Icing on the cake - Daniel Whiteley

Today we had big water beatdown Thursday, which isn't about getting worked in a big wave or hole for everyone. The idea of today is to get used to paddling huge water with almost no dangerous consequences at the bottom. I had a great start to the day on the McCoys rapid by completing the "hero ferry". This ferry starts above phils hole in an eddie called hero eddie. You go from here and ferry across to past left side phils without falling into it which is very challenging especially in a play boat.

Today i was very inspired by seeing a blind man in a kayak with coaches running the McCoys rapid. It was great to know that i'm part of a sport where everyone is accepting of everyone else and always willing to help people who want to give kayaking a go.

I came to the keener program with two main goals, the first was to be more confident on bigger water and become an all round better kayaker from it. The other goal of mine was to complete a front loop on a wave which finally happened today. The front loop is a full forward rotation of your boat while at one point having your boat completely out of the water. This was certainly my biggest challenge for my time at keeners. I can safely say that styling this move and landing back on the wave to continue my surf was the most incredible feeling ever.

After completing this and having no other real big goals, everything else is just icing on the cake.

How to loop with Connor

It's Connor back and I'm taking you through the loop I find its such a fun trick so these are some instructions on how to do the loop.

Front Loop  

In a loop, the boater does a complete flip, landing in the same direction that the move was initiated. Loops are unlike most other moves in that the bow is initiated flat to the water, with no edge. The move is begun like a popup, with the paddler driving straight and flat into the most powerful part of the current on a feature. The boater leans forward, and the bow is swept down and the stern up. Once vertical, the paddler quickly leans backward to pop up out of the water, then powerfully drives forward to intentionally cause the boat to become over-vertical. If done properly, the stern should catch in the current and the boat will return to its starting position.

Aerial Loop

Back Loop

A back loop is identical to a front loop, but is performed backwards, both starting and ending in a back surf.

Flat Loop

A flat loop is a loop done on flatwater. To accomplish this, the paddler stops in a front stall, before bouncing on end and "plugging" the hull deep in the water, and using the pop to throw the boat clear of the water and subsequently loop.

Race day! - Keegan Parker

Surfing at Garb! Not a Race, but still Awesome

Hello everyone! It's me again with another blog post. Specifically, a blog post about the fun and exciting race day! So what is race day? Race day is the one day of each week where the day is focused around racing in all sorts of ways in, through, and around rapids all along the river. Yesterday we had 3 different races but unlike last week we were put into teams for 2 of the 3 races. The first race was a 4 leg relay race through McCoy's rapid. The first person started with a small portion of a pool noodle and had to ferry across the river at the top of McCoys landing in the the eddie above sattlers and touch a boat that was stationed on the side and then make it to the bottom of the next eddie to hand the pool noodle off the second racer. The second racer would then take the noodle and ferry into either the safety eddie or the corner wave eddie on river right and then ferry back to river left and hand the noodle to the person stationed at the  bottom of the football eddie. The third racer would then go from the football eddie to river right at the bottom of McCoys, missing the meat of horseshoe and handing the noodle off to the fourth and final racer. The fourth racer would then have to ferry across the the other side of the river, touch the boat that was stationed there, and then race to the finish line at the point of swimmers island. I would love to tell you guys about the other two races but now it's time for fix the heater in the house and get ready to boat!

Dealing with logs- Emma Crane

Its emma agian!!!! Having a blast. Monday was our first day of swift water rescue. Down at death canyon, which scared me at first because of the name, we did some awewsome and fun scenerios. They taight us how to deal with swimming and kayaking over logs if you have to, but best to just avoid them at all costs. The three drills for swimming consists of just getting stuck on the log, then trying to climb over the log, then putting your feet on the log and walking over to the side. of course i was nervous to get my self thrown into a log on purpose because my whole life i was told to stay away from this stuff. It ended up being super fun. Getting my feet up on the log was the hardest. It was all safe so if you did mess up, then everything would be fine. With the kayaks was a different story, because the slot was a little bigger than your paddle. We needed to boof over the log. At first it was ok and all you had to do was lift your bow up. The second time they made it alittle harder by raising the log up. I was in my fluid boat which was a little too big. The stern was pretty long. The second time i went i got my bow up and over and then my stern got caugght in the current and i flipped over. Rolled back up at the bottom, and everything was ok. It was super fun just knowing everything will be ok. Eventually, the log raised higher and higher and no one could get over it. So funny to watch.

Overcoming Challenges by Sydney Nixon

Hello again!

     Sydney here with another blog for this week! This week I have chosen to write about and share a short (ok maybe not so short) story about the last 6 weeks of my life. As much as I wish I could say that I've been doing really cool things and training in freestyle, I sadly can not.

     The Monday of the Canada Day long weekend I found myself playing in this little feature called Fluffy Bunny. No one in the group I was with knew what the level was really so we were all playing in Fluffy Bunny and having fun. All of a sudden it was my turn again and I decided to throw a McNasty. This is a 180 degree rotation (half of a spin) into a loop (essentially a front somersault.) As I was doing the loop part of the trick, I thought to myself  "YES THIS ONE'S GONNA GO!!" and then all of a sudden there was this ridiculous pain all across my face. I had hit a rock, I looked around and realized I was still surfing the wave. I went to paddle out, windowshaded (flipped) and rolled up behind the wave. Immediately I knew something had gone wrong when I saw the blood pouring from my nose and mouth and knew I needed help. I wasn't really able to process words or think straight so I just screamed until someone came to help, which was very quickly thankfully. From there I paddled to Keenerville still bleeding and not fully aware of anything and Ryan Whetung helped me out of my boat and up the hill while my step dad got my boat. We used Ryan's phone to call my mom who wasn't on the river at the time and she took me to the Pembroke hospital. After a CT Scan the results were I had many many many fractures in my face all over and there was nothing they could do besides give me pills and send me on my way with ice. After this we drove home which was 6 hours away and got the rest of the medication that was prescription. They said it would take 6-8 weeks until it was fully healed.

     The following 3 weeks included laying in bed. I would wake up at noon, get some food my mom had gotten ready for me before work and watch a tiny bit of tv sometimes. After this I would be exhausted again and sleep until I was woken up for dinner, then I would sit with my parents for a bit then go back to sleep until noon the next day. It was a very tiring healing process, even just going for a car ride was enough to make me sleep for a few hours after. I was very good- with reminders from my mom- about remembering to take all my pills and pretty much always have ice on my face so it wasn't too painful. Mostly it was the headaches and pounding head that bothered me. I'm generally a very hyper, energetic person and especially after literally just having gotten home from 6 weeks outside in Colorado around tons of people, it was different. I got lonely and felt trapped because I had no energy to leave my room let alone house.

During the fourth and fifth week I started going into my moms store for half days and doing stained glass and mosaics as well as working the till. It was a good, easy way to get out of the house and my mom could still watch me and see how I was doing.

     The sixth week was my first week here at Keeners. I was WAY more nervous than I had realized I would be about getting on the water. There was more than a few situations and still some are coming up, where my friends encourage me to do something that I'm nervous about. The coaches and myself noticed I didn't have nearly as much energy as I normally do and had to take it very easy and be conscious of how I was feeling. Usually pushing your limits is good however in my case, it was and is not in this particular situation. With a very close watch from Claire and Anna especially as well as my safety buddy on the river Conner (he makes sure I roll up or saves me if I have to swim- appointed by Claire), I paddled every day all day. This was exhausting to say the least especially since I was always dead by lunch, but I always sat out a little longer after lunch or did what I had to do so I could stay on the river. This was important to me because it made me feel like I was finally getting better and progressing. Even it was only by staying on the water all day, it made me slightly more confident.

     Over the last week I started to slowly return to myself. I took the weekend easy with a short play session at Babyface on Saturday and only 4 surfs at Babyface on Sunday. Monday when I returned to the water I was VERY stoked to say the least, all day long. I still had energy when I got off the river!! That was something that was almost new to me after feeling dead for 6 weeks straight. I've taken a couple shots at surfing and playing on Garb. This was probably one of the biggest challenges I've had to face while here. To catch Garb you drop in from above and have to get really close to Moby Dick rock. This was terrifying for me because there's so much water pushing on top of Moby Dick I was so nervous about getting close. The last thing I wanted was to get dragged over the rock and that's all I could think about. After dropping in a few times, I realized it was good to go and mentally something clicked, and I felt confident while dropping in. I was hesitant and nervous at first about tricks because I was scared to take a paddle to the face or hit the water hard and there were so many things going through my head that could go wrong. This held me back for a bit but finally I started to get over it and try tricks. Since Monday I've been working on clean spins, blunts and backstabs mostly. Today Stevo said something that made me feel good about myself and realize I'm getting back to myself. He told me he's "impressed at how well I've been doing especially since I just took over a month off." It was a simple thing that took almost nothing for him to say but it made me realize how far I've come from that first day back and how terrified I was. Looking back, I realize yeah it was a bad thing that happened but everyone takes their blows and you can either let it stop you or you can come back stronger. My wave boating has never been as good as it has been lately and I'm doing things I never thought I'd be able to get down.

So stoked to be back on Garb! 

     Well, if you're still reading, thankyou. I appreciate it, these past few weeks have been a rollercoaster of emotion and they haven't been easy BUT they can only get better from here.

Cheers,

     Sydney

Dominik-swift water rescue training

Hi there this is Dominik. Today we had swift water resque traning. We started the day off with learning how to use our throw bags. i thought throwing the ropes would be easy until I tried it; I kept missing my partner.I later learned that you also need a backup person to hold you down and very good foot placement so you don't fall in when your swimmer grabs the rope. We then went to the death slot  to practice getting over a strainer.

Practicing Boofing over strainer

To get over a strainer in the river such as a fallen tree then you want to slow your self down a little bit and then put your arms in front of you , push up onto the log and simply climb over. We then practiced a rescue for if someone was stuck on a log. The way we did this was we had a total of five people helping. There was one person strapped onto a rope being lowered down the river. two people were holding onto the rope. One person was yelling commands and one helped the person get out of the water onto shore. The person on the rope grabbed the person stuck on the rope and brought him towards shore and then the one person on shore helped them get out. then we practiced foot entrapments and equipment entrapments. Those were much harder to do. We practiced this by being tied onto a rope on a peace of equipment and take it off. this took me many tries to do. the foot entrapment drill we did was you were tied by your foot in the water and you had to find a way to take the pressure off your foot. You do this by swimming to the bottom pushing off the rocks. This one i got first try.

See you next week! Dominik

Matt- How to Keep Your Drytop Healthy

          Hey guys, Matt here. Today I'm going to teach you how to replenish the bead on your drytop.
          When you first buy a drytop, the durable water repellent coating, also known as DWR, works great at keeping you dry. All the water beads up on the outside of the drytop,and all the perspiration inside your drytop is wicked away, leaving you entirely dry on the inside. The only issue is that this DWR coating eventually gets worn down and stops working. This happens especially in areas with lots of abrasion. Not to worry! You can easily restore the DWR coating on your drytop. My two methods of replenishing the DWR are heat, and after-market products. Sometimes I use both if my drytop is really soaking up water.

Garb can't get me wet! 

          The first thing I like to do when my drytops stop working is heat them up. Many companies that use Gore-Tex or similar materials recommend putting it in the dryer. I don't like that method because I have found that the gaskets around the neck and wrists don't handle the heat well and will eventually tear. My recommendation is to use an iron with a thin cotton sheet on top of the drytop. Some things to avoid are ironing the gaskets, and using too much heat. I recommend using a lower setting and ironing for longer, rather than super hot for a short amount of time. It's worth it for the control, and you don't risk ruining your drytop.
          If using heat doesn't work, you can always purchase after-market products to replenish the DWR. Companies like Gore, Nikiwax, and McNett all sell products to help your drytops, whether by wash-in or spray-on methods. The spray-on method is more precise but a lot more work to coat the entire drytop.The wash-in method works well because it coats the entire dryop, but it also has its drawbacks because it coats the inside of the drytop, reducing its wicking qualities. Whatever you use, just know that your drytop will never be quite as dry as it was when you bought it.

Best of luck with your drytops and until next time,
Matt