Sea Kayaking

Holy upset, Batman. In an uncharacteristic early bow-out, four-time world champion Eric "EJ" Jackson was ousted in the quarterfinals of the Freestyle Kayak World Championships in Plattling, Germany, five points behind Germany's hometown hero Martin Koll, who earned the last semifinal berth...

Paddling enthusiasts have always been connected to each other through various (sometimes unspoken) networks. With the onset of high-speed internet connectivity and websites such as this one (you’re reading this at www.paddlinglife.net in case you’ve forgotten where you are), that network of information has grown bigger, faster, and stronger. Now, paddlers are embracing social media networks like FaceBook as the primary means to connect with other enthusiasts.

So the Bruins won the Stanley Cup and the Mavericks the NBA title. Big whoop. The real action is in Plattling, Germany, where 225 of the best freestyle paddlers in the world from 28 countries – including newcomers Slovenia, India, Argentina and Brazil – rip up a river-wide wave on the Isar River for the World Freestyle kayak Championships June 20-20. PL checks in, with a special look at who to watch for...

Kayak? I don't need no stinkin' kayak. That's the sentiment that could be shared by longtime kayaker Dan Gavere, who showed his versatility in the stand-up world by winning the SUP downriver sprint race on Gore Creek at this year's Teva Mountain Games, edging out rival Charlie McArthur by 13 seconds...

If you’re a paddler and it’s the month of June, then we know you’re in Colorado. Last weekend (June 2-5) the 10th annual Teva Mountain Games wrapped in Vail and upcoming this weekend (June 11th & 12th) the newly christened Rocky Mountain Surf Festival goes for the full Polynesian in Glenwood Springs. So, what if you’ve got a day job and couldn’t make it to Vail or Glenwood Springs? No worries, FIBark finishes off the tri-fecta in Salida the following week.

How much is a hundredth of a second? The blink of an eye? A drip of water off a paddle blade? No one knows this better now than Honza Lasko of the Czech Republic and New Zealand's Mike Dawson, who careened down Class V Homestake Creek at the opening paddling event of the Teva Mtn. Games for an unfathomable tie for first place, down to the nearest hundredth of a second, finishing at the exact same time of 3:34:62. PL checks in with both to get their take on the photo finish...

The weather might have been a bit on the chilly side, but that didn’t stop some of the world’s best kayakers from putting on a sizzling show at the sixth annual Paddling Life Invitational on Monday, May 30, in Steamboat Springs, Colo. And in an event sponsored by Chaco Sandals, Rhino Racks, Rocky Mountain Remedies and Steamboat in the Summertime, it was 17-year-old Dane Jackson, in his first pro-category debut, out-dueling Nick Troutman to take top honors in the combo creek/freestyle extravaganza, with Australia’s Tanya Faux besting Emily Jackson to nab the top spot for the women...

The water was cold, but the paddlers were hot. After a winter that was heavier with snow than usual Spring seemed reluctant to give up any of the goods. For the US Teva Whitewater Raft Teams competing in the 2011 USRA National Championships it was exactly what they trained for.

While Jesse Coombs nailed Oregon’s 101-foot Abiqua Falls in March, it came at the cost of a collapsed lung. Ten days later, world waterfall record holder Tyler Bradt, who ran 186-foot Palouse Falls a year earlier, ran it and broke his back, sidelining him at least for the first half of the season. Yup... running waterfalls is serious business, where even the best are often at the mercy of fate’s hands. PL checks in with both Coombs and Bradt to get their current injury status and take on whopping waterfalls...

Get ready to rock out your Rocky Mountain bling. 2011 marks the 10-year anniversary of the Teva Mountain Games (TMG). Diamonds are the traditional gift for a decade of mutual admiration, just ask your spouse. Not that you’ll find many athletes sporting jewels in Vail June 2-5; tradition flies out the window when there is a race to win. Besides, those things are heavy...

Tim Niemier, 59, has always thought outside the box...or cockpit. It was in his garage in Malibu, Calif., in 1971 that he indented a surfboard hull to create the world’s first sit-on-top kayak. By the time he sold Ocean Kayak to Johnson Outdoors in 1997, nearly every kayak manufacturer worldwide had a sit-on-top in its line. Forty years later, the visionary’s light bulbs still burn at his Wild Designs firm as he tries to get more people out on the water...

Allo, Gubnah! Ok, so our English accent needs work, but that’s OK; we’re still more than a year out from the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Games in London. The good news: paddlers don’t have to wait that long to take a run down the official Olympic whitewater course. The Lee Valley Whitewater Centre opened in April and allows anyone with £49( about $80 US) a chance to descend the same rapids as next year’s Olympians...

Talk about a doozie of a douching competition. With six balls-to-the-wall events over two weeks, the first ever Whitewater Grand Prix wrapped up with a hair-raising Class V Giant Slalom event in Quebec. And while top-place honors in that event went to Evan Garcia, Dane Jackson’s third-place finish was enough to propel him to the overall victory stand...

And now for something completely different…. Monty Python references aside the staff at PL is stoked that the former Whitewater Stand Up Paddling Championship held annually in Glenwood Springs, CO is morphing into a bigger, better event (and not really a completely different event). Anybody with a wet-suit and a paddle can tell you- bigger is always better. Keep reading for all the details.

Watch out, American boaters. Steve Fisher has come back from Uganda and is now living in none other than the hardguy Mecca of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he’s learning to ski and getting ready to rip up local runs with near-record runoff. PL caught up with Fisher – once named the world’s best paddler for his big water cajones – to get his take on coming to cowboy country...

Get your high-water boats out. From Colorado to California, record snowpack is fueling the biggest water season paddlers have seen in decades, and in some places the biggest ever on record. A PL rundown of where it’s all going to spike...

Last month prized access to one of the most beautiful river floats in Oregon was secured by Western Rivers Conservancy with the purchase of the famed Minam Store property...

Recently we've gone a little heavy on the West Coast articles here at PL. We thought it was time to check in with East Coast correspondent Jeffrey Cheatham, who filed this report from Rockingham, N.C....

This past weekend marked a major milestone for Olympic hopefuls on the USA Canoe/Kayak teams. Over one hundred of the best U.S. sprint athletes took to the water on Friday and Saturday for the USA 2011 Sprint National Team Trials at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif...

There are few places more ideal than the Pacific Northwest in Summertime. The parkas are put away in favor of wet suits. The natives stop avoiding the water and start attacking it. Now, thanks to some of the guys at Mountain to Sound Outfitters and Sea Kayaker magazine (among others), there is a place to purge all that cold weather angst...

Northern California, specifically Sonoma and Mendocino counties, have been known in the last 50 years primarily as a solid wine making region. What you may not know is that on the weekends many of those wine makers put down the wine glass and pick up a paddle. And they all head to the waterway that gives life to their valley: The (Great) Russian River...

On March 20, the paddling world was shocked to learn that 2009 Junior World Freestyle Kayak Champion Jason Craig, 17, suffered a severe spine injury after hitting a rock at the base of a 25-foot waterfall on Dry Creek near Marysville, Calif. The efforts of his kayaking friends saved him...

Right now there is an AIRE kayak stored in a garage or a canoe waiting in a barn that come August will be featured in the winning entry for the AIRE Video Contest for 2011...

Huck Finn would love these guys. Last fall, a group of eight twenty-somethings paddled two Mohawk and two Grumman canoes from Minneapolis down the Mississippi, all the way to New Orleans, rasiing more than $10,000 in the process for the Lambui Fund of Haiti, and making it back to Paddling Life’s hometown of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, in time for ski season. Here’s their tale...