Andrew's First Blog

My name is Andrew McLeod, I am fifteen years old and reside in the town of Cochrane, Alberta. I begin kayaking about a year and a half ago on a small creek behind my house. I bought a boat off Kijiji and figured out the hard way that I needed to learn to roll. Soon after this I enrolled myself in a University of Calgary roll clinic on the Kananaskis river. I had been kayaking on flat water for most of my life so it really wasn't that hard to make the transition to whitewater. I then found a group of friends to pursue my whitewater goals, we then created a paddle group called the Bomb Squad. My home river is the artificially enhanced Kananaskis River in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta. This river offers exceptional hole play with few opportunities for big water waves. This is the reason I came to Keeners.

On Tuesday our Keener group was split into two groups, one ran the smaller, more mellow middle channel. While the rest of us ran the more intimidating main. The highlights of the day were surfing the infamous Bus Eater rapid, and river running the potentiality dangerous Colosseum rapid. We also played in some large whirlpools that could literally "swallow" your entire boat. It was the best day in kayaking I had ever had.

Heading in to the finish line for our short sprint
race down Initiation rapid on wednesday.

The next two days we had Keener race day, where we had races down rapids in the middle channel. I came first in the "A" class division race. On Thursday we ran the infamous Garvins Chute, a class 4+ slide down a steep rock face. This was my first real experience to steep creeking, and I loved it!

I would like to take the time to thank my parents for sending me out here, it is the greatest thing I have ever done!