Althea’s Kayaking Blog

Today was the first south eugene whitewater club trip of the year. We had a very experienced group, and sadly no new members but on the bright side it meant that we could run a more challenging section of river. Due to the low flows we opted to run the damn released N Santiam. The section has a nice big water feel to it and is well worth running. The two main rapids, The Narrows and Niagara, were not as big as i had anticipated. According to Soggy Sneakers  ” experts advise portaging this rapid” referring to The Narrows, the rapid is not that bad at all, it is about class 4 and i had no difficulties with it. Niagara is also said to be much more intense when in reality if you are comfortable with swirly water it is quite easy. The run has numerous other rapids that are fun and vary in difficulty from class 2-3. All in all it was another great day on the river. Picture is of all our boats on one car, we were being environmentally friendly even if it meant sacrificing some leg room.

In my time waiting for the water levels to rise i found some old footage and put it into a short video. Its not the best footage or the most interesting so i am hoping to get some new footage into a film but this is it for now. Enjoy!! click on the link to view > kayaking

This is my first post in a while, i have not been paddling that much lately due to the low water levels. It has not started raining here yet which means that nothing except some of the summer runs are in. I am waiting for it to rain and as soon as it does i will get out and paddle some stuff worth writing about.

During this wait for rain i have been volunteering at a city program that offers kayaking classes to people of all ages and skill levels. These past few weeks we have been teaching inside at a pool, we have been teaching people to roll. It is a great feeling to watch someone go from learning to wet exit to T rescues and to the roll.