The Judgement Call

The way the storm came in last night, and this morning I was forced to make a judgement call on the water today. I could have taken the gamble, stayed around home and see if the Boquet or somethign else came in late today, or I could have taken the sure thing and gone over to Inner City Strife wave on Black. Bill Frazer and I decided to go with the sure thing and head over to the Black. The wave was in really well, a great posse of paddlers were around, and we had a great time.

Moose Fest, a little rain, and then a lot of rain

Moose Fest. this year was a lot of fun. We had an absolutely perfect water level for the race on Saturday, good partying, and decent weather. Unfortunately there were only 6 braqve racers this year. The results are as follows.

1. Justin Beckwith

2. Fred corielle

3. Jeff Calhoun

4. Trip Kinney

5. Matt Young
6. Bill Frazer

Next year's race as chosen by Justin Beckwith will be a Le Manz style start from Sureform through Magilla.

Our first run in the morning started out with a bang all within the first 5 minutes of putting on the water, justin broke his paddle, and Bill blew his skirt. It was a pretty funny way to start the day. All the pictures below were taken by Patrick Rogers.

The following weekend we were blessed with some rain. Eric Kinerum and I rolled down to Keene Valley to find that the Hull's Falls section of the Ausable was running at a really sweet level. We did about 2 and a half laps before calling it good and heading home to get ready for the next day.

Sunday was quite possibly the best day on the Moose River ever. Sunny, 70 degrees, and almost 5 feet on the gauge. On this day we rolled really deep with an international posse of paddlers. I wish I could say all of my lines were good, but they weren't. I really put on a nice show for everyone who was watching at crystal. I also took some serious downtime on the right side of Magilla.

Today (10/23) it rained a whole buch so Justin McGiver, Bill Frazer and myself with a little help from Justin's girlfriend Jen took a little stroll down the hill once again to see what we could see. We found two creeks that had flashed really high, really fast. We chose the lesser of two evils which ended up being the North Fork of the Boquet. Lots of fun, really big, and lots of wood floating everywhere.

Who knows the goodness that this weekend might hold.

Big Boats, Big Bikes

This weekend we did a little something different. Partially because of the drought, but also because riding big boats and big bikes is really fun.

On Saturday, Bill Brad, and I loaded up the ranger with 3 recreational kayaks and headed to the Deerfiled River. Not only was it Bill and Brad's first time paddling these large kayaks on whitewater, it was also their first time on the dryway. We met up with some other long boaters and had a really good time.

We were back at home on Sunday morning and I got to do something that I had wanted to do for a really long time. Downhill mountain biking at Whiteface is everything it's cracked up to be and more. Bill and I met up with Mark and Adrienne to see if we could make it through the day without seriosuly injuring ourselves. We gathered up some big heavy bikes, full-face helmets, and whatever body armor we could find, and got after it. Even though I got stung by a bee and crashed at least 60 times, it was really fun.



















The Moose River Festival is being held next weekend. It's raining right now, so we should have some good water, a good party, and a fantastic race.