Why The Ottawa is the Best River - Ben Capstick

The Ottawa is my favorite river and brings me and thousands of others back year after year. It does this because diversity the river allows for. The river allows for challenging and entertaining lines from beginner to expert boaters in every form of kayaking. The Ottawa has amazing creak lines, squirt boating, down river play, and and its most known for its freestyle and play spots. Additionally, the river has variety of different terrain depending on the level and with every level there is a new play spot and line that offers hours of fun. The Ottawa runs 3 months of the year because it is dam controlled. This means no matter what day you decide to go paddling there will always be something that leaves you in awe and mesmerized and wanting to come back.

First Week Back on the Ottawa - Nathan Bond

This is my second time coming to Keeners and the Ottawa river.  Leading up to this trip I was worried whether my freestyle skills would suffer too much considering I don't own my own playboat at home, and if I would make friends with all the new first-time Keeners that I'd never met.  Luckily, my sense of insecurity was met with a tremendous sense of security once I impressed myself on the water and got to know all the great new people.  The first two days everyone paddled the middle channel.  Although I had paddled this river before, the INSANELY high water levels rendered the river unrecognizable and left plenty of amazing features for us to surf.  The second day we ran elevator shaft, a line that didn't even have water going over it last time I ran the river.  Wednesday and Thursday we ran the main channel and got the opportunity to surf the world famous Minibus wave at lower water.

I got chundered in Minibus and lost my paddle.  That day I had to make it down the river using an uncomfortable pair of hand paddles which proved especially challenging at Coliseum, the biggest rapid I've ever paddled.  

     

Friday, everyone competed in the weekly freestyle competition.  I put up okay rides and felt like it was an appropriate way to end the week.  I'm excited for the next two weeks to come and to watch myself progress.  Regardless of what happens in the rest of my time her I know the Ottawa river will continue to amaze me. 

Why Kayaking the Ottawa for Weeks Straight Never Gets Old by Jake Elder

At first look a program where you kayak the same river  everyday all day for three weeks straight seems like it  could get a little monotonous. But keeners never fails to amaze me at how in my two years at keeners I've never had the same day on the river twice. Every day has its own special theme which keeps you always looking gorewatd to something. For instance there is race day Wednesday, big water beat down Thursday, and funky fresh freestyle Friday. Also there are two stretches of the river that keeners run, the middle channel and the main channel. There are many different play spots and fun rapids on each and at every water level. In addition to being able to paddle some of the best white water in the world we get to learn important things like first aid, swift water rescue, and knots for gnar. I hold keeners near and dear to my heart and I can safely say I've never been bored at keeners.

I've been here before-- Oh wait, which rapid is which??!! By Julia Frangenberg

          This session at Keeners is my second time, and a chance to re-experience the amazing times I'd had surfing and discovering new skills last year. Prior to this session, I had gone to session 3 in 2016, when the Ottawa's levels were significantly lower than now, averaging at about -1.5 feet. The huge difference now is that the level is 14 feet!! I was shocked when my family and I drove up to Garb to take a look, and rather than seeing the Lorne that I was familiar with, Garb and all, I glimpsed a whole new big rapid, topped off with a massive wave/hole at the bottom which I was later told was the famous MINI BUS!!!! Before driving to Canada, I'd been looking at countless videos of pros like Paul Palmer and Dane Jackson surfing the house sized wave, and had idolized it since. When the beginning of Keeners finally rolled around, we ran the middle channel, which was filled with fantastic waves such as Angel's Kiss, Butterfly, and the intimidating but incredibly fun Big Smoothie. At the lunch site we were able to glimpse Garvins, which was even bigger, even scarier, and even more fun looking than the year before!!
          A couple of days later it was our chance to run the main channel. I was ecstatic to get a chance to explore more of the completely different Ottawa river. The first rapid we came upon was the Lorne, which sported a MASSIVE hole on the right that looked particularly nasty to get stuck in. the next feature on the Lorne that stuck out was Mini Bus. After I got too freaked out by its massiveness, after the others surfed it for a bit we headed to lunch, then butcher's knife. The new features that popped out on that rapid were the man eatingly massive whirlpools. After some of the other Keeners got completely beatered and sucked down all the way into the whirlpools, I decided to test a few out. This experience resulted in me being sucked into a quite vicious one and swirled around upside down so I couldn't breathe, which was AWESOME!!! After a bit of flatwater, we approached Norman's. In the middle lay--actually crashed--two humongous curlers morphing into one big super wave!! After that came the biggest, nastiest rapid of them all: Coliseum. Previously at a different session I had gotten a pretty terrible beatdown there resulting in me losing my paddle and having to hand roll up. However, that day it was much, much, much, much more intimidating. To the right: jurassically huge "white faced monster" hole. To the left: another hole of equal levels of intimidation. Downstream: three of the biggest, baddest breaking waves I'd ever seen, followed by a slightly "smaller" hole on the left. As the rapid seemed to taper out, there came a large horizon line. Steve-o made it super clear that we weren't to go anywhere near it, because it was a gigantic, pour over. On my fourth time of the week running it, all three of the breaking waves knocked me over one after the other, causing me to keep carping rolls and grow increasingly closer to death ledge (the dangerous pour over). Fortunately I rolled up and had time to quickly paddle left.
          The Ottawa river this week has pleasantly surprised me in so many ways, and I hope to discover much more in the next two weeks coming!

My First Decent - By Fergal McConvey

Coming from Ireland, where there isn't much water on the rivers, my ambition to venture to the Ottawa river was high. On the first day we paddled down the middle channel. I didn't know what to expect, however I knew it would be amazing. I was right!!! The sheer mass of the river astonished me. I was overwhelmed by the enormous size of the foam piles and waves that we encountered on the river. On the third day we ran the main channel and at this point I saw the middle channel as the biggest rapids ever, but I was wrong. The main eats the middles for breakfast. I arrived late to paddle as I was bit by a spider and took a trip the the clinic , but missed nothing. At the bottom of the river we paddled the biggest rapid ive ever seen in my life, COLISEUM.

   

Blog #1 - Lotte Rayner

This year the Ottawa river is at a raging flow of 12 feet, 13 feet higher than the river I knew last year. But because the river is the Ottawa and in my opinion is one of the best river in the world the flow increase only makes it more huge, fun and  exciting. Yesterday I got to surf the biggest wave i have ever surfed in my life on the loren rapid called mini bus just below where garb usually is. Mini bus is a bit misleading in the name because it's not that mini and is indeed ruffely the size of a bus, I swear it's the size of a small house. My first time dropping in I was to far left and flushed but after watching other keeners drop in and shred it coming out all goods, I just went into the meat of it and found how awesomely fun and smooth it was I managed to get a spin and a round house on the monsteress wave!!

A wee bit farther down the river are the whirlpools, last year they weren't really there and we would spend quite a bit of time attempting to get a slight pull down and now the levels up I managed to get a solid underwater beat down with my whole boat submerged underwater it was kinda pretty awesome:))

Keeners has been awesome so far and I can't wait for the next 2 weeks I'm hoping that the water might go even higher! 

Hi mum and dad! 

New Friends--Ben Warren-Blog #1

I've been excited for Keeners for a long while now. Now that I am finally here my stoke levels are as high as they have ever been. My name is Ben Warren and I am from Asheville North Carolina and kayak whenever I can. Some of my favorite rivers back home are the Green, Pigeon, Ocoee, and many more. There are kids here who have come from all around the world to create the amazing kayak crew that we have here now (summer 2k17 keeners session 1). Even though it is only day 3 I have already made great friends. While I am not great friends with everybody in the group yet, I plan and hope to be by the end of the session. So far we have only paddled the middle, and we have owned it. We all styled elevator shaft and have been shredding on every wave. I can't wait to see what awaits us on other sections of the Ottawa that we will run in the future.