Leif and Natalie

So, I actually thought that I had posted this back in March, but I just realized that it never go put up! This Spring I was invited to speak at Colorado Whitewater's Fundraiser dinner. I'd never been invited to speak before so I really took it seriously. Since I was invited to speak because I competed in the Whitewater Grand Prix (see our past posts in November through January 2013 ), and because I’ve noticed a more popular interest by more people in “running the gnar,” I took the opportunity to share with everyone my two bits about how one gets to the level of boating you saw in the WWGP and more generally, What Makes a Great Kayaker. This talk was really geared towards class III-IV and new class V paddlers, but I think that everyone got something out of it, whether you didn't kayak at all, or already considered yourself a badass. I ended up putting together a talk that I'm pretty proud of. It was quite fun to actually sit, think, write down, and speak about s...

I've been feverishly slaving away at the editing machine, turning the cracks, pulling the levers, and taping all that footage together, and the tireless efforts have finally paid off. It was worth the three weeks spent without any sleep and the hundreds of dollars spent. With no further ado, allow me to present the fully edited Spring Break video to go with this story . At the end of the video is Jakub Nemec's hail mary to beatdown at Celestial falls. Shit gets intense for a while, and may not be appropriate for younger viewers (Finn... Ollie...). However, Jakub came out of it ok, and we did find that paddle that everyone was yelling about so loudly ("Katrina! Get the paddle!"). Mostly it was Galen yelling, because it was his paddle that Jakub was borrowing. I debated leaving out the beatdown, but decided to stick it in there for a couple reasons. The rest of the video is good clean fun, since I carefully removed all appearances by anyone associated with BDP. ...

Last weekend, Natalie and I got to go on a trip to the Southeast US for a Fluid kayaks team trip. This may surprise our more astute fans, because I am constantly making fun of paddlers from the southeast. Well, having taken a trip out there to experience their rivers for myself, I will say this: I was totally right. Everything that I said about the east seems to have been completely verified by my trip out there. Paddlers from the east are giant babies about cold weather and cold water, because it seems to always be warm there. Paddlers from the east are terrified of normal rivers because all their rivers are incredibly tiny and have no water in them. And don't try to tell me about such and such from the east who is the greatest big water paddler in blah blah blah. If that person is good at big water, I bet that they are FROM the east, but they did their big watering somewhere else and they now live in Canada or the northwest. Paddlers from the east have bizarre attitude...

This spring break, Natalie had to do some research setup in the Northwest Territories (that's a state in Canada) and couldn't come paddle, so Spencer Mauk, Josh Oberleas and I loaded up and headed out to the Pacific Northwest (that's those states in the US). I had a great time showing the boys down some of my favorite runs around the Hood river area. I'm putting together a video of the trip, but for now enjoy some of the photos we took. Spencer creepin on my long exposures We started out by driving through the night and sleeping for about 3 hours in the car in order to make it to the Wind River race. None of us had ever done the Wind, but we knew it was a pretty mellow run. I still had to lobby pretty hard to get Spencer and Josh to register for the race. In the end, I think it was the fact that entry fees covered beer at the takeout that really tipped the scales. The race was a ton of fun, and about the difficulty I had imagined. It was a mass start, so ...

It's amazing how my life just seems to go on hold whenever we come back from a trip. Since returning from Chile, I have felt like I have barely had any time to edit photos or video. However, by assigning smaller homework assignments and skipping out on my research, I finally managed to put together a little video with the footage from our Grand Prix trip to Chile. Chile Grand Prix trip from Leif Anderson on Vimeo . While on the final push of editing, I couldn't quite find a spot for the GoPro footage from the day where I swam on the Nevados. I wanted to sort of show the mini-story there, but there just wasn't a good place for it in the song, so I slapped together a short video of just the swim itself. Thus far, the video of the swim, which I spent about 10 seconds assembling, has been more popular than the main Chile video, which I worked on over the course of several weeks. Hopefully this says more about the paddling public than it does about my editing skills. ...

The Marathon The official video: WWGP Stage 5: Whitewater Marathon The marathon was the final race of the Grand Prix. It was a mass start race held on the Futalafu river on a longer run that included the section we raced for stage 4. This was my personal favorite race of the event. I think that it was a favorite of a lot of racers. This race was held on the Bridge to Bridge section plus two big rapids below: Mas o Menos and Casa de Piedras, and was very very physically challenging. The race was 25ish minutes of paddling hard through nonstop big water. The water level was very high. If you swam it would not be good because you'd be swimming for a while before you could get yourself to shore. The women set safety along the run for the men and then the men set safety for the women. What was neat about this event was that it was a mass start and that you knew who you had to beat to change your overall standings. To keep my fifth place spot I had to beat Louise Jull and N...

My best finish for the event was one of the heats of the Boatercross and my overall favorite race was the Futaleufu Marathon. After finishing up in the Pucon area with the Rio Nevados Sprint (Also see posts about the Gol Gol Enduro and the Puesco Boulder Dash ), the Grand Prix switched locations and spent a few days transporting to the Futaleufu, in the Patagonia region of Southern Chile. This was a minor logistic feat (thanks Emily!). We spent many hours in the car on bumpy roads and chilling out on a few ferries. Leif spent his time on the ferry taking nice photos. Leif was happy he was not in the Party Bus and he had a shoulder to lie on. John Hyland checks out the ferry.  Notice the guy in the sleeping bag. That guy is Kyle Hull catching some zzzs Rush finds some time to work on his Raps and Dane gets into crafts with the gals.  It was cold, I don't know how he hung out in that sweater vest. Jakub hacks. Emily, Pat and Matty B makin...