How To Surf Garb Passably - Patrick Kyle

The first time you drop into Garb feels like you get hit by a bus - don't panic, everything will be OK, so long as you edge the right way and don't face plant the rapidly moving water. If this doesn't deter you follow the next couple of steps to place yourself at a confidence level where you can start to have fun and learn some moves:

1) Make sure you avoid the curler coming out of the eddy - the large bubbly, foaming line of "don't go overness." This will rocket you far to river right and you will miss the wave or catch an edge and capsize. Drop in further down to miss the curler.

2) Don't stop paddling, once you're out of the eddy and dropping down, keep paddling towards Moby Dick and the full impact shouldn't overwhelm you. Keep your bow pointing right and lift up your left edge. Now you are off to the side comfortably skipping along the rail.

3) Wait until the top of the foam pile is to your left and carve on top of it - you may flush, but if you don't to begin with, you aren't trying hard enough.

4) Now you are sitting at the top of the foam pile, high up and in the perfect position to zoom down the wave. Lean forwards and your boat will drop down the foam pile and hit the green water. You will probably bounce, maybe get a little air depending, but make sure the face forward the whole time and you should be fine.

5) Point back to Moby Dick and surf out to the right of the foam pile and drop back. Follow steps 3 and 4 again. Repeat until confident on positioning on this wave.

All is set - if you follow these 5 simple steps, you should easily be able to attempt some epic tricks without being frustrated about the set up... enjoy.

The Tournment to last the Ages by Ray Barbera

Competition, that one word sets keener adrenaline pumping and makes the fear palpable in the air. Every friday the keeners compete at a feature on the river (ex Pushbutton Garburator)

and one of us hopes to score the most points in one ride to win the golden ribbon of awesomeness. But this friday there was a backroom game going on….. Foosball. Today was the tournament to decide what pairs were the best at the game. Every participant was prepared for the best, but ready for the worst. 5 teams and only one can claim the glory of being the best. The tournament starts and in no time we are at the finals two teams in the red corner French Connection with Tom Dolle and Mathieu Dumoulin and in the blue corner The Dream Team starring Ray Barbera and Kaelin Fridenson. BAM BAM! The game starts and immediately the French Connection scores. Minutes go by and then The Dream Team makes a comeback and they score 5,6,7 goals. By this time the French Connection is getting desperate and BAM BAM the score is tied up at 7 goals. The players are perspiring with sweat from the nervousness the win is on the line either you win and are glorious forever or you lose and are shamed with embarrassment. The Dream team gets the ball and all of the sudden two goals are scored and one more the DREAM TEAM WINS what a miracle eternal glory for Ray and Kaelin.

P.S Happy BirthDay Mathieu

Big water beatdown- Kathryn Walker

This morning I got up, silently groaning at how early it seemed. I slowly got dressed and ran out side on the freshly dewed grass. After playing a team building game, I ran inside to cook up my eggs and bacon. After talking about what a big water beatdown is we decided the plan for the day. I jumped into my gear, eager to go kayaking. After scouting out the Mccoys rapid, we decided to swim it. It seemed very scary at first,  but after I swam it, even when I missed my line, it was really fun! We then hiked back up, and ran it in our kayaks. I decided to surf left side of phill's hole, which had always terrified me. The rest of the day, we spent swimming lots of things that scared me. Then I slowly realized, the real reason of big water beat down days is not to give our coaches some free entertainment, but instead, to learn how to conquer things that scare us. Learning how to conquer things that scare us is definitely an important life lesson, even if it is learned kayaking and swim through massive water, while running into other terrified keeners. It's a lesson I am thankful to have learned.  

Importance of keener Warm-up – Jacob

Everyday we start our daily kayaking sessions with a warm-up. It normally starts off with 50 forward strokes and then 50 backward strokes. Following up on that we do stretches involving our core/torso and then some overall stretches targeting increased flexibility. Afterwards we start doing lean cleans which involves going on edge and then stomping your bow and then lifting your other edge and stomping your stern and lifting opposite edge. This is an amazing core workout but its also the basis of almost all wave/hole tricks. From participating in the keener warm-up I’ve gotten increased flexibility which allows me to get better leverage on some tricks and its improved my core strength which allows me to do increasingly harder tricks. The keener warm-up will help you become a better kayaker because it teaches/reinforces the basics of kayaking, so that when you need to use any of them its second nature