skookumchuck!

what a spot!

every kayaker has a list of things to do, runs to run, waves to surf. and anyone who ever surfed big waves would be lying if they say that skookumchuck was not on that list.

when i first started whitewater kayaking i saw pictures of that wave that left me awestruck. people were surfing this monster of a wave, getting air, green grinding...

at that point i never thought that i would one day be able to do something like that. now, almost ten years later i have surfed waves that are bigger and faster, there has been tons of skooksfootage from boaters around the world. often enough so much coverage takes some magic away from places, you almost feel as if you know them too well already.

not skooks though!

the power this whole place has is beyond anything a picture could capture. seeing the wave appear out of nowhere, surfing it as it is forming, gettingh washed downstream on the tour on a fine line between massive boils and freakwaves, seeing sealions surfing waves and hissing at people, big boats cruising by as you are surfing on oceanwater, then watching skooks peak and green out, come back for a bit and slowly disappear into calm water again... simply incredible!

we made it an even bigger experience by camping out on an island next to the wave for five days! filled up our playboats to the brim with everything we needed and then pulled them behind the creekboats. from egmont it is something like a 40 min paddle at slacktide, so we only left the island once to get watersupplies and stuff we had forgotten.

it was a great time, but we also had a bit of an epic:
the first day there was a big SAR mission going on, cause the night before a guy that wanted to drop off his boat at the wave went missing.
turned out he simply didn´t recognize the spot where the wave forms and paddled way past it and eventually made it to the next seddlement to hitchhike back the next day. too bad that he wanted to meet someone there and never showed up...

and i had a pretty solid swim!
getting a mild trashing in one of the waves futher down my knee slid out of the thighbraces i hadn´t adjusted yet and thus popped my skirt. i had to swim through three gigantic whirlpools, got a lot of downtime, almost ran out of breath at one point and lost my paddle! scary shit.
didn´t lose the boat, luckily, but i still had to handpaddle back over to the island, quite exhausting.
the next day i borrowed foerster´s paddle and broke it on my third ride, forcing me to paddle back to egmont c1-style. took me about an hour and a half, it sucked! at least that was our last day anyways...

our camp on the island

chill times, we even brought a boardgame!

davies going for a good old brainwash...

sam ewings styling his flashbacks

and so is foerster

andy hill... going clean, going big, but how is this supposed to end?

the only action shot of myself, thanks to gill crawley!

something was weird about the tides, the wave greened out a lot.
which left us watching this guy cruise for a long long time.

yeah man, you rock!

what a shitty view to wake up to, heh?

peace out everyone, next updates should be costa rica. it just started raining again.

lost and found...

so, a little break!
i had a lot of downtime lately, hanging out at my place in turrialba, costa rica. it was raining non-stop, and as i don't have a creeker yet to run the crazy stuff that's going off right now (soon though, so soon!) i started going through this years video footage. i stumbled upon a bunch of stuff from augsburg this winter and spring and thought that i might edit a little clip with it. same same, me trying to figure out the washing machine on the eiskanal. it probably had a bit of coverage this year anyways, as it was part of the worldcup.

i also got way more footage than this, of all the ahoicrew, but that'll have to wait for a bit of a bigger videoproject.

but anyways, here is my take.
while i was editing it a lot of memories of a-town came up, close friends and places, i spent five years in that city... so everyone back home: sending you a lot of love from the other end of the world!



augsburg2008 from sven perschmann on Vimeo.

western canada!!

okay folks, once again I have been slacking off. no, there was no two weeks break on the road trip, it's just that i am in costa rica now!!!
so i have been kinda busy with adjusting to the place i will be living in, finding a place, a job. and i succeeded, it's all set now. i will write about costa rica later though, only so much right now: it is an amazing place, so different than everything i have done before!

back to canada though!
after kelowna we went on a mission for some creeks in bc, and got pretty lucky. especially considering that it was bone dry for the first part and then too rainy and cold for the last.

we made it down:
the spillimacheen - awesome low volume creeking, nicest moves being a slide into 90° drop, tons of fun boofs and then a nice little twenty footer (foerster broke his paddle, popped his skirt and still didn't swim!)

the jordan - even less volume but some good tight and steep lines, one slide into autoboof where skipped across the pool into the next unscouted rapid

the box canyon of the illesillewaet - even in lowest water still somewhat pushy, fun run

the perry - too low when we ran it

the soo - a lot like the oetz in austria, shallow, fast, dirty, some fun moves but not my fav

the upper cheakamus - fun class IV, on sweet sweet boof!

the callaghan - three times, big playground including sketchy little boofs, attempts on grinding logs down drops, a good 25/30footer and lots of steep bouldergardens. highlights? neil getting trashed at the bottom of the drop.

the ashlu: mini mine, pretty high, pretty fast, pretty sweet (except for that i dented my boat, argh!)
BOX CANYON!!!!! what a beautiful run! class IV/V, bryan smith took us down, almost no scouting, sick lines, complete commitment, no way to get out. it was great to finally run it, i had heard so much about it and it surpassed all expectations. the downside was that we got to see how much progress the hydro companies have made already, the run is gonna be dry from next year (?) on, DAM!!!! check therangelife.blogspot.com for some info on the protest and the other intense stuff those guys are pulling off, there are some gems around!

the area around whistler and squamish is considered to be the adventure capital of canada, and i can totally see that now that i've been. sea to sky, everything from coast to big mountains, so much stuff to be done here!
i will definately come back for a while, maybe even try to work there for a while.

oh, i talk and talk, and no shots? well, to be honest, i don't have too many, as i lost my battery for the slr, so we only took video of most of the runs. just be patient, it'll go online at some point...
and there still are a few...

what a day! sunshine, nice creek, good lines...

davies. jordan.

that boof turned out so well that i skipped the pool and went straight into the next rapid. unscouted...

me. jordan. stomp!

foerster and davies. jordan. boof.

outch! what where you thinkin!
foerster. callaghan.
(also the last shot before i lost my/ran out fo battery...)

there were some chill times, too!

and sometimes having some time away from the boys is sweet, too ;)
enjoying the view over the ashlu valley.

yours truly from turrialba, costa rica.

sven

p.s.: it´s raining like crazy here, hasn´t stopped for six days!

winching!

pow! so what does that mean? well, part of our trip out west was a stop in kelowna, to visit our friend darcy.
soo, kelowna is quite the f****ed up city i can tell you. we went out to party hard, got asked for drugs all the time and the general vibe on the street was super aggressive. definately not the right spot for river hippies like us.
anyways, that's not the story.
literally beaten up (outch!) we decided to take it easy the next day. darc and his roommates had a winch with a 600ft rope for wakeboarding. so there was our plan!
we drove to the lake nearby (deepest lake in canada?), set it up and had a few testruns. the boys were rockin their skimboards and wakeskateboards in good fashion and we took our boats out.
being a bit sketched at first, as the water was pretty shallow all the way out we took it easy at first.
after a few rides of getting used to it we worked our way up to throwing tricks.
man, that thing is fun! if i'd ever be somewhere without any play, i'd get one of those.
my favourite was the airscrew, but i can see almost any trick possible, you can get quite the bounce out of the up to 17mph this thing generates.
and this is were the shallow water came in handy, we could film and shoot from so close. i was even able to use my flashlight. made for some good shots i think, but check it out yourself!

the beast!

darcy styling it!
oh, and it was not as warm as it looks.

only downside: handpaddling out 600ft for each ride: davies

neil doing his thing!

did i say flashlight?
zzzzzipppp!

who would beat someone with such a hat?

alright, gotta catch my flight to costa rica in the next minutes, gonna keep posting though!

peace out,
sven

leaving the east!

one of the last little missions we did from our basecamp ottawa were the chutes de coulonge, a tourist sight about 45 mins away. the big double drop was unrunnable in the flows we had, it also had a log in it. so we wanted to run the logslide just next to it. just after davies made it down the desaster started. the registration lady told us she'd call the cops if we'd run the slide (after telling us beforehand that its been run and taking our cash to walk in!), so we decided to send the boats down by themselves, have alex catch them and walk down along the side. unfortunately the pool at the bottom was not as calm as we thought, so alex could only catch two of the boats and the two other ones went down the first drop into the coulonge gorge. argh!
we all ran down, foerster and i chased the boats down the really nice gorge but had to find one boat broken! so: one boat down, two of us didn't get to run any whitewater, foerster and i did the gorge (nice class 4 into a drop) and davies did it all! and surprise surprise, that lady still called the cops, even though we followed her orders! nothing happened though, but had we known, we could as well all have run that damn thing!

davies you lucky bastard!

a lot of magnums, a copcar and a friendly hydroquebec guy that gave us a lift back up.

throughout the summer there always was the question of what to do after the season. should i fly back home? what am i gonna do for the winter?
at some point it started to become clear that i'd go to costa rica some time in november. my friend fernando helped me finding a job, hopefully a place to stay, and now i'm going into a completely new experience!
after having made that decision i pretty soon realized that i had to do something inbetween the rafting season on the ottawa and my departure to CR. so a few of us came up with the idea of roadtrippin out west towards british columbia! so far i had only seen eastern canada and i was looking forward to see this massive country from a different angle.
alex davies and i left the ottawa mid september, our first stop being actually further east: montreal! i hadn't been, wanted to catch up with the riot boys, get some more waves in and switch boats. at 180lb i am on the low side of the astro 58's weight range, and even though i liked its speed and downriver abilities i wanted to push my combomoves. and well, it really does the trick!
so, after working on alex's cottage for a few days him and i spent a full day at the factory, which is just going through some big changes, assembling our boats.
here is my new beauty! charcoal 54! hard to see on photos, but whatever guys, it just looks badass!
i also picked up a magnum 72, as the 80 was a bit big for technical creeking, i had a great time in it throughout the summer though.

my ride

montreal was wicked! we stayed and partied with simon from riot for a bit, cheers man!
also visited and partied a lot with friends from the river, got annihilated with vince and got to surf both big joe and habitat! everytime i come back to montreal i am amazed by its energy, i got really attached to this place throughout the last two summers!

safety discussion, anyone?
habitat was not quite perfect but still good fun!
and thinking of short tops for boating gets me pumped for the winter again!
alright, this is not in the right order, this shot is taken in the badlands near drumheller, close to the end of our continental crossing, but may i introduce:
the roadtrip crew!
left to right: alex davies, neil gibson, stephan "foerster" paetsch
yeah guys, you really are outlaws!

after montreal we hooked up with the other boys. up to winnipeg we had andy hill accompanying us. the first run we did were the seven sisters of the aux sables. pretty nice but short run, provincial park camping just next to the drops, a trail accompanying it, what a playground!
and luckily enough our friend tiia invited us to have a true finnish sauna at her place, thanks so much!

foerster boofing the living daylights out of the biggest slidedrop!

that was it with boating for a while, there sure was a lot of driving though! i mean we pretty much drove across the whole northamerican continent. we had this gps with us, and at times it would just tell us to switch lanes after a few hundred km's. and the worst was: you could already see that spot!

the prairies!
wir machen den weg frei!

anyways, that was it for now, more updates are about to come on the western part of our trip.
peace, out!

this ufo made the sick spot we stayed at even better!

what happened!?

first trip on the ottawa, doing safety at highwater garvin's chute, middle channel

well, i guess i was working!
like working a lot!
and it was a lot of fun!

the whole summer was ridiculous for waterlevels, the ottawa never made it down to normal low summer flows. which means that we had some pretty intense rafting and a lot of time on buseater. while last year at some point became very repetitive, up to a point where i was fed up with rafting, this years changing waterlevels made it all way more interesting.
being at owl the second year had a few advantagesm, too. lots of work early in the season, sportrafting, some tripleading, really interesting classes at MKC, it was simply way more challenging and entertaining.

of course there were downsides, too. i started the summer with tendonitis, smacked my elbow first dancing and then surfing so hard that i had issues for two months with it and had to take a step back in my boating, which sucked! overall i couldn't go out as often as i wanted to, due to this, infected wounds and some minor issues. i guess there is a price you pay if you are consistantly trying to do as much as possible.
nevertheless, once again the ottawa didn't fail in pushing me a lot. i got into combos, learnt a bunch of new tricks, and spent a lot of time on the water which paid off this fall for creeking, too.
i met a lot of new people, spent some good time with friends, partied hard...

i didn't really make it out to montreal or the rouge throughout the season, the water was simply too high to make it worth it. so there was little to post about and i had a hard time getting stuff done anyways, as life was just too entertaining as it was.

right now i'm staying in vancouver, trying to figure my next steps out. i will spend my winter in costa rica, which is gonna be insane! i will post one or two more updates within the next days, we did a roadtrip over the last month and a half and i'm just sorting out the footage. as soon as i have a bit more downtime and all the video, i'll hopefully be able to post some video, too.
for now just a small appetizer, a few shots from the season, i'll just comment on each of them without trying to paint a bigger picture:

big boat guiding highwater coliseum, the only shot i have of me rafting!
photo erin rayton?

first time high tension
it was a bit low to be prime, but still so much fun! one of the best practice waves, so predictable and so much potential!
this photo is taken by benjamin kraler from austria, we randomly met him and his buddy hannes at the wave. the kayaking world is soooo small!

the bitch came back! buseater in full force, i hated this wave last year, now i can't wait to surf it again! we had something like six weeks of bussy this summer, which is totally unusual.
photo by john jennex

park'n huck in quebec!
i went out for a day with foerster, billy harris and a few more to go creeking near north bay.
this one was big, real big. i took this shot of foerster from a bridge. this massive slide continues under the bridge and then drops down a 10-15ft drop with a nasty left corner.
i was pumped to run it, unloaded my boat and had to find out that there was no outfitting in my boat anymore. thanks mark!

more bussy. man this wave is insane!
photo john jennex

foerster doing his thing. c1ers are crazy!

alright, enough for today, everybody's getting busy around me, kinda awkward...

peace,
sven

Broken Car, Mini Bus and Quebec Roadtrip

good morning!!!

yep, that's what it can look like when i wake up in the mornings. not too shabby!
i guess it's been a while since i updated this, mainly because we're still in ridiculously high levels for the season.
this summer at the ottawa has been very rainy so far. so rainy actually that we're not even close to all the low water play levels. no cornerwave, no garburator, very limited play on the two main runs and no good park'n play at all, which makes it hard to get personal boating in, especially as we're in full rafting season now.
rafting is awesome though! we've had highwater coliseum levels for a while now, and that can mean a 50/50 chance to make it through the rapid, motorboat safety at the bottom...
feels almost like kayaking.
and i guess a total of over a month of buseater is not too bad either.
sad news are that my car left me. it actually didn't just leave, it peaced out with a bang!
apparently you need a driveshaft and multijoint to drive the good old aerostar.
RIP!

but the next day totally made up for that! buseater sessions are just awesome. the wave was in so long that people actually started getting bored? i had a blast! some early morning sessions, some full days spent, sore backs and smashed elbow and some decent airtime is how i would sum that up. but check out yourself!

dave pierse about to drop in

carving some green

working my ka-y's

silly flip, cab screw, call it what you want!

oh, and we still made it out for some boating!
riot kayaks hooked up the owl/mkc instructors and guides with some nice deals! these guys spend every day on the river and now they do it in style!
so we got a few days off, took alex davies' chevy venture and, after a really slow start made it to montreal and the riot factory. four of us, eight boats and a bike (!!) on a little adventure!

now that's a load...

first night we hung out in montreal, surfed lachine which was way too high still and partied a bit at a friend's place. next morning we loaded the car again and moved on towards quebec city.
our first stop was the shawinigan slides, just a fun park and bobsled, not too hard but tons of fun! the huge thunderstorm and hailshowers made it a pretty good adventure!

dave pierse

big boats are a blast

the big final slide

running it trainstyle, three magnums grinding

after one night in a cheap-ass motel and a few beer at a local pub the next stop was the tewkesbury section of the jaques cartier river. none of us knew this run, it was above rafting cut-off and the guides we met didn't really wanna run it this high.
apparently the water went up two feet within two hours before we put in. it felt big!

davies in lead, dave chasing him down

there were some big lines. dave pierse tackling one of them

alex

after hours on dirtroads and few right turns too many (thanks alex!) we made it to the neilson, a classic quebec run. 10 km's and countless drop'n pool rapids. we spent six hours on the run, scouted twice and were as exhausted as could be at the very end. great run! fair, technical, and it just keeps going and going. great to practice your boat scouting i guess!
we spent so little time out of our boats and it rained quite a bit, so i only have shots of the very last rapid.

J.T. Hill about to boof

looking back it looks as if we actually got some boating in...
well, flipped my first big raft in coliseum today, gotta have a few beer on that.
of course rafting style. yours truly from owls guide ghetto, sven.