Whitewater Kayaks

According to our friends and partners over at Colorado Kayak Supply, longboats are having their moment. Especially given that it's fall and some of...

When the water warms up and our local Skykomish and Snoqualmie rivers are low, I switch gears to my son’s interest in kayaking. Yes,...

What’s the latest antics with the new Jackson Antix 2.0? Plenty, especially when you get the lowdown from freestyle kayaker and Demshitz crew member Jesse Shimrock,...

(By Adam Goshorn) At 6’1” and 265 lbs. I am right at the top of the recommended weight range for Pyranha’s Large Ozone. It’s a...

While paddlesports sales were treading water at best prior to COVID-19, the pandemic has put them back on the path to prosperity, with sales...

My name is Alex Dodge, and I'm here to write a review of the Waka Steeze. But first a little bit about me, for a...

  “Damn, if this is another un-named rapid, we’re in for a doozey,” I think to myself, the last of us bobbing in a pulsing,...

Less than two months after his retirement as president of Jackson Kayak, Eric “EJ” Jackson announced he is launching a new kayak company called...

Calling it “more strength, capabilities and opportunities for the world leader in paddlesports equipment,” Laval, Quebec’s Pelican International Inc. has acquired the assets of...

 Already close to some of the best whitewater in the country, Boise, Idaho, is now giving paddlers (and surfers) another reason to visit the...

Move over Dominatrix…there’s a new Dancer taking the stage. That’s the tune being sung by longtime kayak designer Corran Addison, who, as the designer of...

Someone who invented a product that lets you sleep on water is also good at designing products that let you paddle on it. Such is...

Holy Demo-day of all-time, Batman. When Paddlesports Retailer moved its annual tradeshow to Oklahoma City this year, it did so primarily for access to the...

Eric Clapton would be proud. German kayak maker Prijon just released its newest creeker, with the provocative name of, wait for it…The Cocaine. PL...

Most whitewater kayakers try not to swim. But not the folks at Bellyak, makers of a hybrid craft that falls somewhere between kayaking, hand...

Honey, I shrunk the boat! With all due credit to Jackson Kayak for its kid-sized Fun1 line, now that he has a child of his own who else but longtime boat designer Corran Addison would design an even smaller kayak for his kid? Read on for a step-by-step photo sequence of the glorified foamie getting built…

What does five days of hob-knobbing with the top players in paddlesports at the annual Outdoor Retailer tradeshow in Salt Lake City get you? Red eyes, sore feet, a couple of Utah-beer, bloated-belly hang-overs and the following rundown of a few products you’ll see on retailers’ shelves this coming season…

For Jimmy Hostetter, Luke Farny and friends, running the entire Grand Canyon in five days in December provided the perfect reprieve for coming back in the nick of time to study for and take college exams. It also provided the chance to test out the Jackson Karma RG kayak in the exact conditions it was designed for…

We came, we saw, we paddled. A look back at some of the 2013 highlights from the competitive paddling planet...

At this year’s Outdoor Retailer Summer Market tradeshow, Confluence and AT Paddles unveiled what the company bills as a “gamechanger” in the whitewater paddle market: Duraweave™, a blend of polypropylene-based Innegra fiber that forms the lightest, strongest paddles on the market. Intrigued, we caught up with brainchild and product manager Hastings Blumer for the skinny. Here’s what we found:

Rerun the Production Mold. That could well be what Dagger’s RPM, at one-time the world’s best-selling kayak, stands for as the company brings back one of its most popular whitewater models, whose mold has been gathering cobwebs for 17 years...

Founded in 2003 by Scott Shipley, S2o Design and Engineering recently completed New Zealand’s first in-stream whitewater park, the Camphill Surf Park, near Wanaka on the South Island, and it is earning rave reviews by boaters of all abilities.

The fear of being trapped in a closed-hull boat with a spray skirt is a barrier for may entry-level whitewater paddlers. Fluid hopes to eliminate that fear with their new sit-on-top whitewater kayak. Designed with hull characteristics similar to their top end whitewater kayaks, while providing superb stability and confidence, this new boat may make the difference for whitewater enthusiasts interested in learning to kayak.

Once a year, industry bigwigs gather in Salt Lake City for the annual Outdoor Retailer tradeshow, where those lucky enough to attend can ooh and ahh over paddlesport manufacturers' new designs for the upcoming year. For those smart enough to stay on the water instead, here's a quick PL sneak peak of what the tradeshow cronies will see...