New Zealand to Norway

The last 6 months have been pretty busy for me with a lot of work, a lot of play, quite a bit of global drift, and heaps of good times. I just noticed that I haven't written anything for ages so I thought I'd do a quick update of the last half year of my life.

At home in Rotorua I had one of the best summers ever! It was the hottest driest summer I can remember, super busy on the river which was sweet. We even had a few good days of rain at the end of summer so managed to squeeze in a few days of creeking to finish off the season. I also managed to find time to get my heavy vehicles license, my passenger endorsement, and my grade 5 rafting cert. All in all a very productive season.

Jordie style packing

Jordie and I then packed our bags and with 2 kayaks, 1 mountain bike, 1 longboard, and 3 bags we jumped on a plane headed to California for a 2 week holiday and catch up with our friends.

Cool story about this truck, we hired it in San Francisco to transport us and all our stuff to Coloma, then when we took it back the next day they had lost the paperwork so didn't charge us anything! So much better than previous rental experiences!!! Big ups to Enterprise rentals!!! 

Thanks Harmony and Nick for the hospitality!!!

California was sunshine and fun times as per always and after two weeks of kayaking, rafting, longboarding, shopping, we were ready for the next leg of the journey. Fly to London, get ourselves and our excessive amount of stuff from Heathrow airport on one side of the city to Gatwick on the other side of the city. Thanks Lynne for letting us stay at your house and thanks Sara for getting up at 5am and driving 2 and a half hours across London to pick us up and transport us to the airport!!! 

Cool little open air cafe where we had brunch

Jordie trying to find Big Ben

Probably the most exciting place in London... The M&M Factory!!

Finally after 2 days of traveling we arrived in Bergen and amazingly the entire Voss Rafting Senter crew showed up at the bus station to pick us up! We spent a few hours handing out rafting brochures at the fish market then Froude treated us all to a delicious dinner and beers at a nice restaurant and we all headed to Voss. What a great welcome to Norway!

Now we are in recovery mode after the best Ekstremsportveko yet!!! Probably the most exciting race was the final between the Voss Rafting Senter (VRS) team and team Germany.  Team VRS had won the slalom and it was a battle to the end in the raft cross.  It was a Le Mans running start and Germany got the start perfect. VRS was chasing them the whole way down the river all that was left was the last rapid. Germany went right and VRS went left they had 200 m left till the finish line and Germany got forced into some rocks allowing VRS to take the victory  good work boys!

The riverboard race is always good times, I found a very sticky hole and had probably a 30 second beatdown while getting glimpses of Tabuya throwing me a rope over and over again yelling 'grab the rope Toni, Toni grab the rope'. Finally I flushed out still hanging onto my board and managed to beat the only other girl to the finish line.

I had never competed in the Amazing Raft Race before so this year I decided to give it a go. This race is not so serious as the slalom and raft cross races but definitely more energy expensive. The teams have anywhere between 4 and 7 people of varying abilities, the only prerequisite being that you have rafted down the section once before. The race has a series of clues and challenges, you have to solve the clue to find the next challenge. This year the challenges included taking on the kids high ropes course to find our first clue, some throw bagging target practice, some river swimming, rafting a rapid on the bottom of the upside down raft, and jumping off a bridge, all accompanied by a blow up pool toy.

The Brandseth was pretty low on race day and this ended up with a bit of drama. I quit my first race partway down the course as I saw one of my good friends on the side after just escaping from a pin against an undercut wall. Luckily she managed to drag herself out of her kayak and I arrived in time to help with the evacuation. I was surprised when I got back to find my kayak had been transported back to the race start and I got another chance to race.

Results:
1st in Rafting Slalom and Rafter X me in women's and Jordie in men's
1st in Amazing Raft Race with Jordie
1st in Women's River Boarding
3rd in Brandseth Downhill
2nd in Women's Teams Race (but first and last really because we were the only women's team there was a bit of a mix up where a mixed team got awarded first in the women's competition)

VRS team win the rafting race 6000NOK!!!

Next adventure Sjoa River Festival!!!

Okere Enduro Race

Last Saturday we had the first ever Okere Enduro race. The race was Ben Robson's invention and the concept was a 6 hour endurance race with a team format. Each team had 3 people 1 of which had to be a girl, this was a cool idea as it massively boosted involvement with 50 people competing, 15 teams and 5 solo competitors.

The race began with a mass start at the top of the river, this resulted in 5 swims in the first lap! When you reached the take out you had to carry your kayak to a trailer which shuttled the kayaks back to the start then run roughly 2.5 kms up a track to tag your team mate in.

As a second thought Ben added in a solo division which ended up having 5 competitors, 4 men and 1 woman. Jamie Sutton smashed the men's class with an amazing 21 laps and Kylie Laxton-Blinkhorn put in a staunch 19 laps beating about half the teams division all by herself!

The winning team, 24 laps

Jamie winner of the solo division

Kylie takes out the women's solo

Thanks heaps Ben Robson and Brendan Bayly for organising this awesome event. Big ups to all the volunteers for helping with the time keeping, shuttling, and safety! Cheers to the sponsors of the event Okere Falls Store, Paddle Power, Macpac, Sandiline, Southstar Adventures, The Wall, Cumec Magazine and Keith from Cascades for allowing us to use his land. Shot to everyone who competed. I hope this becomes an annual event!!! 

Josh made a sick edit of the day, check it out!


Kaituna 6 Hour Enduro Race from Southern Underground Productions on Vimeo.

Storeelva

After breaking my boat on the Myklebust we borrowed a mini gas powered heat gun from Jakub's Slovak friends and Benji did a neat job fixing the front of my kayak. We headed to the Myklebust again just to show Jakub's Slovak friends where the put in was and ended up doing two laps down the super fun race section. Great start to the day!

A spot of plastic welding to start off the day

Benjamin Hjort, tea drinking extraordinaire!

Me trying out one of Benji's super flash lenses on my camera, I like

Jordbær kake yum!!!

Then we got news that some crazy German friends who were riding bikes round Norway towing their kayaks on bike trailers were paddling the Storeelva that afternoon. Needless to say we beat them to the river. Putting on a 6km section which is supposed to take 5 - 7hours at 5pm sounded a little bit ambitious to me but in true Norwegian style thats exactly what we did.

Benji didn't even scout this drop and he still got a better line than me

A couple of rapids in I went deep off a drop, hit the ground, and completely ruined Benji's weld job. Luckily I had a big roll of duct tape which slowed sinking rate enough to keep on paddling. Then at the half way point Olaf gave me some bichathane which did an even better job.

Rangi as on-river repair job

Olaf dropping in

Green submarine, if you can't go over it, go under it...

Scouting

Just to keep the second half of the trip as exciting as the first I decided to explore a pocket eddy. This was at the bottom of a cool twisty waterfall boof which I managed okay but got pushed over by the boils at the bottom and held against a wall by the current. After multiple roll attempts on each side I decided to swim. Thanks to my awesome fiveten boots I managed to rock climb to a stable brace mostly out of the water. What ensued was some great target practice as the boys took turns throwing bags at me from the other side of the river. Olaf had the best aiming and got the first bag straight into my hands, I clipped my boat on to the first bag then my paddle into the next bag and finally clipped the last bag onto my lifejacket and did a dive of faith swum through a hole and pendulumed into the eddy. Chur for the rescue boys!!!

Jakub (photo by Benji Hjort)

One of the must runs in the upper section

Benji on a drop with an 'interesting' lead in

Boof fun on the Valldola

Jakub on the Valldola (Photo by Benji Hjort)

Me on another Valldola boof

Camping in Norway

Thanks for the day everyone!