Some of you are no stranger to Pablo and others could use a brief introduction. Pablo grew up paddling as a camper learning from Tom many years ago, then trained as a slalom racer, and became a kayak instructor at camp and occasional trip leader for Tom. Pablo has raced and represented the US as a slalom racer and most recently competed in the Olympics where he represented the Chilean National Team. He currently is taking a bit of a winter break after a long summer competing and running summer paddling programs at the US National WW Center in Charlotte. While here visiting the folks, you all get the opportunity to learn from Pablo in our slalom for riverrunners workouts on Saturday mornings at the Feeder Canal.
We are pleased to have him here teaching again, if only for a short while. Pablo is a highly skilled instructor and paddler and a joy to learn from. Here are a couple of links to some more on Pablo, he is fun go Googlestalk. I love the article mentioning his bothers store as eclectic, that is about the best adjective for Pablo.
Our slalom workouts are designed for the low-strong intermediate paddler looking to hone their river running skills by exposing themselves to slalom work on the gates. You will become a smoother more efficient paddler. Your river running kayak is all you need and a few light paddling layers. Workouts are at 10am at the Feeder Canal and are 2 hrs in duration. Try one for $50 or sign up for 3 for $135, these are are Fall/Winter season prices.
Dates are Nov 7*, 14, 21 and Dec 5, 12, 19. Sign up to join on our registration page.
Happy in our Dry Gear Dodging Ice Flow in Potomac!
Leaves have begun to turn, there have been a few cooler days, the parking lot at Anglers is mostly empty, and MD Chute is at 3.5. Oh, no there is a tear in my dry top gasket! How did that happen? I haven't used it all season. Or, I get lightheaded when I wear my dry top. These two scenarios can be prevented with a little maintenance and know how.
Drywear Storage and Care
Store indoors in a cool dry place
Use 303 spray to protect and preserve your gaskets
Remove rings and watches making sure they don't tear your gaskets
Preemptively replace your gaskets when you start to see small nicks and tears
Hang to dry with a coat hanger and limit or eliminate drying in the sun
If you have space, have a drying room with a fan or dehumidifier
Reapply 303 spray often
Do not use heat on gaskets
Every season or so reapply a DWR to your garment, there are wash in and spray on treatments available, use hairdryer to activate, or use dryer if you are needing new gaskets anyway
Replace your own gaskets or send things to IR or Amigos Drysuit Repair.
When removing garment, do not pull the gaskets off, roll them off.
Treat the Zippers on your Drysuit and store them unzipped
These tips will help to prevent damage to your gaskets and help increase their lifespan.
As for what to do with that new drytop or suit. Consider the following.
Train your gaskets by applying 303 and then stretching them overnight with a cup for the wrists and bowl for the neck, a reinforced traffic cone works well
After the overnight stretching and a couple of outings, if things are too tight, consider trimming gasket.
I often get questions about what to wear in the winter. This often leads to much debate, but you should try what I am saying, I am rarely wrong :).
You have heard it before, dress in layers and no cotton. Shoot for 3 layers, wicking, insulating, then your drysuit. This system helps push moisture away from your body and out of the garment.
With a drysuit the fleece union suits are the way to go. They can be worn alone, but work better with a wicking polypro layer underneath. Ideally, go polypro, unionsuit, then drysuit. If you are still cold after this, consider not paddling.
For drysuits, make sure you don't neglect the feet, fleece socks are great.
Other great layer combos are splash pants and a dry top. I try to stay away from the pants with latex on the calves. They trap water and decrease blood flow. A unionsuit is great here but you can do fleece pants and top and a poly bottom and top.
Hydroskin pants are nice on the bottoms sometimes, but aren't great when it is windy or for hiking about. Hydroskin and neoprene are not good underlayers. You want to trap warm air next to you with fleece under the drywear. Neoprene is designed to trap and warm a layer of water.
Don't forget the gloves, pogies and head beanie, these can make a huge difference.
Here are a couple of links to tips from other folks on the subject and a couple of brands to try out.
Fall Feeder Slalom Classic BCE's annual fall slalom race is coming up on October 24th at 1pm. Open to all, the course will be an 18 gate novice-level course. New this year: the Scott Parsons Combined Trophy. Add your best run in canoe (C-1 or C-2) and kayak, and win some great prizes! Times will be normalized between classes.
Liquid Adventures Biathalon On Sunday, October 25th at 10am, run 3 miles and downriver sprint down Little Falls for advanced paddlers, or on the Feeder Canal for novices. This year the race is open to both seniors and juniors. Race is followed by a lunch, awards, and a raffle for all competitors.
Catching up with what happened - or didn't happen - at the Outdoor Retailer Trade Show. And what that means...or doesn't mean...for whitewater.
Didn't make it to the show this year so I catch up with Bryon Dorr, buyer for Next Adventures in Portland to talk about what it's like to be a retail buyer for whitewater. David Weber and I do our annual half empty/half full analysis of what it's all about.
Liquid Adventures will now be selling off our 2009 instructional boats. Most of these boats are one season and have been used in our rolling and river instructional classes. Here is a brief listing of the boats available.
Liquid Logic
3 Remix 59's - $550 each (all orange)
3 Remix 69's - $550 each (yellow, white, blue)
3 Remix 79's -$550 each (orange, white, white/flames)
Jefe Chica - $550 (white)
Jefe Grande - $550 (white)
Dagger
2 Mamba 7.5 - $550 (red, lime green)
1 Mamba 8.0 - $550 (yellow/red)
2 Mamba 8.5 - $550 (red, red)
2 Nomad 8.1 -$575 SOLD
Equipment
Aquabound Paddles - $90
IR skirts - $70
Shred Ready Helmets - $40
Extrasport lifejackets - $40
We have a smattering of other boats, Fluid Flirt, Logic Big Wheel, Dagger RPM, and various others. Make an appointment to drop by the office to look about.
To be fair with everyone, we will not be reserving any boats, first come, first served. You may however call in with a credit card and purchase a boat over the phone. Thank you and happy shopping.
The trip began well (and did end well, by the way) – starting with a week-long parking space negotiated by Nathan at Rockwood Conference Center for left-behind cars, a new LAKS van complete with board in the rear, and an engrossing Sunday NYT crossword puzzle, finished off enroute by Alexina, Anne Nuechterlein, and Anne Kibler (who from now on will be known as Anne and Kibler, respectively).We no sooner hit Frederick, though, than a wrong turn took us off course momentarily (in our back yard, no less!).Whoever was driving got some grief.And it was not the last time, either, for an unplanned detour.But we had crackerjack navigators on the whole and some devoted, competent drivers (Alexina, Gene, and Shane) who shared the burden with Tom, and the rest of us were truly grateful for this.
We made Watertown, NY, by about 5 pm to work out the road kinks at Hole Brothers, a park-and-play spot on the Black River.With a late afternoon glow on the water, a few locals graciously accepted ten boats from out of nowhere into the queue.In true Tom fashion, he made a game of it and began timing everyone’s stay on the wave, holding out a beer as the grand prize.Shane won with a 24-second surf, beating out Carrie in close second at 20 seconds and Alexina a distant third with only 12 seconds (but a successful spin).
After changing in the parking lot by Hole Brothers, we retired to the campsite to set up tents, which encouraged an immediate “fessing up” of those who snore and those who don’t -the snorers creeping off to a far corner of the campsite.Late dinner in Watertown at an Italian restaurant with about half of the world's supply of fake plastic grapes hanging from the ceiling and quite vividly painted murals of Italian countryside on one side and an electronic keno board on the opposite wall (we got tips from the waitress on how to play, but we had all conveniently left our "gambling cash" at home).Tom promptly disappeared for the whole meal to go shopping, returning for the last five minutesto wolf down his salad before we paid the check.
Monday, August 17
Fresh melon slices and grilled chorizo for breakfast (along with the usual juice, bagels, and oatmeal, of course).The boys got peer-pressured into finishing off the copious amounts of chorizo - tough duty, but they managed. Tom kept the sleepy masses from revolting with a (not so) quick stop at Watertown's bestdrive-though coffee joint -Brew-Ha-Ha - and everyone got sufficiently caffeinated.Shane claimed his "longest surf" prize in the form of a milkshake.Made the border crossing in the vicinity of the Thousand Islands with no incident, no undue questioning of Tom, this time, and his youthful exploits.Headed north through lovely rural farmland to Owl Rafting, an outfitter on the Ottawa River with great facilities and hand's downthe most scenic campsite of the trip.We pitched our tents on a wide expanse of manicured lawn dotted with picnic tables, facing the broad, calm Ottawa River.Behind us lay farmland and a newly mown, golden hayfield (complete with loud rumbling farm equipment running well into thenight!).Not even Shane's complaints about how far the campsite was from the parking lot (including a Facebook posting) could dampen our intrepid spirits!A stunning sunset the first evening with some humidity in the air, a crisper evening the next night with the sky awash in stars and the milky way.Spectacular.
We met up with Jake Weiss, our second instructor (and designated rescuer par-excellence) who had driven up separately from Pennsylvania, and quickly brought him into the fold.He immediately became an integral part of our extended paddling family.
By about 3 pm, we put on the river to do just the first rapid, McCoy’s.Was there a little anticipation in the air?Tom had us doing stroke drills and onside-offside rolls like mad as we approached the forested island where we could leave our boats to scout.As soon as we got to the rocky outcrop to view the rapid, the sky let loose with a pelting rain and gusts of wind which blew the rain sideways and lifted the foam off the top of Sattler’s and Phil’s Holes.The heavy rain set the perfect dramatic tone, as we stared wide-eyed at the gaping maws of two of the biggest holes most of us had ever seen ... and then shuddered when told of the line squeezed in between the two!We looked at the rapid from the top…..from the bottom…..from the middle….with plenty of pointing and discussion and the beginning, for us, of a new feature-based vocabulary:“Threading the Needle” was only the first of many river identifications and lines that would be seared in our dreams each night.
Jake executed the move flawlessly for us, but Gene was our probe, and he promptly got EATEN.The idea was to line up, cut across the right corner of Sattler’s Hole, and paddle hard towards river left (thereby “threading the needle”) in order to avoid the left edge of Phil’s Hole just below.Well, we saw just how key it was to hit enough of the corner of the upper hole so as not to be swept into Phil’s, because that’s exactly where the force of the current took Gene.He swam for the first and ONLY time on the trip (none of the subsequent rapids ever seemed to trouble him!).By the end of the afternoon, though, most people did the rapid two or three times.It’s situated on a right dogleg in the river so that there are two surfing areas at the bottom, Babyface and Corner Hole.You can carry up and do the whole thing again and again and then paddle some flat water back to your car!It’s super-convenient for all the Ottawa river-rat play boaters, of which there are many - kind of like a super-sized version of paddling out to MD & VA chutes.
There’s another line at McCoy’s without trying to “thread the needle” – you drive straight through the center of Phil’s Hole lining up with a crowning wave above and then take an almost imperceptible small opening in the middle of the hole.Tom led Anne down into this "hero-line" but didn't quite punch through, and as Anne dropped into the hole she found Tom in mid-surf looking back at her.Now anyone who knows Tom knows he's a gentleman's gentleman, so it was no surprise that when he slid over to give Anne the gentler side of the hole, while he got heavily cartwheeled and chomped by Mr. Phil. Anne flipped, flushed and rolled, while Tom "fought the good fight" .... he gave Phil a few good uppercuts, but then his helmet was ripped off by the force (a faulty strap) and afraid of loosing his glasses, he put his hand on his head with one hand and pulled his skirt with the other.We were just happy to see him again, regardless.His helmet was gone, a relic from his Tibet trip, but we rescued the foam liner.When your fearless leader swims the first rapid of the first day, is that a bad omen?
A lesser event of the afternoon was a successful combat roll by Irene after being pulled into the edge of Phil’s – not noteworthy at the time but it would become so later in the week after seeing her roll disappear in the big water.April never quite figured out the line until the next day, shooting through Phil’s two of her three attempts of the rapid and losing everything in her PFD (including camera and sunscreen).But she made her roll every time!
Steak dinner and a complimentary beer ("Steam Whistle" beer - brewed with love from Canada's crystal clear - if somewhat bug-infested - springwater) at a picnic table alongside the river at Owl Rafting with rhubarb pie a la mode for dessert.Golden light on the water, towering cumulous clouds in the distant sky.A perfect day. (read the whole rest of trip report)
Posts
