Playak News Flash 2010-08-14

Playak News Flash - August 14, 2010
The world's latest paddling headlines.

News Watch Headlines

Rider of the Year Mike Dawson - Check out this video. It's about 15' long but features some wicked footage from around the mix.

Pushing the Envelope: Playboating in the Detox Fluid Blog - After the Outdoor Retailer show, Natalie and I found ourselves transporting a Detox Large to the Colorado rep, Dan Glauser. For those that know us, it should be no surprise that we stopped off at the mwave for a couple days before actually delivering the boat, and while we were there, this funny thing happened where I got all confused and thought I'd try playboating in the Detox.

Callaghan Race July 24 2010 Fraser Valley WW - On July 24 the first of what I hope becomes an annual race on Callaghan Creek in Whistler took place. It has been several years since there were any races held on the awesome creeks in Whistler British Columbia. With a delayed snow melt this year in most of South Western BC the level was well into the high side, despite that 8 teams of 2 came out to compete and dozens of other paddlers got laps in as well that weekend.

Munich Freestyle Kayak Video by Teva Life Agent Simon Strohmeier Teva Blog - Here Teva Life Agent Simon Strohmeiers video about his most favorite wave in his hometown Munich, the capital of Freestyle Kayaking in Germany.

Tacen Extreme part II duemmstuff - After the freestyle competition we moved to the Jahmp™ training. I don't know if the reason was the bad weather or just the mere size of the ramp but only 9 men and 3 women decided to try themselves in big-air competition.

Upper Lech Gorges PeakUK - In the far west of Austria lies a gem of a river. While the Lech is well known as a class II easy intermediate river with lush alpine meadows and mountains all around, the Upper Lech Gorges are very unfamiliar to the English speaking kayaking community!

Black Canyon of the Gunnison Sweet - All good here in Colorado. Summer is getting to the end, we got last full on week of work and then who knows what is gonna happen. Last weekend I had a great time on Black canyon of the Gunnison with some of my best friends Yonton Mehler and Bryan Owen aka Astral buoancy, Brent Toepper aka badass guy who reps for Sweet in Colorado, Milo from Crested Butte and Daniel Windham from Boulder.

Manuherikia River - Go Pro HD Cumec Magazine - We've just picked up a GoPro HD Head Camera which we're in the process of reviewing. They are a great little unit that feels very robust, and the video quality is outstanding. Late last week the local Alexandra run on the Manuherikia River was high enough to paddle so I connected up with a few of the lads from Queenstown and went for little bit of winter paddling.

Thailand Exploring (Part 1) Level 6 - After a couple of days in hectic Bangkok, finding a rental car, bartering with construction workers for wood to make roof racks and waiting for Josh and Tylers bags to show up, we finally got to leave the city. First stop, Khao Yai National Park where we had seen photo's of a handful of potential sweet waterfalls. Jackpot, our first stop was at Heaw Suwat Waterfall ('Nam tok' in Thai).

The Mighty Fitzroy - Kimberley 2010 Fluid Blog - In February 2010 Anthony Yap and myself lead a expedition to the highest volume river in Australia, The Fitzroy - The real heart of the Kimberley. The mission was a long time ago I know but here is the photos, We have been negotiating for the rights and selling different shots so it has taken awhile to get the photos ready that can be splashed around on blogs.

Video Saar Splash 2010 Teva Blog - Video Clip of the 4th Saar Splash, a Kayak Big Air Ramp Contest in the beautiful city of Saarbrücken in western Germany. It's a very fun event which is part of the Saar-Spektakel, a big festival around the river Saar with 250,000 spectators. During the day we got to kick of the ramp and at night we danced trough the clubs of Saarbrücken. So watch the video and have fun. :-)

Freestyle – Sopotnice Team Pyranha - Last weekend of July I took part first competition of Czech rodeo tour 2010.

Dreamboat KayakQuixotica - It's just silly to leave some great kayaks sitting in the shed when someone else would love them, and when what I really need is a solid roller. What a sad, sorry state of affairs this is. How many kayakers know this story. I have lots of kayaks. Still I'm not really happy. Usually that results in someone saying you just need one more boat…. Well.. No. Not now anyway. What I need is about 3 less kayaks and one good roller. However it happened, I'm a guy who lives "rolling" and yet I find myself without a low volume rolling kayak.. Duh.

Slalom Nationals Level 6 - Well as most of the office headed out on a road trip to Salt Lake City to attend the big Outdoor Retail Show, I also decided to head out of the office as well. The National Championships of Slalom Kayaking at the Gull River in Minden seamed like the place to go. All of the top Canadian athletes were there sporting the Level Six Competition line that includes a sweet line up of light weight combi tops and the ever popular Race-Lite PFD.

World Raft Champs Medals PeakUK - Following on from a successful Pre-Worlds, Peak UK Raft Teams proved themselves again at the R4 World Championships held at Dutch Water Dreams in July. The event also hosted the first ever Youth Raft World Championships which proved to be a great success.

This mail contains a selection of the world's latest paddling news. To see all the latest news, videos, forum discussions and more, visit Playak News Watch.
To manage your Playak subscriptions, click here.