Leif and Natalie

Buddha, excited about Skook. As graduate students, Natalie and I have the best of both worlds: school vacations AND salaries. While most working stiffs got maybe a four day weekend to celebrate american thanksgiving, Natalie and I got a full 9 days, and then we even skipped out a day early for maximum slacking. Life is good. We used these precious days for a trip to the land of awesome; the pacific northwest. (The Slave was frozen over, so we couldn't paddle there.) First we drove through the night to Skook, and spent four days getting up before dawn to catch the good tides. The first day was particularly special, since we had misjudged the timing by at least half an hour, and ended up paddling in to the wave while it was still pitch black. We made it safely to the eddy above the wave, but even after getting out of our boats on shore it was too dark to see the wave. We paddled with Will Parham, Megan Harpam, and Natalie's brother Russell. Good times were had by all. Rus...

Attention world: Natalie has learned to panam. Consider yourself warned. From Mwave 9/2009 Details to follow.

My birthday was last Saturday on August 29. I didn't have anything more exciting planned for the weekend than painting the outside of our house on Sunday with Leif's mom Ann (soon to be my mother-in-law!), until Casper Mike (soon to be Bozeman Mike) had the great intuition to call me to go boating on Bluegrass Creek, WY. I jumped at the idea to run a creek which I have never run before. The trip proved to be just what I was hoping for. The creek was a perfect mix of heady whitewater with some steep drops and a nice long paddle in some beautiful scenery and awesome geology (minus the 20 fences that we had to duck under). Casper Mike put together a little video of the trip so you can check that out at: http://casperka yakers.blogspot .com/2009/09/bl uegrass-creek-g opro-cam-vid.ht ml The first mile of the creek is totally unnatural rip roaring good time. On Saturday there was 365 cfs being discharged out of Wheatland Reservoir #3 through a manmade rock tunnel and into an ep...

Mist rising off the river just below putin, at dawn on race day This weekend, Natalie and I headed up to the 2009 Gore Canyon race. I had just finished the three day drive back from the Slave, but somehow I ended up driving late into the night to get us there. We woke up early in hopes of getting a practice run in before the noon start of the race, since neither of us had run Gore since last year. However, the putin was deserted, and while we were hanging out making breakfast, a ranger showed up and politely informed us that there was no parking at putin until after the race was over. We packed up and headed to the takeout, which was a complete zoo. It was probably a good thing that we went to takeout, since we got to attend the racers' meeting and, you know, register and stuff. Of course, there was a lot of sitting around waiting for shuttles and such, but by about 12:00 we were back at the putin again, ready to paddle a few miles of flatwater and then RACE. The race went we...

Rollercoaster is a pretty nice, friendly wave in the Cassette rapids here on the Slave river. It's got some size to it, so large moves are not impossible, but it isn't too violent or trashy. The eddy is a little boring, due to the large distance that you have to paddle, but hey, at least you don't have to hike. We were lucky enough to get quite a few days there this year, as the levels changed around. Well, I'm not writing a guidebook here. I'll just let the photos speak for themselves. Begin photo dump!

Yes, I am still here. While I've been up here on the Slave, Natalie has been running all over the place, kicking ass at races , and posting libellous blog articles about me. But I'm not taking it sitting down. I've had a few adventures of my own. So many, in fact, that I haven't even had time to brag about them. Times have been crazy indeed. Since it's dark outside, it must be near midnight (since I'm in the Northwest Territories), so I'll just throw up a bunch of photos. Pow, enjoy. Maybe later I'll throw together some rollercoaster photos. If I feel like it.

I womped on good number of guy paddlers this last weekend at the Gnarrows Race on the Cache La Poudre to come in 4th out of 18 paddlers. For a complete pre-race to post race shit talk fest visit http://www.mountainbuzz.com/forums/f11/gnarrows-race-2009-a-26676.html The gnarrows race is hands down the best and most fun boater X ever. This low key event is attended by locals and is not an official event. There are no entry fees, no bibs, just plain old fun. The preliminaries are usually held in heats of four or five and the racers paddle from upper narrows all the way down through lower narrows, it is exhausting! The top two paddlers advance. Kevin, whom I call fancy no pants due to the fact that he was wearing a leopard print thong for the event, almost caught up to me on the last drop of narrows, but I eeked through to semi-finals. Semi finals and finals are held just on lower narrows. The key to winning these heats is to jockey for a good starting position. I had crappy star...

___________________ I am writing this post for two partially related reasons, 1. Nostalgia for my boating partner who has whisked himself away to Northern Canada to do nothing but playboating (what a pansy ass). 2. I feel like our creekboating adventures have been severely under represented this summer on our blog. This is: partly because some person (who I will refrain from naming) only likes posting our kick ass photos on Fluid's site, partly because I am lazy and have not posted them yet, and partly because our two person team hasn't been taking as many photos as we should while running the shit. Apparently most rapids 'are not worth the trouble'. Unless otherwise noted, all pictures of Leif were taken by Natalie and visa versa. NARROWS and THE BIG SOUTH, CACHE LA POUDRE We often run things in tandem and I am especially grateful to Seth Murphy for snagging these shots of our blitz run down the narrows at four feet. I believe that this was the last run Leif and I ra...