Leif and Natalie

This March-June, we both entered Darin McQuoid's March Madness photo contest. This contest is based on an old online photo contest that The Range Life blog used to host. I remember seeing the original once or twice and wishing I was cool enough to have something to enter. Well, years have passed, and now the contest is revived and lo and behold we are cool enough to have a ton of photos to enter. Throughout the competition, Darin provided commentary on the photos and results. The decisions were based on five votes: four judges and a popular vote. Darin was not one of the judges, so his commentary is unbiased and very interesting to read through. I've included links to his commentary at each stage of the competition. It's worth checking out. I've also linked to the site so that you can see what photos we were competing against. I can't repost the other people's photos without permission, of course, so you have to visit the original contest site to see ...

We've been talking about it for years.... a top to bottom no portage Slave River Rapids run (Fort Fitzgerald to Fort Smith, ~20 km). In the past, we've been turned off by the longish stretches of flat water that we'd have to paddle in our cramped playboats. Enter option Duo with camping and double date (minus the wine that I forgot to pack). It was a perfect two days of paddling, ~5 hours on the water + priceless hours hanging out on the rocks with our very close friends and Fort Smith locals, John Blyth and Gen Cote. We didn't take many photos, but I feel like the ones that we did get really captured the flavor of the outing. The team(s) at Fort Fitz John and Gen catch some air off of Rollercoaster Gen and Nat Leif and Nat at Twinkies John and Gen on Twinkies John being John. John's a little bummed that Natalie burnt the veggies Wow.  Just Wow.  I'm just a little scared. Inspired by Come Down to the River, circa 19...

Not only did the Slave claim my pants today, but also my boat and my paddle.  But loyal fans, the mighty river did not eat me and so I live to tell the tale. So, the Slave is very high right now, the highest we've seen it and I found this new epic epic epic wave with John Blyth.  Fast big and furious. See below.  Yet unamed.  (options: intimidator, medusa, fear itself, terror, hyra, leviathan, the punisher, panty snatcher) This wave actually has eddy service, which is odd for such a large feature.  If you flush it just takes about 10-20 minutes to navigate back to the wave depending on how many times you mess up the multiple ferries.   To get on the wave, you just have to enter surfers right through that big aerated pile of goodness. Like this (see above).  I was able to get on the wave with no problem about half of my tries with the other half starting and ending rapidly in some nose flushing.  Unfortunately, on one of thos...

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...