Whitewater Rafting

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...

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...

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...

Buy shoes, save rivers. That’s the message from Teva, which is putting its money where our rivers’ mouths are with the launch of its "Pair for a Foot" campaign on World Water Day (March 22), an initiative estimated to help protect over four million linear feet of global waterways this year alone...

As the Ugandan government dams sections of the White Nile River, the villages that depend on the river seem destined to suffer a similar fate. PL guest correspondent Errik Hill was there to run the Silverback section of the river on it's final day. This is his report...

For more than a decade The River Network has been holding the National River Rally to bring together activist from across the country (and planet). This year the rally is being held June 3-6 in Charleston South Carolina. Read on to learn about the weekend, the speakers, and of course– preserving our rivers…

For Gale and Eileen Marshall of Pendleton, Oregon, the date of May 20, 2006 will forever be etched into their minds and hearts. A date marked with tragedy when one of their close friends, plus the owner and head guide of the rafting company, died on the Klickitat River. Now almost five years later, the Marshalls continue to grieve, though Gale feels it’s time to talk about what happened.

It doesn’t run often, but when it does it goes big. This time, in early March, it careened in at more than 70,000 cfs, drawing hairboaters like Trent Thibodeaux, Sam Fulbright, Chris Wing, Pablo McCandless and Chris Gragtmans out of the watery woodwork to ply its epic waves. And its name, the New River Dries, is about as much of an oxymoron as you’ll find in the paddling world...

Okay, all you Colorado boaters. Since this one’s in Paddling Life’s own backyard, we’re asking any and everyone who’s ever paddled in our neck of the woods to help us out with American Whitewater’s flow study for the Yampa Basin. And, yes, it includes such local faves as Cross Mountain and Fish and Willow creeks....

In a waterborne version of David vs. Goliath, river group Idaho Rivers United has filed a lawsuit charging the U.S. Forest Service with abdicating their responsibility to protect the Wild & Scenic values of the Middle Fork Clearwater and Lochsa Rivers...

Legacy Paddlesports LLC announced today that Andy Zimmerman has decided to leave the company to pursue other interests....

Sniff, sniff...Kayakers in Uganda's White Nile region joined in an Irish Wake hosted by outfitter Nile River Explorers as an era came to an end on perhaps the best play run in the world: on March 1, the Day 1 Section (Silverback) of the Nile was closed to river traffic through the main rapid of Silverback for an upcoming hydro project...