Back In Action!

OK, so posting blog updates in Cali didn't work as well as I thought it would. Sleeping in the woods every night for three weeks was really good for the soul, but, not the blog. We did however run the gnar and some will be on Disarm. For the past 5 weeks I've been teaching kayaking to kids at a camp in Richmond, VA called Passages. It's super fun, and I love teaching kayaking.


Stuart Hyde on the Horsepasture River...

Last weekend it rained and a group of counselors got to head down to the Horsepasture River in western NC. It was ridiculously fun, super steep and not really that hard. The run starts off with a 20-foot cascade/waterfall, and pretty much just keeps dropping from there. It heads into about half a mile of boulder gardens, which are mostly read and run except for the one with the sieve that you can't really see if you boat scout! After that it's mostly pool drop the whole way, and the pools are pretty short, separated by high quality slides, more boulder drops and the most interesting feature on the creek, Staircase.


Mike Stratton, Dave Rugh, and Van Null Dropping Staircase...

Staircase is 4 drops of close to 10 feet, some taller, some shorter. The drops are stacked so closely on top of each other that when you sit in a kayak at the top of the rapid, all you can see is the first horizon line and the pool way below. Amazingly, all of the drops are very straightforward and low stress.

There is no shuttle for the run, so after four river miles, the real fun begins. It's a 4-mile hike out climbing near 2000 feet in elevation. Luckily the trails are easy to follow.

We headed down with 5 girls and 5 boys, all either climbing or kayaking counselors. The boys went kayaking and the girls climbed Looking Glass Rock, so we went to meet the climbers at the rock only to find that all five were descending their route completely topless. Sorry, we only had the camera out for the kayaking.