United States of AMERICA!

And so the journey back to the United States of AMERICA begun! Louise Urwin, Katrina Van Wijk and I piled into Katrina's little Element and did 3hour driving shifts across the Canadian and American border and into the States. After driving through New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland to reach West Virginia! Along the way we stopped off to paddle the Upper Yaugh which is a dam fed grade 3/4 creek that has limited releases. We then came to set up camp in the town of Summervile, the host of the annual Gauley Festival. The Gauley Festival is one of the biggest kayak festivals in America and probably in the world. With loads of venues set up for the different businesse in the kayak industry we were able to checkout the latest gears on the market. The Gauley River is totally awesome! It has an Upper, middle and lower section and hosts many good rapids and features. It is basically a high volume creek with beautiful scenery as it rests in a nice valley with lots of green trees and vegetation. We ran the Upper section in playboats and creekboats on the Friday and Saturday's with the OWL crew that had also come to paddle the river. There were heaps of rapids that had multiple choices for lines which was great as you could make the run as hard or easy as you like.
On the Monday Katrina and I raced in the Gauley Festival race event which was held on the Upper Section of the Gauley River. Katrina took out the long boat Womens class in her Green Boat with a time of 57 mintures, while I took out the Womens class in the the Short boat division with a time of just over 1hour and 1minute.

Now Katrina and I are staying with Ielene, Bryan Jennings, Matt S and Bryan Kirks house in Fayetteville. It is really nice to have somewhere to hideout well the rain thunders down. We will be hoping it rains so we can jump on some creeks before getting back on the Gauley River on Friday!