New Blog

Hey all, I have started this blog. Hope to replace the news page on the site

Beginners hike

So beginners hike headed of early in the morning of 11th Feb after spending a rather raucous night in the pub. We expcected a very wet weekend, so had many a plastic bag, poncho, drimac, anything waterproof
to keep our kit dry. Destination: Hebron near Carolina. The hike was supposed to be 8km on Sat and 9km on Sunday but due to unforseen circumstances, like getting lost, we decided that a 11km hike on Sat and a 6km hike on the Sunday would be far better, the extra 3km on the Sat being totally unplanned. We started hiking at 11 on Sat as the rain stopped (I wore my poncho for nothing). We reached the overnight huts at 4 after many a bundu-bashing and circle walking. Only one major incident happened, Ryan slipped on some rock and drenched his shoes and broken two ribs (though we didn't know this until after we got home). And the getting lost part, but that was all part of the experience. The major non incident of the trip was the complete lack of rain. Not a drop. A definite highlight was swimming above the 30m high Kolkrans water fall on a Sappi farm after the hike. I hope that everyone had a great time on the trip.

- Brigitta Annegarn

Town Hole

Nothing like a whole bunch of water to bring out that little-kid grin in sleep-deprived kayakers... which is what we were afterleaving Jo'burg at the crack of dawn to go and investigate the Parys "town hole" at 500 cumecs... The wave was basicallychannel-wide, a little on the diagonal side - which meant it was a lot like grinding along a steep hand-rail - but good times nonetheless... (Turns out that the best level for playing is 400 or 1300... in between is not great). There was a sweet glassy bit of wave on river left, conveniently placed just above a bit of a strainer, but where you could sit in a front-surf for as long as you liked.

We spent pretty much the whole day either on the wave or on the bank, with plenty of local onlookers (some with their own chairs) and also some local paddlers every now and then (this made it a little difficult to find a good pee-spot). We took a lunchbreak (at about lunch time) just in time to watch a few large trees and other random debris float through the hole - luckily no one gotpole-axed... After a long day playing, we took a short drive up to check out a rather interesting looking rapid just upstream of the wave... the entry looked a little tricky and the best line we could pick was "aerial loop over the river-wide strainer/bridge, down the main tongue on the right to miss a willow tree strainer the size of tennis court, and then quick jink left to miss the gigantic raft-flipping hole". Good Times.

Good Things:
- Boofing through the very boily eddy line to get to the wave was awesome practice
- Grinding along a diagonal wave is actually quite fun - it forces you to "use it or lose it"
- Front-surfing-as-long-as-you-like
- Right-spin-into-stern-end is a great way to learn to cartwheel
- One-hand-on-the-paddle roll-in-the-hole into front-surf and casual replacement of paddle isn't as hard as it looks...
- Little-kid-on-christmas syndrome
- Ham Rolls
- playing with our makeshift foamy - knobhead - when we were too tired to paddle any more
- being too tired to paddle any more

Bad Things:
- few good pee-spots

Good Things 9, Bad Things 1.

-Daav

Mkomazi River 3-5 February

What a great weekend! The river turned out to be at a perfect level for us (1.7m) and despite some almost serious car-trouble (we only had 3rd and 4th between Tugela Toll Plaza and PMB) which resulted in a running pull-off followed by A-Team dive into the car at the Mooi Toll Plaza and an excellent "landing" (if I do say so myself) at the Shell in Hilton). Here we met Bry-Bry who had organised an excellent overnight bivvy with some snakes and a nice lady named Sue. The landing here was slightly more troublesome with low visibility, a strong cross-wind and a difficult final approach which required a dramatic side-slip maneuver... In the morning Bri-Bri's little 1300 towed our rather laden car back up the massive hill to the highway, and we landed safely (still in 3rd) outside Baby and Company on Victoria Road in Petermaritzburg. Bry-Bry and Snoo set off on a mission to find the missing link while Neil and I tried our best to make the problem more complicated than it was... Bryan-Snoo soon returned with the missing link(s), followed shortly by ace car-mechanic/bob-the-builder Mike Price, who promptly (well prompter than any of us could have done it anyway...) replaced our broken (plastic) gear linkage. With all 5 gears (and reverse too) back to working order, we set off at a furious pace to Richmond and Hella Hella to have a look at what we suspected was going to be a bit-too-high-river... Turned out it was just on the high side of perfect and dropping - not not good times. We managed to get on the river by 12 or so and ran 1 to 8 in about 5 hours (3 kayaks and 2 crocs) with minimal drama... Excellent stretch of river. Everyone did pretty well and the crocs flipped/swam once each (apart from the obligatory swim at Number 1). We ran the "commercial" stretch on Sunday - which had a pretty sweet wave (not great eddy service though) and some nice (relatively) easy rapids (except for the last one) to finish off a pretty awesome weekend...

- Daav

Gatsien 100 cumecs

Daav and I headed down to what turned out to be a massive Gatsien play wave. Sure it looked a bit meaty, but we went for it anyway. After the first ride we both realized that this was not the same Gatsien wave we have become accustomed to, the face was wide enough to park a car in and we both started to bounce. I soon found out that the pour over below the wave was a wee bit sticky, as I turned my getting too long to hold anymore side surf into getting worked upside down/ pulling unintendo ends. Once we go used to the wave and the tiresome ferry to get back in, we opened our small bag of tricks.

-Nortis

O week kicks off

Wits awoke again yesterday with the start of o-week, the library lawns where transformed into a hub of activity with that addition of a marque and a beer garden. All the clubs and societys where there signing students up, if you haven't made the trip to the lawns I suggest to do so, only two days left. The atmosphere was festive, however the level of control imposed on the students, clubs and societys bothered me somewhat.


- Nortis