After heading up to the far north of Australia I participated in the Australian Boatercross Championships. With a stack of slalom competitors making the trip up North and a couple using it as training for the Olympics I was quite happy with my top ten result. Crystal Cascades is an amazing place to hold such an event, warm water, great rapids, awesome spectator access and just one fantastic all round river. The day later, the water dropped just enough to make it too low so we were very lucky with the conditions indeed! Cheers to everyone that headed up there, already in just two years is has become about the second largest whitewater festival in Australia.

Jez

Jackson Kayak Coordinator of Karma

http://vimeo.com/m/41898449

Some other videos from the trip

I have recently gone to the Nantahala for a shootout and a hometown throwdown checking out the new wave shaper.  A lot of hard work and changes have been done on it since the last time I’ve paddle at the NOC.  The construction done on the wave has made it more retentive to land massive tricks in the hole, and also easier to get into the eddy.  Still needs a little work to be done on the wave, but definitely moving up on my list of favorite play spots! The Nantahala has one of the very few custom-built wave shapers on a natural river in the U.S.  I can’t wait for the Chattahoochee River, my hometown play spot, to finish construction of a wave shaper here in Columbus, GA.  But for now, I will be spending lots of time on the Nantahala hole practicing for the Worlds! See link bellow.

Here is a vid of our trip to Canada, HUCK CANADA, a Kayak program for Juniors that Nick Troutman and I speared up with Falling Creek Camp.

This one is from Alex, one of the Juniors who put together a stack of pictures to make a sweet video!

Here are some of the other videos from the trip.

Full long Version Part 1 http://www.vimeo.com/29041670

Full long Version Part 2http://www.vimeo.com/29048442

Jez

Jackson Kayak Coordinator of Karma

Monsoon Madness is a kayak festival in Far North Queensland, FNQ, Cairns that was started just a year ago by ‘Bondy’ and I and has already become a feature on the Australian Paddling Calendar. This year the first day featured the Australian Nationals Boatercross. What is boater cross I hear you ask? Well in the visually spectacular Crystal Cascades river, paddlers are timed as they kayak down a steep section of river and ranked on their timing. Then you paddle head to head in a brackets style of event with the winner moving on and the loser getting knocked out. Last year we were successful in our attempts to ratify it as a Nationals event allowing use to crown National Champions.

With this said, it is by far a fantastic spectator sport as boaters jostle for position racing head to head down technical and steep rapids. Everyone who headed out for the event really enjoyed the racing as we had competitors from all around Australia and some competitors from France, NZ and Canada.

In the end Phil Gibons took out the event for the second year in a row with France paddler Max securing second place, Christian taking third.

Congratualtions also go to womens winner Emily Karr and Junior winner Joe Dunne.

Day two featured the Australian Freestyle Championships on a very munchy and difficult feature on the mighty Baron river. Local paddler Marlow took out the event in his first ever freestyle competition. This guy can boat!

Joe again took out the Juniors with some huge loops while Emily also took out the Womens and I was fortunate to take out C1.

What an awesome event, thanks to all the sponsors, photographers and TV crews that headed outs, also Blakey who made the boater cross run so smoothly as well as a huge thanks to all the paddlers who made the trip from all around Australia and the world. See you next year!

jez

Jackson Kayak Coordinator of Karma.