Leif and Natalie

Here is a video that I put together from the weekend. I didn't have much footage of other people, so it's mostly my personal race experience. Enjoy! It's that time of year again, where I scramble into the car and book it back to Colorado from the Slave River, just barely in time for Gore Race. This year, I trained extra hard while I was up at the Slave, trying to paddle hard for about 10-20 minutes on flatwater every day. Also, this year I had the large Bazooka, a very fast but still very manuverable boat. I was primed for a rematch against Conor Flynn, my nemesis. Conor is a fast paddler. We've had a rivalry for a long time. At the last Gore race, Conor took first in the creekboat class, with me in 6th. My private goal this year was to beat Conor. Come race day, I was feeling pretty stoked. Conor and I paddled in together across the flatwater, each of us paddling a little faster than we were comfortable, but trying to pretend that it was easy. He was th

Here are a couple handy Slave-related links: Map of the rapids last year ( week 1 , week 2 , week 3 , goodbye , wood video ) Best of this year 2012 Week 1 2012 Week 2 Week 3 - Or maybe week 3 and a half? How did a whole week go by without me updating the blog? I'll tell you how: there were sick waves in every day, so I paddled all day, then went to bed. The water levels have just risen back up to 5300 cms (187,000 cfs), so nothing really good is in. However, for the last week or so, we've been surfing Rollercoaster almost every day. We took a lot of video, so we don't have quite so many stills, but it's still a large amount of media to sort through for this post. Paddle mount GoPro . Slave 2012 The lighting is cool! Go do a trick right now! Photo by Mike Seitzinger. Slave 2012 Clearly not staged at all. Slave 2012 One of my favorite photos of all time. Slave 2012 From Slave 2012 From Slave 2012 We built a staircase for the Cassette takeout