Colorado Competition Wrapup

Natalie's final lap in the Homestake race. Full album

Well, it's that time again, where the competitions have more or less finished up for the season, and we have to brag about how well we did. This was a productive year for team Leif and Natalie. We attended the inaugural Auburn rodeo, the Teva Mountain Games, the Lyons rodeo, FIBArk, the Gunnison festival, and US freestyle Team Trials. In all but three of those events, at least one of us advanced to at least the first round of finals. Natalie had a top 5 finish at the Homestake creek race, and I podiumed at Gunnison. In fact, I actually took all three top three spots at Gunnison: First in the boatercross, second in the big trick contest, and third in the main rodeo. Also, it's hard to quantify, but I pretty much dominated the video of the Pine Creek race. My trashtalking was at a whole different level for that event.

Leif looping at the Teva Mountain Games in Vail. Photo by David Schmitt. Full album

However, if you've seen one rodeo, you've pretty much seen 'em all. At the beginning of the season, we were very motivated and took lots of photos, but after a couple weeks we began to lose energy, and focused more exclusively on paddling. Unfortunately, most of the photos from Auburn got corrupted, so we seem to mostly have photos of the Vail games. I was very pleased this year because Natalie and I were not the only paddlers in Fluid kayaks. True, those damn smiley faces still dominated the field, but there were a fair number of Solos and Nemesises putting on a good show out there.

Here's David Schmitt making a nasty face as he throws a mcnasty. Full album

Here is a slideshow of our competition photos from this season. Enjoy.