Where did the weekends go?

As this blog hasn't been updated in a while, due to exams I suppose, I thought I would add a few words about the paddling I have done of late.

Dave and I went to the Ash about a month ago, unfortunately my clutch gave in when we got to Bethlehem. We got it fixed in the morning an managed to catch the other lads about half way down. We joined them and paddled from the Grade 5 to the end. It was a great little paddle none the less, was good to get the dust off the paddle. The Ash is a great "step test" river.

Dave and I went to the Fish river at the end of September for the annual canoe marathon. Despite previous bets involving lots of beer, Chris did not race. I say he is a girl, but it was mostly due to the fact that we had recently become homeless. I race, it was long and fun but the other reason why we went down was for the Fish rodeo. Scott and Craig from Life by Water organised a rodeo after the event. The fish rodeo used to be an annual event coinciding with the race for water. There had not been a rodeo in the last few years, so hats off to Scotty and Craig for getting it going again. I'm sure it will grow and become an annual event again.

Dave and I entered the Intermediate rodeo. I, due to the lack in resolution of the scoring chart, won with Dave coming second it was really close though. I sure Dave and I pretty much had equal runs. Andrew Pollock took the honours in the main event, with some great clean chartwheels. I'm not going to harp on too much about the event, please read about it here.


The weekend after Fish Chris and I headed to the Vaal for the weekend. Unfortunately it wasn't at a great level, the chute was washing out and the wave wasn't quite working. None the less we played hard in the wave even though it was super flushy. Chris worked on his spins tried out the new Fluid Nemesis. We camped at rocky ridge after the biggest storm in the world in a tent that wasn't quite waterproof.
Dave, Chevonne, Don, Liam, Sam and Rob joined us on the Sunday for a river run. The river had dropped even more and was fairly uneventful. The chute was really nice and I had a good play when we got there.


So it rained a quite a lot, Adrian mailed me a said we were off to Deepdale Gorge on the Umkomaas. Sweet, I was so keen. We left JHB at midnight since Dave Joyce had a dinner to go to. A long drive saw us get to Highover at around 7am. Dave from Highover helped us out with shuttle and we putin just below deepdale falls.
What an awesome river, long technical rapids, beautiful vistas and not a person in site.
You can read more about the trip on Adrian's site