Waiatoto Adventure (Part 2: The River) ~ Highlights of 2011 ~ Mariman

Playak News Flash - January 9, 2012
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Waiatoto Adventure (Part 2: The River) thebigbluetree.com - Day Four: New Years Eve! After a spectacular camp high up on the side of the valley with the curious Kea, one of which woke us up in the middle of the night as it crashed into the side of the tent, we woke up to begin our final descent to the river.

Highlights of 2011 worldkayak blogs - Its been a pretty big year this year. I would certainly say that my best kayaking moment in 2011 was hucking the middle Palguin waterfall. Its a 70 footer near Pucon in Chile which the local boys said I was the second female kayaker after Mariann to have run… Great feeling running it and looking back up with the adrenalin pumping!

The Familiarity of the Devil Track River Adventures of Burgess - The twilight was falling upon the waters, and one by one the stars put holes the growing darkness.  Upon the gravel shores of Lake Superior a fellowship was amassing. The waters continued to leap heartily in the creeks of the North Shore, and spoke to the hearts of all those wielding a paddle.

The Leap of Faith Jackson Kayak - After fall break this year, I packed up and headed down to finish out the semester in Chile with New River Academy. One of my main goals for this year has been to get better at running waterfalls, and controlling myself in free-fall, so that I would be able to move on to bigger drops. While the south east has a ton of great waterfalls,...

Upper Whitcombe River - West Coast, NZ Jordan Searle - Severin rocking the tuna (p. Jordy) The Upper Whitcombe is one of the coast's super classic multi-day kayaking runs. Providing the majority of the flow to the Hokitika River, this run is good to go after a period of prolonged good weather and is definately best enjoyed with sunny weather.

Dagger's Chris Gragtmans Recounts His Alabama First Descent Adventures Dagger Blogs - As I sat in the college library distracting myself with a Google image search for "Alabama waterfalls," I couldn't believe my eyes. The photos depicted massive punchbowl amphitheatres, overhanging cliff walls, and deep emerald green plunge pools.

Gotta Love Kayaking in Ecuador! Dagger Blogs - After a week of climbing mountains with my mom, it was time to move onto a sport that I have a little more experience with. So after returning to Quito from our Cotopoxi attempt, I headed to the airport to meet the most famous kayaking dentist in Kentucky, Clay Warren, for our week of kayaking and...

Mariman New River Academy - We have been lucky enough during our break to stay over at Pucon Kayak Hostel, which is owned by David Hughes. The hostel is located on the banks of the Trancura river, only 15 minutes outside of pucon. The Trancura, which is our prime run right outside our hostel has one of the best big water rapids in the Pucon area.

Rock Gardening Team Profile: Neptune's Rangers Fat Paddler - Back in March of 2011 those scallywags of the US west coast, the Tsunami Rangers, issued a challenge to find, scale and take a photo at the peak of "Neptune's Castle", a rocky islet somewhere on the Californian coast. Some twenty years earlier the Tsunami Rangers had done the same and hadn't been back since.

Year End Update from Todd Wells Immersion Research - Over 2011 a summer job as the lead instructor at the Columbia Gorge Kayak School, and my freshman year at Western Washington University kept me from doing as much paddling as I had hoped. However, I was still able to get after it pretty hard and visited some incredible rivers all across the West Coast.

A Dynamic Start to the Year Jackson Kayak - Dynamic Duo that is! Each year I try to start the year out right by hitting the water New Year's Day. This year I happened to be in Oregon for the holidays. The Oregon Whitewater Association hosted a club float on the Sandy River outside of Portland, OR. While most of the country has been getting hit with storm after storm, ...

Living the Life in Ecuador Small World Adventures - Greg picked up a hitch hiker on the Upper Misahualli. Don't worry, I'm sure the kid was at least 3 years old! However old he was, he was a much better swimmer than I most of us. As I sit in Tena listening to the rain pounding down on the tin roof, I realize that ...

Smokey Gorge, and the wet Kaimai's! Ricketts Kayaking -  Well! Happy new year everybody, hope you all have had a great relaxing time over the Christmas and new year celebrations! What will 2012 bring for us? If it's in the same calibur as 2011 hold on because its gonna be a crazy year!!  The past 2 month I've been living ...

2011 David Bain - So we are now in 2o12, this past year has definitely been my most hectic and exciting year yet, with competing at 2 world championships, and a european championships covering 3 disciplines was something new and pretty special for me. I was extremely happy with my performance at the Slalom Junior European championships ...

Get your Skates on! Palm Blogs - At the tail end of 2011 Welsh kayak anglers Andrew Williams and Gareth Bowen took themsleves north, to Scotland, in search of Skate…… looks like the Aleutain suits were needed in that cold weather. We had awful weather for the week and only managed to get out onto the Skate grounds for two sessions , [...]

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Today's News Editor(s): bartw.