Leif and Natalie

A couple days ago, Darin McQuoid posted a relatively innocuous comment to his Facebook wall which sparked a heated online conversation. The debate revolved around the quality of online content. Here is that post (oh the technology!) Observe the number of comments (and click through to see if you can access them via facebook). You know what kayaking needs more of? Shameless sponsor plugs. And GoPro selfies. Posted by Darin McQuoid on  Wednesday, January 6, 2016 A few of my favorite bits (cherry picked, not to be taken as a complete picture), with names abbreviated to protect anonymity: JS: Don't forget a string of unintelligible hashtags Darin McQuoid: Or two strings if all the good ones won't fit in one. RKS: Small price to pay to do what you love... And you gotta start somewhere. As much as part of me misses the days where it took 1-2 years (or more) for a new DVD to come out, or months for photos to be released in a magazine, now a days the playin...

Based on my wealth of experience in patching two or three cracks in my Element, I decided that I was fully qualified and ready to build my own boat. The finished product, just 3 short years later The plan was to design a boat from scratch, because it was becoming increasingly difficult to find production boats that fit me. I liked the Element a lot, but it was just impossible to paddle in a hole, and it was also a little tough on highly concave waves. The long bow tends to hit the water if the wave is really curved. The design I decided to make was basically an Element without a long bow. I decided that I would make it a touch wider, like maybe an inch, and also give it a tiny bit more stern rocker, as well as a shorter and wider stern. I was going to keep the aggressive flared rails. That was where a lot of people raised their eyebrows, since it seems crazy. I was thinking back to the Liquidlogic Vision, which had apparently been acceptable in a hole, despite having some pretty ...

Greetings, fellow explorers! This week, the Leif and Natalie Show visits the distant NORTHWEST TERRITORIES, deep in the heart of a tiny North American country known as Canada. As always, we journey out in search of adventure and whitewater. Here is the video of this episode: NWT Waterfall Tour from Leif Anderson on Vimeo . HD! Full screen! Now! This week's quest was simple: investigate the mythical waterfalls on the many creeks surrounding the Great Slave Lake. These waterfalls are caused by isostatic rebound. The thick ice sheet laying over the continent during the ice age was heavy enough to depress the earth's crust around the Great Slave Lake. After it melted, the crust rebounded upward. The process of rebound continues today. The creeks and rivers in the region began to incise downward into the uplifting terrain, and the usual method of erosion is for waterfalls to form and gradually migrate upriver. Fortunately for us, there happens to be a highway that ci...

It's getting toward fall up here on the Slave river, and this is usually the time when things slow down. Paddlers go home, the weather cools off a little, and the water starts to drop. Ironically, this is also when one of the sickest waves comes in: Rockem Sockem. I've come up to the Slave 8 different years (or is it 9?) and have not yet been able to really surf this wave. Until sunday. Rockem Sockem.  Photo by Bryon Dorr, Exploring Elements On sunday, the levels dropped from just barely too high for Rockem Sockem straight to the low end of perfect, which is even more perfect than perfect. We went SUPpering at mountain for the first half of the day, then packed up all the cameras (not a lot of cameras - ALL the cameras) and rallied the crew to go surf. We took a couple rides at outrageous on the way down, since it was as good as I ever remember seeing it. When we got to Rockem Sockem, I was amazed at how good it was. It was even better than I had imagined. ...

This past T-giving Leif and I met up with Cody Beach for a trip that ranks in one of my top kayaking trips of all time.  I missed last year's Thanksgiving break trip and was super excited to break away from my research to head to the Pacific Northwest (aka PNW) for a week.  We just had a blast and Cody ranks as one of the best all time Leif and Natalie third wheels. I always appreciated his upbeat attitude and it was fun to have someone to make fun of Leif with.  I paddled a different run every day for a week and I had tons of fun catching up and paddling with friends in White Salmon.  Residents from the PNW would say that nothing was running, but when you are visiting, not much needs to be running to have a great time. We ended up paddling Canyon Creek, the Upper Upper Cispus, Ohanapecosh, Lewis Falls (upper run and lower Lewis Falls), the White Salmon from Farmlands all the way down to the Columbia, and the Little White Salmon. Some of my highlights from t...

This year at the Slave river Paddlefest, we introduced a new event: the GIANT SLALOM. It's not just giant because it's on the Slave river, but it certainly helps. Giant Slalom from Leif Anderson on Vimeo . The course was on English channel, which was awesome. English channel is one of the smaller channels, but it's steeper, and because it's so little, all that gradient is much easier to handle. We started river left, above the main hole. There is a line to the left of the hole, which is faster because you don't have to ferry all the way out into the current before starting to move downstream. After the main hole, the rapid necks down a little and loses a lot of elevation as it drops into a big V wave. The "gate" was in the river right eddy. You had to circle around a rock outcropping over there. The V wave in the fastest part of the course was not playing nicely. It tended to toss people back to the left, away from that crucial eddy. T...

This post is a little overdue, because I've been focusing on facebook publicity lately and letting the blog fall behind. We have a new facebook athlete page (you should go "like" us). The objective is to have a way to share stuff with all those people that sent me friend requests even though we have never met. We set a goal of getting more likes than Todd Wells' facebook page. He may be a bigger deal (maybe), but there are two of us, so... I'm not sure Todd knows about this. I mean, we're not really super close friends or anything. But I'm getting off track. The Gore race is one of my favorite events. This is the sort of race that I seem to be able to do well at. Small mistakes have a minimal impact on your time. It's really more about endurance and some flatwater technique. Apparently I tend to average out better than a lot of other paddlers in that arena. For a few years now, the Gore race, for me, has been all about me versus Conor Flyn...

This post is long overdue, and I am not going to do this run any justice, but here is a video and some photos of our Boxelder season from this spring. Boxelder Creek, Wyoming from Leif Anderson on Vimeo . Boxelder is a strange little creek near Casper Wyoming. It has sort of a Cali feel, with a fair amount of exposed granite, but at the same time, it keeps that manky feel that Colorado is famous for. This year, we completely missed the good flow window because we were gone for a competition in Montana, so all we got was the ultra-low water shoulder. However, even at low water, Boxelder is a fun run, and we had a blast mobbing down this creek. There are a lot of challenges associated with Boxelder. The first is access. In the past, we have been able to use a nice easy putin at a bridge across the creek. You had to hop a fence and take about 10 steps over private land to get back to the river, and as far as I know, this was pretty much ok. However, somewhat recently, the...