Date: July 31st, 2009
I’ve done a fair amount of running, riding and messing about in New York City’s central park. But I’ve been worried about getting mugged, run over by a sprinter, flattened by a drunk on a pedicab, but I have never once worried about the trees. Who knew?
Actually, trees have fallen and killed a fair number of people over the years in the Rockies. A couple of kids near Marble Canyon, someone on the Banff Springs golf course, and likely some other chaos I don’t know about. I don’t mean to make light of dangers of trees falling over (and I’ve been fully terrified in the lodge-pole forest around here during a windstorm), but I think falling trees is really not a major concern compared to driving, eating, drinking, or walking down the sidewalk. But stay heads up out there, the trees have a real bad attitude…
Posted in: Blog
Date: July 27th, 2009
Alaska in the summer is fun–back home now, still thinking about the super long days, glaciers, icebergs, rivers and all the other stuff I saw. I was working for an Australian TV program (I’ll reveal more on that later, not sure they want their cover blown) doing a story on glacial recession and climate change. Basically my job was to climb, kayak and otherwise mess about on the glacier with their host, and then talk about the changes I was seeing around the world as glaciers recede and the climate changes. I really enjoyed the experience, good people and a great place.
“Beat that Will Gadd, I double dog dare you fool. Just because you climbed Mount Robson (3,950 m) in 17 hours, doesn’t mean you can beat ME, I’m the best, or maybe you’re scared? Wink. Wink.”
Right Mr. Trotter, let’s get ‘er ON!!!! (say that in a Mr. T voice). While it sounds like he had a fun day out in the mountains and may be sorta fit for a youth, he doesn’t know fast from 5.14 in the real mountains around Canmore. Prepare to suffer fool! No winking, no nudging, I’m seriously pissed off and looking to open up a can of speedy whup-ass on the escaped chalk-eating rock monkey who has been poaching lines around here us locals would climb if we weren’t so fit for slogging up choss heaps in the summer. I know choss hiking like Tigger Woody knows golf, no contest fool!
Posted in: Blog
Date: July 21st, 2009
I’m off to Alaska for a week of climbing, kayaking, paragliding and filming the same for a TV program. Stoked for that, I’ve never been to Alaska in the summer before, should be an adventure…
I’m also wasting way too much time
on this, the Red Bull X Alps. I know the terrain well as I raced the X Alps in 2003, and covered it as a reporter in 2005. It’s an amazing event, the “live tracking” can take over your life.
Sports: Had a good Sunday–we hiked into and ran the Pipestone, which had a surprising amount of water in it (good) and then went and mountain biked to Ross Lake. Super fun afternoon of just being out and about in the mountains, love it! If you haven’t ridden to Ross Lake you’ve got to check it out, it’s one of the best rides in the Rockies that I’ve ever done (if you’re uber-fit bike nerd ride it twice or something). Most rides in the Rockies go up and then down; Ross Lake just rolls along for a little under an hour each direction, and it’s all rideable with a few fun stream crossings and places to fall down. I know this because I fell down when my chain came off. I know my chain was off because I tried to hop my front wheel up on a little bridge thing and didn’t have any power in my pedals. First time I’ve ever landed on my head mountain biking, kinda cool.
Plus some other rivers, hikes, bikes, and general activity. Summer, yeah!!
Posted in: Blog
Date: July 13th, 2009
Thanks for all the comments, real opinions and historical smack-talk on the last post–yeah, I remember the Wave Sports days and Chan well. A great era, be fun to see Chan and a few of the guys again (ran into Jordy, also from the same era, on the Skook). More on boats later, but I’ve just gotta write about rivers for ten minutes when I should really be doing other things just ’cause I’m so fired up! I’ve run a bunch of new, for me, rivers lately: The Elbow, Ram, and Toby Creek. Photo at left on the Ram, thanks Shane.
Elbow River: Show up at the put-in at six p.m., meet a crew, start paddling toward the lip of Elbow Falls without looking at it. I’d scouted this once at higher water while on a climbing mission in the area and remembered it as a kind of four-foot flop into a pool. At low water it’s a bigger drop, which I figured out as I hauled ass off of it with hard boof… Landed level-flat on green water, hurt my back/right little stomach muscle a bit more. Continued on down the river without actually having read anything about it in the guidebook as usual, so it was all a pleasant surprise. Super fun slide. Warm water. So stoked to catch this run with enough water in it, thanks to the crew for a fun evening paddle.
Ram River: The South Ram is one of those “Gotta paddle it man!” rivers, an epic two or three day wilderness run through some of the best canyon scenery in the foothills of the Rockies. For those who know the area it’s sorta between Nordegg and Rocky Mountain House. The only problem for me is that I’m a family man without the wife part of the family at the moment–this means I’m limited to one-day runs. My mom is in the house to help out and could likely deal with a longer trip, but there’s a fine line between help and abuse of same. The solution was to do the two or three-day trip in a day. About 45km of river, with three burly portages and enough action to make paddling that far in a day difficult. Especially because we’ve had a lousy water year here in the eastern Rockies, and low water wouldn’t work.
My bud Patch wrote a little story up on the trip here with some more photos from Shane. We had a magic rise in the water level thanks to perfect rains, and a magic run.
It was a really solid day, a sort of alpine climb on a river. I would paddle the river again instantly, especially with the same or more water. There are literally hundreds of little waterfalls pouring off the edges of the canyon, and a strip of green grass running along the rim above the black rock for what seems like the entire run. It’s just a magical place to kayak, with enough gnar to keep it interesting but also a lot of nice cruising where you can just relax and look around while paddling and boat-scouting ledge drops. Our day didn’t feel rushed at all, just a nice long and difficult but ultimately smooth day out with friends. I could write a long article about the day, we saw and did so much that it was almost impossible to believe everything happened in one day. So many cool canyons, big waterfalls, animals (it was like a safari film at times!), driving, moving in a wild place with solid partners… Yeah!
Out of Canmore at five in the morning, back at 10:00 or so, just in time to put the kidlet to bed. Thanks to Shane (the recon probe–send him in) and Patch (Logistics–I still have no idea where the river really goes, I just drove where he told me to) and Rachel (A fierce shuttle driver–farm kids always have cool skills like how to operate bolt cutters).
Toby Creek: So it was the Elbow on Wed., Ram on Friday, toilet replacement and work on Saturday, and then the Toby on Sunday. The Seven Canyons run is bad-ass, and unlike the last half-dozen or so runs I actually read Stuart Smith’s guidebook before I put onto the river. I’ve been really enjoying the on-sight nature of the last few rivers, but I remember Toby Creek from when I did a race there when I was 14 or so and wanted a little info.
The reputation of the canyon below the race course was huge then, and hasn’t slackened much since, but we had a solid crew–Shane, Mark, Larry and myself. The run’s reputation is well-deserved–the 7 Canyons on Toby Creek is one of the finest canyon runs I’ve ever done. We had a little excitement before we even hit the first real canyon. One of the first drops had a couple of big diagonal holes in it (Oh, the water was at a “solid” level–most people run Toby when it’s low for smart reasons), plus a river-wide log right after the holes that was just off the water enough to slip under–a technical drop. I did a deep exploration of the pour-over on the left side of the second hole, but managed to reach up with my paddle onto the rock beside the pour-over and yank myself out. Cool! Mark wasn’t so lucky, and went for the full rodeo in the same hole. I was eddied out behind a rock and couldn’t see what was going on–Shane hopped out of his boat with a throw bag, and I decided to stay in mine in case I need to chase a Mark or his boat. Eventually Mark flushed free, and Shane hit him with a five-star throw-bag toss. Wicked. Mark manned up and ran the rest of the river cleanly; I might have walked out after the beat-down he took, but he’s tough.
The rest of the run went smoothly except when I rolled right above the only must-make ferry, my first combat role in a bunch of runs. Toby is definitely a really serious run, with some must-make moves and gnarly drops/portages in awkward places. I’d have to say that it’s my favorite river of the year so far in terms of its paddling in the canyons and just general in-your-face nature. I don’t think you can paddle Toby at any level and not find yourself very deep into a hole or two, which is cool if you’re not right above some “Well, you might live but I ain’t paddling into that if I can help it!” kinda drop. Shane has been the man with the plan on at least three (Cataract, Yoho and now Toby) new rivers this spring that I’ve done, thanks for that.
OK, that’s the last week’s sports action. I really, really love running cool rivers with good people! And my elbow is healing up at roughly the same rate I’m destroying my back/stomach muscle as I learn how to boof modern boats off drops, and how not to lift toilets… The water is definitely low now in the Rockies, but all we need is a little more rain to make it all dreamy again! I’ve done six (seven?) new rivers this season, which is a record for me–modern kayaking is awesome!
Posted in: Blog
Date: July 9th, 2009
So I need a new kayak. Back in the day (15 years ago) I was a sponsored paddler (which meant free to cheap boats and free beers from Chan, great era!) with Wave Sports, but since I turned into a climber/paraglider pilot the days of cheap boats are well behind me. Anyone who wants to pro deal me a boat let me know, but I won’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen (Note–I just bought a boat–full retail pop, so it’s too late anyhow). I keep reading reviews on-line for information about the new boats, but most of the reviews on-line are written by people who are sponsored by the company who made the boat they’re paddling (gee, now that’s unbiased and useful information!). How about this: if you want to write a review at least put on the TOP of the review that
you’re owned by the boat company and have no impartiality whatsoever–don’t add that disclaimer sometime after the original review, way down below the meat of the text.
And then there are the reviews written by people who actually bought boats; with rare exceptions, everybody loves their boat. This is very sweet and nice, but for christ’s sake it’s the internet, be bitter, have opinions, mouth off, actually have an issue with something! The average kayaker on the internet is a pale shadow of the average climber, paraglider, mountain biker, hell, even phone user that uses the internet. I wanna hear that this boat SUCKS, and why!
But the worst reviews are written by those looking to get sponsored; they are desperate for free plastic like a junkie for heroin, and they will write nothing but flowers about the smelliest ass-product imaginable. You total chumps! Let’s have a little integrity here; I understand if a sponsored athlete doesn’t want to piss his sponsors off, but if you can’t write something sort of realistic then don’t write it at all. As anyone I work with at Arc’teryx or Black Diamond knows, I pull no punches on product design, and I’m not happy until the thing actually works like it’s supposed to. If it doesn’t work well then I don’t go writing glowing reviews of junk on the net, that’s not how it’s supposed to work. Maybe kayak companies are different and expect total slave-like submission from their sponsored paddlers? Something is weird in kayak review land, and it makes finding real information about boats near impossible.
There’s only one solution to a situation like this: I’m going to write my own reviews. I’ve paddled five boats in the last month, including the one I bought. Stay tuned for the first review, which will be short and not so-sweet, kinda like the boat it’s about.
wg
Posted in: Blog
Date: July 7th, 2009
So I just did a new-format interview... Kinda cool.
Posted in: Blog
Date: July 6th, 2009
Dropping into the unknown
One of the things I really like doing in life is on-sighting, a climber’s term used to describe a climb where the climber starts at the bottom of a completely unknown climb and goes until he reaches the top or falls off. This is in contrast to a “redpoint,” where the climber works all the moves, falls off lots, then climbs to the top without falling. Anyhow, climbs, carpentry, kids, school exams, rivers, whatever, it’s just more fun to be in it all at once without a lot of knowledge. If the objective is really big then of course you research and so on forever, but then it often boils down to the “on-sight” effort anyhow. An onsight requires skill, in that you understand what you’re doing and why based on similar sets of experiences from past efforts. In climbing you know a crack will accept protection, and that makes the onsight reasonable. It’s that application of existing skill and knowledge to a new set of problems that’s exciting to me. If I had to do the same climbs, rivers or flights over and over again I’d quit–it’s just not interesting to do the same old thing again and again.
In the last week I’ve had a bunch of new onsights. A new railing on my parent’s house (well, more of a fence, but it looks nice, thanks to Gravity Gear for the help with the drill!), new steps on my house, and a new river yesterday. All great, all “onsight.” Love it!
The Yoho canyon was the run yesterday–I showed up at the put-in with exactly no idea of what we were up against. The looks on my old and new friend’s faces showed that something serious was on, and by the time I pulled my sprayskirt tight I’d figured out that the run was kinda serious. The put in for the Yoho River is the best ever–there’s a huge waterfall, Takkakaw falls, booming in a 1000-foot white rooster-tail off one wall, glaciers, it’s just a rad place. The river starts bopping along in a fast but friendly enough way, but it’s white from all the glacial rock flour. Glacial rivers always seem to move faster and slightly oddly to me, maybe because you can’t see as much of the rocks and current due to to the color. I was paddling a new boat (full retail price!), and it took some getting used to. The river is fast, a bit pushy, and then it drops into a canyon that you supposedly can’t climb out of. I’m pretty sure I could climb out of it anywhere if I were healthy, but not with a boat and not with a broken leg. And if you swam it would be bad, the river just rockets along. I began to have these memories from years ago, these little oral flashbacks of, “The Yoho, yeah, that’s where X broke his leg, Y broke her arm, and Z lost everything but his underwear…” Holy shit, I’m on the YOHO!!!! I cranked my back brace down a bit and re-checked my sprayskirt, it’s that kinda place.
But our crew was super solid, and everyone kept it together through one of the coolest canyons I’ve ever paddled. Big deep drops, pulsing no-stop canyons, so cool! Two of my friends knew the run, so it wasn’t a pure onsight, but but it was a mega run! One broken paddle and a few rolls (I kept it upright if you count bracing with your head in the water as upright), but we all cleaned it. Modern boats and attitudes make the run easier than it was 20 years ago, but it’s still serious. One rapid has a paddle bolted to the ball in memory a paddler that didn’t make it out alive (I think we all gave it a touch for luck), and there have been more than a few rescues down there in the past. Most of the rapids are scoutable, but some are truly on-sight as the steep walls make moving around very difficult. Love it!
And now I’ve gotta figure out how to build a hand rail. Wish I knew more about carpentry, but it’s onsight time again!
WG
Posted in: Blog
Date: July 1st, 2009
I’m up in Jasper for a few days. I used to live here, and learned to paddle, climb, cave and generally get amongst it in the mountains of Jasper when I was younger. Last night I paddled the Athabasca, the river I truly learned to paddle on, as well as raft guide on. As the trees, waves and water flowed by I had so many deep river flashbacks. I remembered individual rocks from over 20 years ago, people I paddled with, the texture of the light, the flow of the water around rocks, beautiful memories I didn’t know I had. I love rivers as much as anything in the natural world, they are as perfect in their own way as any rock, ski or aerial line I ever experience. They are the pumping, alive arteries of the mountains to me.
Today I hooked up with some super solid Jasper/Mt. Robson boaters (Andrew and Sean) and had a go at the Fraser Canyon. This was THE bad-ass rig when I was in high school around here, and I only ran it a few times back then. Maybe because I took the worst beat-down of my life in the canyon below Overlander Falls. When I was about 19 I swam a half mile or so of vertical-walled class five canyon with a fair amount of water slamming through it. I’m still not entirely sure what happened before the swim; I have some ego-saving memories that likely aren’t the truth, but the end result was that I swam what felt like ten miles of gnarly water, and I nearly blacked out in the midst of it all. Saw stars, puked, the whole experience. Broke an ankle… I didn’t paddle that canyon again until today, 20+ years later…
Today we bombed it on down through numerous drops to Overlander. I kept laughing in the middle of the drops–I’d feel my boat get kicked a certain way, and then remember the drop. Not a sniff of any drop in my mind until I was in it and making a move, then it would come back to me like a smell from childhood. I’ve had good luck this year with following locals down rivers, just follow ’em and have fun, and soon we were looking at Overlander, which I was sure I wasn’t going to run as it was the biggest, baddest thing in the area back when I was a kid. I had a look at Overland today and it looked feasible, which was worrisome–I mean, the legend, the monster OVERLANDER! I still walked it, just out of respect for the tradition of the waterfall… It’s hard to explain what that waterfall meant when I was young; now it’s probably had a couple of hundred successful descents, but I knew my business lay in the gorge downstream of Overlander…
Scout? Not with the locals, just line it up and go. I had to stop in an eddy above the canyon entrance and get my act together mentally. Just seeing the entrance to the canyon brought back a lot of memories, none of which were good. I even flipped over in a rapid just above the canyon, something I don’t do a lot normally. But the Fraser just has more power and general ass-kicking lurking in its green water than most rivers I paddle. I can run a lot of class V creeks and not flip, but I remember having to combat roll once or twice back in the day on the Fraser, and today was no different. The water level was somewhere around 100, which Sean said was a solid medium. Andrew thought that was high. I have no idea, seemed like a good level to me.
Then I was following Sean’s boat into the canyon, through the “Terminator” hole, surf the boiling eddy, couple more moves, into the big old eddy at the bottom I remember from when I was 19. I literally saw flashing coloured stars in that eddy back then, puked, and generally had some sort of near-death recovery from my swim. Today was definitely mellower, and I felt the weight of that beat-down from over 20 years ago lift off my shoulders. I’m definitely a better paddler than I was 20+ years ago, but I was also warm thanks to my drysuit and better clothing, with people who knew the river well, and generally fired up to give ‘er. The Fraser isn’t the raddest run I’ve ever done, but it sure was a nice day compared to the last time I had a go at it! Thanks to Sean and Andrew for a wicked day on the river. Kayaking good water with good people sure is fun!
Oh, and the kayak recovery program is working–my elbow is feeling way better, and all the kayaking is keeping me strong in the upper body… Yeah!!!
Now all I’ve gotta do is find a boat I love and buy it. I’ve paddled five different boats this spring… More on that later, I’ve got a completely pointless kayak review brewing up… Let’s just say that not all “modern” boat design is much of an improvement on what I used to run back in the Wave Sports days.
Posted in: Blog
