Whitewater Kayaks

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...

Paddling Life is on hand at this year’s Outdoor Retailer Summer Market tradeshow, to bring you not-in-the-industry folk up to speed on what’s going down. First installment: a look at products for the stockier set. Turns out that Morgan Spurlock, whose 30-day McDonald's diet documented the fast-food industry, isn’t the only one going super size. Paddlesport exhibitors are also banking on beefier consumers by churning out products that excel for XLs. Following are a few tipping the scales.

All sorts of things in life are random…acts of kindness, currents out of nowhere grabbing your stern, even hitch hikers bumming shuttle. To celebrate sheer randomness, Paddling Life brings you this month’s Random Goodie Bag, a sampling of gear and accessories that has come across our transom over the long winter months. Included in this indiscriminate line-up: Fluid’s newest surf kayak, Bomber Gear’s K-bomb spray skirt, and Wanderer Imports’ Maori Hei-Matua necklace for river-running juju.

Christmas is here. And we’ve got a few tips for all of you last minute shoppers scrambling to get the right gifts for your paddling partners. We asked Bend, OR pro Kim Russell, 19, what she uses for gear, and what she’d give to the whitewater junkie in your life.

The Outdoor Retailer Trade Show showcases new adventure products of all types, from the eminently practical to the downright esoteric, and the expo this August was no exception. PL sifted through the maw of hardware and came up with a list of schwag paddlers will be going ga-ga over from the upcoming fall sales through the end of the next season.

Kelsey Thompson loves freestyle. Kelsey Thompson loves creekin'. Kelsey Thompson loves kayakin'. Hence he has to love his paddling gear. Check out what this Nova Scotian is wearin' on the water this season to keep from freezin'.

Turn up the volume--Corran’s newest river running creeker takes on high-flows and steep creeks thanks to a design tweak that represents a break from the Dragorossi norm.

You expect a lot of things when you decide to review whitewater kayaks during December in Colorado. Staying warm definitely isn’t one of them. We packed up the quiver and drove to the Barrel Springs and Shoshone sections of the Colorado, still running thanks to a malfunction in the turbines of the nearby powerplant. Call us weenies, but it was the first time either of us had kayaked in Colorado in December (it was also the first time we’d ever used pogies on bike handlebars as part of the shuttle).

The Grand Canyon is the grand daddy of all river trips featuring three weeks of raging and river-running. The big water, bigger canyon and, hopefully, good friends, all add to its mystique. If you’re lucky enough to get on a trip, you’ll need the right gear. Paddling Life’s Nick Hinds was one of the lucky few this year, testing out everything from coozies and cutlery to fleece and flip-flops. Here’s what he and a few loyal testers found out:

Creek boaters need a home. Wave Sport brings them a downriver ecosystem with the Habitat($1,000)--one of the company’s more anticipated releases.

We love rivers. We know gear. So here's our Spring Picks, including Pyranha, Dagger, Jackson and Liquidlogic WW kayaks; drysuits from IR, Kokatat and Palm; and a review of Yakima's SkyBox Pro. Every piece thoroughly tested. That’s why it’s here. We like it. If it was up to us, we’d own it all.

Joe Carberry recently visited Portland, Oregon on a gear testing trip and the water was gushing. Bloated waterfalls and steep waves were par for the course, as were cold hands and ice-cold beer. Following is a run down of the gear he abused: Helemts--The Sweet Rocker S1; paddles: The AT 2; Palm Torrent Drysuit; PFD: Salus; Boat: Liquidlogic Ronin