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!