dry land - The Elephant Ivory Project - a project aimed to save wild elephants from the illegal ivory trade.

This fall, the explorers will team up the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington to collect DNA samples from elephants in the remote African jungle. These samples will help to complete a DNA map of illegal ivory poaching hotspots. With this data, scientists can pinpoint where illegal ivory is coming from and send resources to stop it in those areas. For that expedition, the Epicocity crew is venturing to a country considered too dangerous and remote for scientists to travel - the Democratic of Congo.

But before they make that trip, the team needs to research where the illegal ivory is being sold… And that’s why they’re exploring Thailand.

“Day one in Bangkok and I’ve already been offered ivory,” team-member Trip Jennings said.

The EP team is in the epicenter of it all. Bangkok has the largest ivory market in Asia - with most of that ivory coming from African elephants. Just few days in Bangkok and they can see that the ivory trade is booming. Poachers kill elephants at a rate of 10 percent per year. With just 470,000 elephants left in the world, it means that in just a few years wild elephant populations will disappear.

The EP team is determined to stop that from happening. But in order to be successful, they have to know what they’re up against - and that means researching the ivory trade in Bangkok and talking to the folks who are leading the conservation effort… And of course meeting some elephants.

To find elephants, they drove into the country and met a man taking his elephants out into the forest to eat. He let them take a ride.

“Elephants are amazing creatures - intelligent, gentle and powerful. It’s heartbreaking to know that poachers kill more than 100 elephants every day,” team-member Andy Maser said. “But it’s not hopeless. Twenty years ago, with a global upwelling of support, the ivory trade was stopped, nearly overnight. We can do that again.”

So, what can you do?

1. Support the Elephant Ivory Project. 100% of your donation will go directly to the expedition and it’s 100% tax-deductible. Let’s save some elephants!
2. Visit www.elephantivoryproject.org to learn more. Knowledge is power. Poachers kill more than 100 elephants every day. It doesn’t have to be that way. Pass it on!
3. Don’t buy ivory! The U.S. has the 2nd highest demand for ivory. Think about it

Read more stories from the field on the Elephant Ivory Project blog!

by Tyler Curtis

Photos by: Jakob Sedivy

To celebrate Xmas we decided to head north to get on a few runs, which I haven’t paddled for a few years! Our first pit stop was the Rio Laja. This short section of whitewater is pure gold. It is combat paddling at its finest with little to no eddies and a continuous gradient which is full of sticky pourovers. None stop action for 3-4kms. The greatest part about his river is that you can walk the shuttle in a quick 20min.

At this point it was starting to get late so we decided that it would be the perfect place to camp for the night, enjoy some grilled sausages and beer, and celebrate Xmas eve. Nothing like a good fire, good friends, and sky full of bright stars!

I had heard about the expanding road into the Melado Valley, which is a tributary to the Rio Maule Valley and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to paddle this super remote river surrounded by beautiful Chilean Andes Mountain scenery. We first stopped in the town of Amerillo to get some beta on the water level, pick up a few things to eat for the night, and see about finding someone to help with shuttle. After some talks with the local mini-market owner, Luis Alejandro Salinas, he volunteered to join us for a night camping in the mountains to help us with our shuttle the following day!

We then spent midday in the local swimming hole hanging out with the local hoodlums and being the gringo attraction for everyone.
After a punishing 3 hour drive into the valley to the end of the road and put-in for the Rio Melado we found another choice camping location. We packed it in for the night and readied ourselves for the long day ahead..

In the morning we woke to a temperature of about 4 celcius..Cold! A quick breakfast of dinner leftovers and we were onto the water. The Rio Melado is a spectacular run. There is no real difficulty to it as it is the perfect class III-IV river with outstanding scenery. Everything can be scouted from your kayak. The whole run was about 18km in length and took us most of the day to paddle..
This was truly one of the great wilderness runs of Chile..

I will let the photos tell more of the story and the next up date is on its way.

Tyler Curtis

by Tyler Curtis

It was the time of year again to pack up the paddling gear and jump a plane to the paddling paradise of Chile. It would be my 11th season in a row traveling to this amazing country and with my vast knowledge of rivers and recently released Guide Book ‘Whitewater Chile’ the possibilities for great whitewater was endless. A large number of paddlers headed for Chile this winter and the rivers were relentless in delivering punishment. The swim count was out of control and broken paddles became the normal everyday occurrence. A ton of rain fell in Chile this season making for high water levels and epic creeking!

I arrived at the Santiago airport to meet with my favourite paddling partner Logan Grayling who I would be kickin it with for the trip. Chilean buddy Peletroke cruised to the airport to load us into his rig and immediately head south to the hucking capital of Pucon! Our first day on the water was the Rio Nevados, which has to be my favourite run in the area! A perfect water level and sunshine day pumped us up for what would look to be a great Freeboat kayaking trip..

Day two we wanted to turn up the volume and go stout. We packed in some breakfast and headed for the Palguin for a date with the Palguin Medio waterfall. So excited! This would be my second visit to this perfect waterfall and my energy was huge! A quick look at the 23 meter waterfall was all I needed to fire it up. I slide into the water and paddled myself to the lip and rode the shit proud. Landing at the bottom my skirt blew off and I became another number in the growing swim count!

Logan cruised next with a similar story. His paddle was ripped from his hands and he also became another swim statistic. What a great start. Day two and we both claim swims..

Days three we headed for a quick run of the Upper Palguin. Rallied the portage a few times for fun! Always an interesting run, never the same and never clean.

Stay tuned for more..

Tyler Curtis