Teva Mountain Games cont.

The Teva Mountain Games here in Colorado continue and today we had theDownriver sprint race- a 23minute paddle down class 2. It was hard work but once again Martina Wegman came out ontop with me following close behind and Anne Hubner of Germany in 3rd. Stoked to take home another $500USD! Mike Dawson took home the gold in the mens. This afternoon Lou Urwin, Martina and I did the Mudrun- a fun event! Was awesome!

Off for some celebrations tonight!

2012 Teva Mountain Games- Vail, Colorado!

 The 2012 Teva Mountain Games kicked off with the Steep Creek Championships on Homesteak Creek! I was pretty fired up! First run was smooth till I messed up the end, but lukily I managed to go through to the final in 5th place (Top 5 in Final). I was off 1st and had nothing to loose, so went out of the start hard and managed to hold it together to finish with the fastest Womens runtime of the day! It was fast enough to move me into 2nd overall! Martina Wegman had two solid runs to take the win and Anne Hubner of Germany finished in 3rd. Fellow Kiwi Toni George put down a good performance to finish in 4th, just ahead of Katrina Van Wijk of Canada and Louise Urwin in 6th. The mens racing was tight as always with Mike Dawson taking the win in the end ahead of American Dane Jackson and Sam Sutton! Yea Kiwi domination! Stoked to be here and stoked to take home $1000.00USD for my 2nd placing:) We are staying in a Kiwi apartment here in the centre of Vail with around 8 of us, its awesome!

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Steamboat!

After around 20hours on the road, passing through 3 states (California-Nevada-Colorado) we came to rest in a small town at the foot of Mt Werner here in Colorado- Steamboat Springs.  It was the Yampa River Festival that was a local kayaking event with a range of fun events. We were fortunate enough to meet up with some of the locals (Jess, Dave and Sam) who took us in and looked after us for the weekend! They were awesome and made our trip to Steamboat even more eventful! It was Shilo’s 21^st and along with Toni they took her out for a rager! Martina and I were still recovering from the drive and for me I have been suffering from headaches... The events began with a 30min flat-water kayak race and a flat-water slalom.  There were not huge numbers at the event due to the low water that Colorado is currently experiencing. On the Monday it was named the pro event with a time-trial down Fish Creek and a freestyle event. The Jackson Clan rocked up to take the honors in the mens event. I was lucky to go through to the Freestyle final and placed 3^rd after New Zealand’s Courtney Kieran and Martina Wegman from the Netherlands in 2^nd. In the Creek race I placed 2^nd after Martina and New Zealand’s Toni George came in 3^rd. I finished 3^rd overall combined after Martina Wegman in 1^st overall and Courtney Kieran in 2^nd- stoked to take home some new gears and hundred dollars worth of prizemoney! After the event Shilo Gibson, Toni George and I missioned it over to Vail. We are now here staying in sweet Kiwi posi along with Lu, Tyler, and the Sutton bro’s. Racing begins Thursday on Homestake Creek! Photos courtesy of Steamboat Today and Shilo Gibson.

Sequoia National Park!

This last week has been amazing. Unfortunately I do not have many pictures from the rivers but I have a few from off the river. Well I would like to put detail to the events and experiences from this week it is super late and I have 200 more words to write for my assignment before heading to Colorado in the morning!

So here is a quick summary:

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Travelling with 3chicks makes getting spare tires easy and cheap. Kayaked: East Kaweah, Middle Fork of the Kaweah- Hospital Rock x5,Kayaking through Sequoia National Park- EPIC! Met up with Kiwi crew of around 15- stoked as!Bakery is the business. Bears and baby bears rock!Camping at Moro Rock- sunrise and sunset- Incredible. Sequoia National Park- Biggest trees in the World!Still sore from kayaking yesterday. 2swims. Beer and crackers at sunset on Moro Rock! 

Quote of the week- Ben Jackson- 'If this is the portage watch out for Rattle Snakes..'

Middle Fork of the Feather- Multiday

Life here in California is sweet! So on Tuesday Martina, Toni, Chris, Christy and I missioned over to do a multi day trip on the Middle Fork of the Feather. The guide book says its a three day trip but we decided to bust it out in two. We didn't end up getting on the river till quite late on the Tuesday so only paddled for a couple of hours before finding a nice campsite. Camping in California is easy, its warm and hardly ever rains! You just have to be aware of the foreign dangers- snakes, mountain lions and poison oak! The first evening of kayaking was super chill grade 3 fun easy wave chains but continuous nice rapids. The second day we awoke to the beautiful Californian sun and began our descent down the river at around 10am. The first section was pretty chill with the occasional tricky rapid but mostly super fun wave chain and rollercoaster rapids. On entering the gorges the paddling stepped up a bit. The first canyon (Bald Rock Canyon) we bombed down quite fast. Then carried on at a steady pace till we reached a tricky looking rapid that looked a bit shitty so we portaged it. Not long after this we discovered a massive crack in Christy's kayak, Toni used her talented welding skills to fix it up well Martina and I made lunch.
As the run progressed so did the rapids! The final canyon (Devils Canyon) was super super fun and had a lot of sick pieces of whitewater. The run was really continuous and really enjoyable. We attacked with a solid pace and it wasn't till we got to the big portage at around 6pm that we realised how tired we were. We managed to finish at around 8pm, a long but epic day on the river! Well the others ran the shuttle Martina and I walked up the hill, it got quite dark and scary...mountain lions are definately my new greatest fear!
I havn't got any pictures from the run yet but I will put some up soon. This is Toni's car 'Nemo' that her and Leela bought a few years back, it runs like a dream!

Maretu River Video

Maretu Stream from brendan bayly on Vimeo.
Here is a video that Bredan Bayley put together of our trip down the Maretu river on the East Coast of NZ about a month ago! Was super sweet!

United States of AMERICA!

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A solid 12hour AirNZ flight saw Toni George, Shilo Gibson and myself landing safely into San Francisco, America! We were so stoked to arrive into the warmth and find Martina Wegman from the Netherlands (That country that everyone thinks is Denmark) along with Christy and Chris from NZ. Martina and I caught the train and bus out to Auburn (20min from Coloma) well the others went in Chris’s car. Basically the others were meant to pick us up from Auburn but due to some miss communication they did not... Anyway after waiting an hour or so we wondered down the street, found a nice family who leant us there phone, gave us some wine and put us to rest in their Gazebo- epic! They then drove us out to Coloma to meet the others and join the party! Big Big thanks to this awesome family!

We set up camp with Shilo at her primo campsite and did a run down a pretty cruizy section of the South Fork of the American river called Kyberz. It was pretty sweet. Kyberz had a few really fun rapids and some good moves, about a 2hour run with no portages. The next day we met up with Nick and Harmony Wimsett, Lu and Tyler, Josh and Chris and Christy again and did a run down the South Silver. It was at a pretty high flow but all good to go! I was pretty scared actually, some of the drops and rapids were rather big and looked full on and like nothing I had ever paddled. They were all pretty clean though and a lot of fun! Stoked on our crew, such a mint day!

I am loving it here in California, the weather is hot, Wal Mart has $8 bikinis and $10 dozens of beers,Ice cold beers at the take out as the rivers are fueled by snow melt, If you need internet just stand next to a bus or a train or hit up Maccas, 50cent refills on coffee- definately makes you buzz, Americans are super nice! Camping life is all good (providing you don’t step on poison oak), Gas is cheap as. Thanks so much to Nick and Harmony for an amazing BBQ! Nicole for letting us use her car! Douglas for looking after my gears! Kate for driving me and Martina home when we got left behind,  And everyone else who has been super nice!

This morning I will be writing some assignments for uni, then Martina, Toni and I are looking at doing a three day or heading to the Yuba, we might meet up with Lu & Tyler and or Chris. All is sweet.
Photo Credit: Shilo Gibson

Aotearoa

There is no place like home and my time here in New Zealand is nearing its end as summer disapears to the other side of the world. The simplicity of watching the sun go down on the West Coast of NZ is pretty awesome and I am going to miss it greatly on my departure to the far lands. I am currently trying to finish off assignments and make final bookings for my adventures alongside a bit of surfing and Suping. Here is a little edit of my home kayak run on the Kaituna that Luuka took!11th of  May I will be boarding my flight to the United States of America! Yeaaaa. Peace out NZ!

1st Descent- Maretu River, Gisbourne

Heavy rain warnings for the Eastern areas of the North Island have been on the news all week. On Thursday night we got the call from Brendan, Willz and Tyler to say that it was all on! So Ryan and I rallied over to the meet the others and set up camp at the take out- down Makaretu Road (Around 70km from Gisbourne, just after you go through Matawai, road on the right). Good Friday came and we were up nice and early to seize the day. We had a solid crew of 7- Tyler Fox, Brendan Bayley, Willz Martin, Ryan Lucas, Kendal, Drew and myself. We were all pretty amped and ready to explore the Maretu River, one that has not been kayaked before. Tyler had done his homework and google earthed the river to checkout the descent, which looked impressive, so we were all fired up for a good day on the river! The first section was loaded with easy slides and a few boulder gardens. These then led into some steeper sections of slides and drops. There was one long gorge section that we had to portage as it was unrunable and not smooth. We then carried on to find a perfect 15foot waterfall, we all ran it a few times as it was so nice! This was followed by a massive slide/drop that looked super knarley and quite full on. Noone ran it as it did not look like it went, maybe with more water...but only maybe. After portaging the big one we came across a nice 25foot waterfall, it was another beauty! We then carried on to find a lot more sweet slides and fun rapids. It took us 6hours to do the whole descent (10km in length) and the shuttle took a good 2hours as well. It was an epic day on the river though and well worth it! A totally sick run that I hope gets done again.Here are some pictures and videos from the mission.

The next day Willz, Ryan and I tried to walk in to another run that we had heard about. We hiked across paddocks and around bush for 2hours before realising we were on the wrong track! We had started late and did not have time on our side so were left to abandon the mission and paddle out on class 2.

Now it’s back to study..

SUP Nationals!

The last few weeks I have been trying to get in as much Uni work as possible before I head away overseas in mid May to California! Work doing kayak instruction for high schools and hostessing on the yacht back on Lake Rotoiti keep coming up however and this makes it hard to get ahead in school.
So last weekend Mike Dawson and I cruised along to the NZ SUP Nationals at Takapuna Beach on the North Shore of Auckland. We were representing Pau-Hana a Hawaiian SUP brand and the people that import the boards here in New Zealand are totally awesome! I am super stoked on the Oahu Surf Board that they have hooked me up with!
So racing! This was Mike and I's first SUP race and we both found it quite interesting. There were only 3woman so we had to race the men and I finished after my 2nd heat in 3rd out of the three woman. I was a bit dissapointed as they did not hold a proper Womans Final and I never got to properly race the other chicks. I found the event organisation not very informative and the event as a whole was not ran very smoothly. Was stoked to be there representing Pau-Hana though!