Archive

Next stop Lyons. That's the sentiment for those following the $5,000 REP Whitewater Challenge, a series of events held at river parks designed by Boulder, Colo.’s Recreation Engineering & Planning, now nearing its halfway point with three of its seven events completed. In the lead? No surprise...Dane Jackson.

Bam Margera, star and founder of the hit MTV show “Jackass”, “Jackass, The Movie” and MTV’s “Viva La Bam” series, has been on the front of such magazines as Rolling Stone, People, Sports Illustrated, and ESPN. Now he’s also been in the front of a tandem kayak piloted by none other than Steve Fisher...

The first weekend of May 2012 witnessed some of the best river action east of the Mississippi at the 15th annual French Broad River...

Chalk two up for the foreigners. An Olympian from Down Under got up and over the competition at this year’s Homestake Creek Race at the Teva Mountain Games, as well as a gal from The Netherlands. Mike Dawson from New Zealand claimed a repeat victory in the Bud Light Lime Steep Creek Championships in Vail. On the women's side, Martina Wegman of The Netherlands beat out the women’s field for top honors...

Shaka-brah. That's what SUP paddlers will be saying in Colorado June 9-10 when the 2012 Rocky Mountain Surf Festival comes to Glenwood Springs. The Polynesian-themed extravaganza will feature surfing contests, music, food and product vendors, costumes, limbo competitions, hula hooping, goof boarding and more...

Want to sell boats? Take a lesson from the Adirondack Paddlefest in Old Forge, N.Y. Clear skies and sky blue sales marked the 14th Annual Adirondack Paddlefest in Old Forge, New York, May 18–20, at the biggest on-water boat sale and demo in the country...

The water might not have been the highest competitors have seen but the excitement still was at this year’s seventh annual Paddling Life Pro Open on Monday, May 28, in Steamboat Springs, Colo. And the sub-par levels still didn’t stop some of the world’s best kayakers from putting on a sizzling show as the final event of the Yampa River Festival.

The 2012 Trans-Territorial Canoe Expedition is a bold, 2,600-mile canoe journey through the remote wilderness of Canada's territories. Keeping these river systems and expedition routes navigable and pristine is important to all paddlers, outdoor professionals and conservation and adventure enthusiasts.

Paddlers might be partying a little harder than usual at this year's Teva Games. Mother Nature has thrown every curve ball possible to the organizers of the Teva Mountain Games — from sinkholes and snowstorms to floods. This year it's drought. While organizers remain hopeful all whitewater and SUP events will take place as planned May 31-June 3, they'll make a final race status decision May 29....

Commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act this year, American Rivers named the Coal River as topping America’s Most Endangered Rivers, shining a spotlight on the threat mountaintop removal mining poses to clean water and public health. Read on for full list...

No one got cheated out of any fun at this year’s 17th annual Cheat River Festival, highlighted by the “Massacre-ence” kayak race on West Virginia’s Cheat River May 4. Marking the largest, mass start kayak race in the country with more than 155 boaters, this year above average (3.9 feet) water levels provided plenty of pandemonium...

Boaters in the Northwest got a backyard run back as, for the first time since Condit Dam was breached in October 2011, a public access is once again available downstream of Husum Falls on the lower White Salmon. Bonus: A new play wave upstream of the bridge...

Talk about a fundraiser. While river festivals around the country try to raise funds for their respective waterways this spring, this year’s annual First Descents Ball, which raises money for the non-profit helping kids with cancer, raised a whopping $450,000....

A key round in the 2012 U.S. Olympic Team Trails for whitewater slalom took place at the U.S. National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, N.C., April 12-14. Among the results, women’s world freestyle champion Emily Jackson earned a seat on the USA Canoe/Kayak Team, with an opportunity to win a spot on the U.S. Olympic Team competing in London this summer.

Borrowing a line from Field of Dreams, the Nantahala Outdoor Center gears up this week for the 2012 NOC Freestyle Shootout April 20-22, the first official freestyle event to be held at the newly built Nantahala Wave, designed for the upcoming 2013 ICF Canoe Freestyle World Championships...

Fearless: One Woman, One Kayak, One Continent is the story of Freya Hoffmeister, a 46-year-old former sky diver, gymnast, marksman and Miss Germany contestant, who paddled alone and unsupported 9,420 miles around Australia in an adventure that virtually every expert guaranteed would get her killed. She was determined not only to survive the trip through huge, shark- and croc-infested seas, but to do it faster than Paul Caffyn, the only other paddler to have completed the circuit, 27 years earlier. PL catches up with author Joe Glickman...

Existing whitewater festivals throughout the country will get a new dose of SUP added to their line-ups this year. Boardworks recently announced a new 2012 Show Up and Blow Up SUP Demo Tour, featuring a fully stocked caravan of pros and boards touring the country offering free SUP demos, races, clinics and more...

A new program launched by American Rivers, the nation’s leading river conservation organization, is helping local businesses and outfitters connect with customers and join the effort to protect rivers and clean water...

Looking for warmer weather and more dependable river flows, the Reno River Fest has moved its dates forward a month--to the exact same weekend as FIBArk.

While last year’s flooding in New England had area rivers at near-record highs, a pentathlon did so to heart rates this year at the Zoar Outdoor Center in late March...

You want this guy on your canoe team. On March 12, Hungarian Gabor Rakonczay became the first person to single-handedly canoe (yes, with a single blade) across the Atlantic, taking 76 days to paddle from Portugal to Antigua...

Yvon Chouinard can have his Let My People Go Surfing book. Thanks to longtime paddler, author and wilderness adventurer Alan Kesselheim, paddlers now have Let Them Paddle, his latest book on revisiting rivers with his three children that they unknowingly floated a decade and a half earlier as fetuses. PL checks in with the author...

First it was Savage Designs. Then Riot Kayaks. Now industry stalwart Corran Addison is moving on from the third company he’s founded in the paddlesports arena, this time leaving stand-up paddleboard company Imagine Surf.

With the introduction of the new Kayak Angler series of paddles, Bending Branches has raised the bar for paddle manufacturers yet again. These angler specific paddles excede all expectations.