South Silver

Yesterday 6 of us headed up to the South Silver, Sarah was along for the ride because its her favourite river, MJ was hung over and got dragged along, Josh came to take photos and tell us the lines, and Yan, Dan and I were in it to go paddling. Everyone except Josh had been telling us the river level was still too high but we arrived under blue skies to perfect levels.This run is amazing, awesome slides, clean drops, and a wicked amount of stacked gradient.

Dan on boof boof slide

Boofing one of the teacups

Yan standing on pride rock (and trying to figure out the most awkward portage ever)

Skyscraper

Offramp

Yan styling plastic surgery

Big ups to Josh Neilson for the mint photos!!!

Middle Fork of the Feather river

The Californian guidebook classes this river as 'the best self supported multi day trip in California'. Day one starts out as a little creek with read and run boulder gardens and sweet boofs, day two the volume and awesomeness increases, and day 3 is just sick - sooo many wicked rapids.

SNOW!!!!

Mike eating steak off a rock plate with his spork and river knife

This river just keeps giving! (p. Leela)

Mike boofing into yet another awesome rapid

One of the locals

Leela plugging the gnar

Josh staring down the hole

Boof! (p. Leela)

5 kayaks and a tire?!

Upper Middle Cosumnes

I don't know if this river always had a reputation for carnage but it does now. The first time we hit this up we had a crew of 9 kiwis and 1 american and there were 5 swims, 1 broken boat, and one broken paddle, we unloaded the boats at the put in with hail on the ground and it poured rain on us for the entire hour it took us to walk in. It was still a sick run so a couple of weeks later I was stoked to get the chance to paddle it again. This time it was sunny, there was no walk in because the road was dry enough to drive all the way down to the river, Devo managed to get the 4wd to the end of the road without flying off on any of the corners he was hitting at 40+mph so life was looking good. The run started reasonably well apart from Taylor getting briefly pinned on a log, everything kept running smoothly until we hit the cesspit like rapid which resulted in one broken boat, one dented boat, one damaged shoulder and two swims. Luckily for Devo we managed to catch up with the kiwi crew who'd left a car at the closer takeout so we left him there and continued on a ridiculously long paddle out to reach the bridge just before dark. Another good day paddling, another epic on the UMC.

Skuxy and Barney below No Lookey Falls

Barney on the rapid we called Californian Cesspit

Me on my favourite rapid

Me on 30ft No Looky Falls (as Skux calls it, the Americans call it brace for your face)

Mike and his awesome purple eskimo

Josh with a turbo powered boof

Ben doing a dance beside my favourite rapid

It was cold at the take out...

Extreme racing, partying, and a brand new car

At the start of June, Leela and I and by total last minute decision Rachael as well loaded up the car and drove the 1,060 miles from Coloma, California to Vail, Colorado for the Teva Mountain Games. What followed was an awesome week with a little kayaking, a lot of carnage both on and off the river, catching up with old friends and meeting new ones, and general awesomeness. The kiwi contingent dominated the extreme racing with Sam Sutton and Nikki Kelly finishing in podium positions, shot guys! Leela took out 6th position overall in the womens which was mint! I also made it over to Denver to visit Katie an meet her family which was really cool, her dad also fixed our car up enough for it to almost make it half way home before the alternator died and we ended up camping out in a random park. The next day we managed to make it to an auto store where we not only bought a new alternator but installed it ourselves outside and sold the old one back to them for $50USD! The results for the extreme races are as follows

MENS EXTREME RACE RESULTS:

1st Sam Sutton

2nd Andrew Holcolme

3rd Tao Berman

WOMENS EXTREME RACE RESULTS:

1st Tanya Faux

2nd Martina Wagman

3rd Nikki Kelly

Can't wait for next years!!!

Terry getting new tires after we stopped to get him a new spark plug and a random stranger luckily noticed we had shredded one of our old tires and gave us the heads up.

Me at the end of the 'manky section' on Homestake Creek

The kiwi crew celebrating Sam's win!

Katie's cute as little cousins enjoying their first kayaking experience.

Changing the alternator, who says girls aren't mechanically minded...