team-ex

[teamex]

In the middle of July George, Nicola and myself went big water playboating in Canada for 2 weeks. We flew there with Flyzoom for about £360, there was a charge of £25 pounds to fly a boat. We hired a Dodge Dakota 4WD pickup from national car rental which cost around $£600 pounds. We also picked up a rental boat for Nicola at Mountain Equipment Co-op, this cost about 30 pounds a week. Then we drove to the Ottawa.

Levels were high and we found ourselves lots to do generally, but there would have been more playspots on the Ottawa at low levels. The Ottawa was between 14 and 18 feet on the Owl gauge, normal levels for this time of the year would be around 0. We camped at River Run which is the most convient place as it is right next to the get out and there is a hot tub and a bar close by. Nice.

We ran both channels of the Ottawa at a high level, the middle channel on the Ottawa had the most play. The main channel had Bus Eater though, and the Collisieum rapids which were fairly intimidating. We skirted round the side of these, but there were some good waves just downstream of bus eater.

On the middle channel the playspots were:

Angel's Kiss : Decent hole/wave. We could spin both ways here and blunt left. You could probably cartwheel too, but it wasn't super-retentive for linking ends. Very friendly

Butterfly Wave : a wave forms near the butterfly hole at about 16. I couldn't do too much here but EJ hit 2 Helixes in a row and some decent aerial blunts so it can't be too bad. The butterfly hole was a trashy pourover where the Liquid Skills guys were doing mystery moves.

No-Name rapids : there were 3 feature here which were great at high levels. The first was a big bouncy wave with a sticky hole on the right but was difficult to get onto. The bottom feature was a little hole for looping and cartwheeling. The middle feature was one of my favourites - a big breaking wave which allowed fast spins and accidental aerials. Hold on!

Glassy wave : the next feature down was a river wide glassy wave which seemed to be getting more like the top wave as the level dropped. I imagine it would be really good fun a bit lower.

Big Smoothie : the last section of rapids on the middle channel where exceptional at the level we had. About 200 metres of really big water with no consequences. The last wave, big smoothie had to be caught on the fly but it was incredibly steep and sticky and compared well with stuff like Lachine and Lyon. Again the liquid skills guys were going off here! Really sweet.

McCoys section was really washed out and was an easy blast down a wave train.

We also paddle some other rivers:

Gatineau - some big water grade 3/4 rapids with massive flat bits in between. Nice change from the Ottawa as we didn't see any other people on the river. After looking at the Haute Tension wave on the Cliveseye website I can't believe I didn't surf here. It looks awesome. The rapid above Haute Tension had a sticky riverwide ledge and made Nic and George both swim. Just as well the eddy below was very big.

Rouge - Good med volume gr4 with some easier bits. You can't see much of this from the road, the section you paddle isn't as hard and the Seven Sisters waterfalls or the rapids above the put which are all pretty full on. Level was 80 (cumecs?), apparently you can run the sisters below 40. The water was warmer than the air temperature. Awesome!

Petawawa - Decent med volume river about 1 hour from the Ottawa. With 3 main rapids and some decent playspots. All three rapids were quite intimidating in slicy playboats. We ran about 1/2 the first one, portaged the second one and the I ran the last one. It's the sort of thing I'd prefer to watch someone else do first though!

Lachine Rapids - BIG - We had a good high level for Big Joe. Get directions from the Internet to the get in and then go out with a local. You can hardly see the rapids from the bank as the river is about a mile wide. Don't bother trying to inspect the rapids by the tourist jet-boat as we did as the it goes to some different rapids with no kayakers (which also look pretty cool btw). I finally got some local guy to take me paddling (thanks very much, sorry I didn't get your name). Its quite straightforward to get to the wave if you are following someone who knows, sort of like going to the bitches the first time but with big rapids on the way out!

The wave was awesome, very big and steep, but getting back to the eddy required a lot of hard work, can't remember the last time I've been so tired.

I've been paddling now for 12 days out of 15 (Including flying days). I need a vacation

I'll add pics once I have them here at work

Note added pics in new post above!