bootfahrer

10/31/2008

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!

10/29/2008

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

7/30/2008

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.

5/17/2008

Back in Canada 2008!

allright!

i don't even know where to start!

i'm back over in canada, three weeks already! i had a great winter in augsburg, hanging out with some of the best people ever. it's been four and a half years in that city, i had such a good time! nevertheless i really wanted to get back for another summer on the ottawa and for the next years wanna keep traveling, see a bit of this world. so here i am, gonna be working for owl and mkc, rafting and instructing and trying to boat as much as i can.
i got a bunch of shiny new gear this summer, so this is gonna be fun!
thanks to kober for the sweetest paddles i've ever owned. scorpion foam core neutral bent, nice!
artistic is keeping me warm and dry while it's still cold on the rivers, riot keeps me floating in style and tatonka is helping me out with some tough bags, jackets and other stuff. thanks so much!

even though things didn't really start out the way i had planned, it still was awesome so far.
i came to canada with tendonitis, and the way i am i didn't really take the time to recover, always went out boating at least one day too early. so in the end i missed out on a few things, creeks were already too low when i finally found the time to head out, i couldn't even go on the roadtrip i had planned. the good thing was that this made me set up my place for the summer real good. i was the first person to show up at owl, had a free choice about where i'm gonna stay and had so much time that i built a house! well not literally, but at least it's wood instead of tarps as walls, i got a proper bed, shelves, a deck... yes!

and i still got out!
i first went to montreal, got my brand spankin new riot boats, astro 58, magnum 80 (that thing is huge!!) and a thunder, ran the super high mulet river with vince normandeau, hung out with fabi and almut (thanks guys!) in montreal, went to chambly just to see tons of divers swimming down the wave (they call it frog day i guess, so no boating there). got my car back, it survived the winter!
i also did quite a bit of boating with stephan "foerster" paetsch who's gonna be back on the ottawa, too, as well as with some of the other riverrun guys. ran the main and middle channel in super high water, got mangled, caught a few sweet surfs and even had to swim after a good beatdown in the lost channel! i went to ottawa, surfed a new, epic and super sketchy wave called "heavy d". imagine garburator on steroids, just huge and fast! not too many surfs on that one, as it was hard to catch and if you miss the eddy it would take half an hour to get back to the wave. big thanks to alex davies for always being in for a mission and erin rayton for some sick photo skills and a lot of patience with us and ten million angry seagulls!
this is one of the few times were i really would've appreciated a jetski, such an annoying eddy...
also been out to the rouge again, hippie canada rules! i love coming back to that place!

anyways, i got a bunch of pictures to share, guess i'll stop babbling now.
throughout the summer i'm gonna try to get quite a few updates up, gonna be writing for the riot blog and will write some travel reports for tatonka (in german). i'm pumped! enjoy the shots!

this is gonna be my summer residence
when i'm coming back it's gonna be all grown in!