Instalment III- New York

Climbing into the van in Denver, I had no idea that we would be driving for 33 hours straight through. We wanted to do a river run on the way out there, something on the Upper Peninsula near Michigan. So we drove up North, sadly the GPS didn’t know where  the put-in was and we ended up running a short class 3+ with horseflies chasing us the whole way down. Since almost everyone had yet to experience Niagra Falls, we continued north across the border and into Canada. We discussed lines down the numerous waterfalls and took pictures. It was nice to be out of the van for a couple hours.

Beautiful rainbow at Niagra Falls

We pulled into Pen Yann just before dark, some running the waterfall.

The course at Pen Yann has a very different feel to it. It is very narrow, maybe one and a half boats wide. In some places it is very shallow. There aren’t any big features on the course, but the whitewater is unique. Just above the course is a slalom boat friendly waterfall, Cascade Falls, if I’m not mistaken.

The first two days, I met so many new people that I am amazed I retained their names and faces so well. There were groups from all over the US: Colorado, Wisconsin, Texas, Pennsylvania, DC, Rochester, and Long Island; it was great to see so many younger, new paddlers. The course that was set for the race was very unique with 3 attainments- very counter your intuition to go upstream when the finish is downstream. If you’d like to see video and the results visit this link:

Kayak Adventures

After a fun week in Pen Yann, we continued on to Minden, ON for the first race of the summer race series. But first, another river run this time on the lower Moose. As it turns out, the water was too low for us to run any of it but we did get to run a sweet slide. It dropped 60 vertical feet over 40 feet. Nic and Ben did a seal launch above the drop. It was pretty sketchy because you have to avoid trees the whole way down the steep hill. Ben’s line was not so clean; we clipped a tree with his hip on the way down and totally ate shit on his landing. Nic’s line down the hill was clean but he landed flat. We heard the smack all the way from the parking lot.

Cully going over the first lip of the waterfalls

Jr K1W Podium: Erin Cambridge, Marissa Dederer