south silver beatdown

Soooo where to start? South Silver, a little on the juicy side, got beaten to within seconds of my life to put it one way.

Nick, 'Cobba', Sanga and I all put on in the wicked sun, excited and ready for the fun that is South Silver. We started out awesomely with some super fun laps on auto barn, Sanga wasn't having a great time and got stuck in the hole at the bottom of auto barn in the middle of a freight train, and surfed the crap out of it... being narrowly missed by Nick and Cobba flying through. It was pretty fun with our camera/ support crew running down the side getting some sweet shots of the day. We had to video cameras and Jordy was taking snaps.

The freight train down auto barn

Cobba on rapid two

me on boof boof slide

Nick in the tea cups

Nose job.. 5 min before beat down time.

Not for from here is the take out and there is just some wee slides so usually pretty chill, but this certain sunday, I got owned. There is a cool wee rapid called triple bypass because you skirt round 3 holes, they are just super uniform, and sticky at our particular flow. I was at the back and was looking good for the first two, and then on the last hole I stopped and there was no way I was surfing out, and I wasn't going to get pulled out because our support crew had at this stage abandoned us, so I pulled tab! That didn't work either, I tried everything, Nick and Cobba had both gotten out of their boats and Nick had thrown 3 ropes to me and I wasn't at the surface long enough for him to hit me or to get a breath. By this stage I had totally given up and thats when I flushed luckily enough and Cobba pulled me to the side moaning, spewing, and coughing in fetal for about half an hour before I could stand up and get ferried to the other side and go home... not too fun at all. Other then that it was a fun day though!

Since then I have given it a pretty good shot at getting back on the horse getting a run on Golden gate with a crew of 10 kiwi's and just got off a South Merced trip but unfortunately passing up a trip on Royal Gorge because I just was to scared.

Let the good times roll!

Kimshew Creek

One two WOOP WOOP!!!

What else can you say? I have heard that this Creek is one of the best day runs in California, and I concur. It has some rowdiness, it has sickness, and it goes and goes and goes! All manageable with a wicked first drop that gives you a perfect taste of what lies downstream.. the goods! The team consisted of Sanga, Jared, and I and none of us had been there before so we just took our time, enjoyed the scenery, and most of all enjoyed the white-water. Unfortunately Josh was out for this one but did a stella job as shuttle bunny with some icey cold beers at the take out. Nice one!

Me about to connect on Kimshew falls. pic - Jared

Sam - "hey bro does your deck ever pop?"

Me - "Na bro it's good as"

Sam - "Sweet you can go first"

Me - "one two, WOOP WOOP!" And off I went.

Sam Firing up Frenchies and lovin it! pic - Me

Sanga was the only one feeling it here.. yeah big nuts eh!

Me on the last drop of the day ready to just get it done after a full day of awesomeness.

pic - Jared

We tried to get some footage but out videography was pretty bad so just enjoy the pics. And Chur to Jared for lugging down his camera and getting photos of everyone else but himself!

Devils canyon

The name sounds way worse than it really was... apart from the heinous time we had trying to get the motivation to get going to the actual river (thanks to the Coloma Club...). But eventually we made it putting on rather late in the day trying to catch up with some friends, we made it to them with a nice welcoming fire just on dark as we were all getting shitty at the rocks that we could no longer see.

Apart from that day, the trip was super fun with a massive crew of 9, a lot of amazing scenery, sunshine, and the funny times that was the bromance of Barn and Jordy. This was our multi day for the season to so we also re-learnt the fact that if you dont have to hike your boat in it is key to take LOTS of food! Then there was the white water, which had been described as amazing, and it really was. Not for the fact that it was super hard, steep or scary, but because it was soo fun. There was just lots of super fun big class 4 maybe a couple of 5 rapids which was enough to keep you on your toes, and good for soaking up the company and scenery and watch beatdown/ unintentional rodeo in our sacked out boats! We also came to the conclusion that the mystic could do with some extra volume!!

This is definitely one to do again when we have an extra couple of days because it runs for such a long time and is such good value. We caught it on the rise... which means that there will be some even better stuff on its way in. But our next mission is to Vail in Colorado to watch the big kids race and experience a house of about 17 kiwis for 5 days.. yea dog!!!