Tree Trunk Gorge

-In the car park gearing up - Photo Josh Neilson

Almost 2 years to the day from my last mission to Tree Trunk I found myself standing on the bridge again scouting the lines! This time we had a team of 6 keen to fire it up! As this is such a sick place for footage and photos and a pretty difficult place to run safety we decided to split into two groups and 3 go first and the others runs saftey and media and then swap round.

-Setting up safety in the gorge - Photo Will Martin

Once we had scouted from every possible angle Brendan, Trent and I geared up and headed to the top. With the flows looking rather burely B and I opted for the seal launch entry while Trent ran the guts. Ask him about how this went down...!

-Trent Garnham firing up the crux - Photo Will Martin

-Brendan Bayly going first on the biggy - Photo Tyler Fox

At the top on the big one we circled round a few times before B rolled off the drop..... Boom....."yeaaaahhhooooo" (muffled by the sound of rushing water) and we guess he made it good!

-Trent following suit - Photo Tyler Fox

Next up was Trent... BOOM(even bigger sound)... and another cheer which signaled my time to roll of the sweetest lip into the canyon. about 30ft of freefall then a 10ft reconnection and into the pool!

-Josh Neilson rolling off the big one, with the coolest view! - Photo Will Martin

-Josh from above - Photo Tyler Fox

In the middle of it we re gathered and Safety and photos moved down to the next drop for us. As the light came out it lit up the last drop perfectly as B boofed off (if you want to see the shot of this you will have to ask Tyler really nicely or keep a look out in the Mags as it was the shot of the day!), Another cheer from below and Trent and I followed suit till we were making our way out of the slot canyon in one piece! Stoked to have made it through again!
-Josh getting air on the bottom drop of the gorge - Photo Tyler Fox


With a bit of bush bashing we made it back to the car to fire up the next group and get in place for safety and footage. Sophie opted to coordinate the safety side of things in the gorge and due to a recent broken back Ryan was behind the lens. Soph tied Ryan and I in and we hung off to gorge wall to get in position for shots while the others set up above. With a quick game of paper, scissors, rock deciding that Tyler would go first we gave the signal and he was off. In the same fashion as our run Tyler, Sanga and Wils all had sweet runs and made it out!

-Will taking the sickest line of the day - Photo Ryan Lucas

-Wils with a hole in the chin! The best type of battle scars! - Photo Josh Neilson

Unfortunalty somewhere in Wills perfect line off the big one he managed to connect with his paddle and come out with a hole in his chin!
So with everyone back in the carpark safe and excited we peered over the shots from the day and shared all the stories of epic landings and airborne time in the gorge. With the gear loaded ther was just one last thing to do... in true athlete form we headed to Turangi Burger King to re-fuel the bodies before we went our separate ways for a bit. I am back in the bay for a few days, B and Soph headed South for a few days and the rest of the crew headed back to Okawa Bay for some more Kaituna action. Cheers everyone for a super sick day! Keen to hit it up again next week!
Chur!

P.s Footage from this, Aratiatia and the rest of the world trip this year coming soon...

Rush Sturges breaks his back on Bonito Falls

-Rush Sturges on Bonito Falls, Argentina - Photo Anton Immler

Just a quick update to everyone out there. We have just recieved news from South America that H-Team member, Rush Sturges has had a bad landing on Bonito Falls and suffered a broken back! The full story is yet to be released but we have this shot here from Anton Immler right before the blow.
A word from Rush - "Despite this minor setback, I will have full recovery and return to the game stronger then ever"

Good luck with your rehab Rush and for the full story and amazing footage you can catch this on "Dream Result" - coming soon in 2010 from RiverRoots and RevIn.

Team Nike/ Beaver Creek 2nd in World Champs

I just received this message from the team and would like to say a HUGE congratulations from the crew here at Hydraulics for their amazing effort! Keep it up!



Team Nike/Beaver Creek Second at 2009 Adventure Racing World Championship

After racing 5 days on less than 3 hours of sleep, Team Nike/Beaver Creek finished a highly respectable second at the 2009 Adventure Race World Championships in Portugal. Great Britain's Team Helly-Hansen ended up victorious after scoring just two more CP's (checkpoints) than Nike/Beaver Creek.



The event introduced a new racing format, which caused much confusion, even among the world's top teams. Team Nike/Beaver Creek captain Mike Kloser remarked "I would have to say that this race had the toughest international field that we've ever raced against. There were at least a dozen top teams that could've won this thing with a little help from lady luck. Our team this year was probably one of the strongest we've ever fielded, Chris Forne our navigator was incredible, I've never seen anyone navigate under pressure of time limits like Chris did in this race. George Christison, another Kiwi (new to our team this year) added to our overall paddling strength and was equally strong on his feet and on the bike. Monique Merrill, performed up to the level that most men only hope they could. We raced full throttle from the gun on day one and found that we were having to up the ante at some points in the race just to make some of the time cuts established with this year's unique format."



Most teams were not happy that this largely experimental format (at least with this level of competition) was introduced at a World Championship event. Kloser went on to say "I personally like a challenge that is both mentally and physically demanding, but it would have been nice if all the cards were laid on the table so we would have had a clear understanding of which hand to play and when. Prior to the race, we were given both written verbal statements of the importance in accumulating all the Check Points (CPs), both Compulsory and Optional Bonus CPs. By the end of day one, we were up front in the lead and had collected all the CPs to be had by this point, but along with Orion, (defending World Champs from 2008) we quickly found out it was going be virtually impossible to collect all the CPs and make the periodic race segment cutoffs. So as the race progressed, we opted to bypass some of the Optional CPs, still barely making some of the cutoffs. Needless to say, we raced hard and had a few close calls making some of the cutoffs, which left our support crew on pins and needles waiting to see if we were going to make the time cuts. We would later find out that teams could actually miss some of the cutoffs and take a short cut to the next segment, rest some and start accumulating CPs. Typically in an Adventure Race, if you miss a cut off you are taken out of the running for the win, but as we would find out late in the race, that was not the case in this race and teams could actually benefit from missing a section, resting and leapfrogging ahead of other teams who had made all the time cutoffs.



After racing all out for five days with so little sleep, we were disappointed to have come up 2 CP's short of winning. In hindsight going into the last day, had we known for sure where we stood against the other top teams with total accumulated CPs, we would have pushed on to collect a few more CPs on the 2nd to last trekking segment. As it turned out, one of our Kiwi teammates George had been battling severely blistered feet over the 2nd half of the race and we opted to take our chances on the final bike segment, verses the trekking section. So for the 2nd year in a row, we would have to settle for second place at the World Championships, a title that we had our sites set on recapturing."

The team, which has won numerous World Championships in the past was relieved to find out that next year's AR World Championship in Spain will go back to the traditional racing format.

Louise Urwin BC Update

BC Domination...

After the disapointment of not making it to California this year, we're making up for it by getting our creeking fix in BC. Tyler, Blake & I, loaded the car with boats, replacing the standard roof racks with the extra wide 2x4 special and with the back wheels almost completely in the guards of our trusty new wagon, hit the road.

From Ottawa, we made it as far as Toronto before our first stop...Colin & Ashleys wedding. We poshed it up (well as much as a car load of skid kayakers could) and enjoyed the hilarious (& perhaps a little tipsy?) priest and garden Canapes (that's posh talk for really good fancy food) before the newlyweds left us in their dust...beautiful wedding 'congratulations' guys :)

Tyler, LU & Blake poshed up for Colin & Ashleys wedding (for you mum:)


The next leg of our journey took us 40hrs across the country, through the states (with only minor immigration hold ups) before we got near Invermere, BC and our first waterfall stop, Lunderbeck...so excited...and it was too low...doh!

Lunderbeck Falls - a bit on the low side :(

A little disapointed, we arrived in Invramere and of all things got our teeth cleaned by Blake's sister.....so we're on a boating trip and so far we've been to a wedding, drove a lot, got our teeth cleaned and haven't boated....next stop Golden.....Paddle time!!!

After a slow start on the boating front, it's been game on since, we've hit up a bunch of sweet runs from Golden to Revelstoke, Jasper, Squamish & Whistler. Including 5 sick days in our playboats at Skookemchuck Wave...We've met up with a lot of friends and had some great crews to play with...good times all round, Unfortunately didn't have the camera on all of them and missed out on Beauty creek & the Ashlu due to water levels which were a couple we really wanted to get on but only one swim so far (no it wasn't me) and no real carnage (touch wood).

As far as wildlife goes, this is my 4th season in Canada and before this season hadn't seen any bears..on the Clearwater river yesterday alone, I saw three black bears, a bunch of Bald Eagles & lots of jumping salmon trying to get up the big drops and slamming into the rocks...poor wee guys. BC is riddled with cool animals (I'm a sucker for them) although I'm not sure if I'm ready to see a grizzly bear just yet....


On the wedding front, we spent some time in Jasper for Matt & Megs wedding which was unreal! Sooo many activities...Boating, Biking, partying & we even did a premier for "Valley High" in one of the local Bars...it was a big hit and thanks to some local businesses, we had a bunch of prizes
to give out and ended up a pretty wild night.

Wet Dream Result (trailer)

Pretty funny tongue in cheek video offering here.