Went to the X-fest and came back with “balls” on my shirt

I suppose a general lack of kayakers in explorers meant that only Dave, Justin and myself headed down to Underberg for the Thrombi X-fest. We left a little later than planned mostly due to the powers of the room, which upset me mostly because I had been at work and not in the room. We arrived at the X-Fest late into the night thanks to some interesting navigating in the mist and rain, with the most featured road in the world providing some extra entertainment. We put up the tent had a beer and went to bed.

Our breakfast plan of pronutro went to pot thanks to some awesome bacon and eggs rolls for sale, I’m sure everyone at the festival has egg on the pants. After a fair amount of fannying about Dave and I decided to enter the kayak sprint race, a little worried that we had never seen the river before. Luckily we paddled the section over which the sprint race was being held Philip Classens and Adrian Vroom. This included two of the bigger rapids on the section: “Slot machine” and “Super tube”. With no major chaos we our minds were put at ease.

Previously this race had a Le Mans start format, this year an interesting start ramp had been built barely wide enough to fit three boats never mind four. Dave was put up against a three other paddlers in creek boats and never really had a chance. He managed to cock-up the run somewhat needing to roll at least half a dozen times. My race was more competitive as there were only two other paddlers both in play boats. I cocked it up right from the start getting off the ramp late and hence playing catch up. I cocked it up more by getting flipped at the bottom of slot machine. At the end I was getting creamed. There was one more twist in the tail however for Dave and I, the race was longer than the section we paddled in the morning and included one more drop. Both of us took horrible lines and needed to roll at the bottom but all was good.

Justin and I entered the croc race expecting to kick as….well we never. There were some pro canoeists in our group, this wasn’t all bad as we go to drink beer sooner. I went to bed early and Justin kept on drinking beer so I’ll have to let him account for what happened.

Then next day Dave and I ran the river down to the falls with Adrian T, Luke and Vroom. What an awesome section of river lots of big drops and long rapids with short pools. We got to the falls without incident, Adrian T and Luke ran the falls while the rest started the long walk out the gorge.