Indholdsfortegnelse for KS#52 (winter 2014) i Kayak Session Magazine

Each time we put together an issue, we do our best to gather a selection of features and news that is diverse and inspiring – the latest milestones, the next great hotspot, a bit of history to build depth in our sport and our community. Our goal is also a gathering of readership, the coming together of a virtual community in passion and support of whitewater kayaking. In this issue we bring you a profile on the Kerns, three brothers who, over a decade and across the globe, took the evolution of running hard whitewater into overdrive. Brothers who collectively impacted the world of kayaking in endless ways, including pioneering the life of traveling event rep, influencing whitewater safety standards, designing boats, probing a long list of first descents on…

Organizer of the Malabar River Festival held every year on the rivers of Kerala in the south of India, Manik Taneja is a paddling addict, IT engineer, paddlesports distributor, kayak instructor, and one of the leading figures in a growing paddling scene in India. It used to be that raft guides made up most of the Indian paddling community. More recently, however, rapid economic development and a young and growing middle class in India has lead to increasing interest in outdoor adventure sports. This budding appeal, combined with the sacred connection many Indians feel to rivers, could turn India into one of the fastest growing paddling markets in Asia. Relatively new to kayaking himself, Manik is determined to spread the sport throughout his country, but especially in his home region…

You are flying through space, surrounded by a swirl of stars and lit up by the big bright galaxy spinning over your head. Below you is a dark place, ominously devoid of stars. All at once, space wind picks up and you are unstable. A bright tornado of stars comes gyrating towards you and violently whips you into a tailspin. You are out of control, at the mercy of this great turbulent gust but strangely at peace with it. Now there’s a disturbance below you and little shock waves ripple through your hull. Your craft waivers, then plummets into the dark. Pressure: a dark crush on your ears and lungs builds rapidly. You stare up to the light from the now distant galaxy wondering why you took this mission and…

As part of a Red Bull project last October, Aniol Serrasolses made the first descent of the Key Hole Waterfall on Pebble Creek in British Columbia. Aniol had to climb to the top of a mountain and drop into the canyon to paddle this magnificent drop, estimated at 30 m/99 ft. Aniol sums up his experience saying,“Key Hole is the perfect waterfall but nobody had tried it before. I’ve never been so happy doing a project. It was the hardest goal I’ve reached so far in my career.” Late summer typically brings a migration of paddlers north searching for consistent flows on big water. Here, Dane Jackson throws a huge macho move right above Phil’s Hole on the Ottawa River, Canada.…

GLACIAL MELT REVEALS NEW RAPIDS ON THE CLENDENNING RIVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA In the past decade, the Glaciers of British Columbia (and all over the world) have been receding dramatically. Outside of the larger alarming consequences for the planet, the melting down of the glaciers brings both good and bad for kayakers. The Homathko is an example of the detrimental effects of glacial recession: A huge moraine lake located right above The First Act of Tragedy broke open, pouring millions of cubic meters of rocks into the canyon. After a few years, the run has still not recuperated from this event. On other runs, the melting of ice has revealed exciting new sections of river. The Clendenning is one such river. The run has been on the map for decades,…

What most people know about Kazakhstan is that it emerged as a modern nation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some might have a vague notion of its location in Central Asia, but their knowledge often ends there. Few are aware that Kazakhstan has a landmass the size of Western Europe, making it the largest landlocked country in the world and the ninth largest country overall. Within its borders lie an amazing diversity of landscapes, and an impressive potential for whitewater. At the eastern end of the country rise two significant mountain ranges, the Altai to the north and the Tian-Shan in the south. Between them is the Dzungaria region, characterized by remote rivers and steep peaks. These three mountain systems were the target of a Slovakian-Russian expedition to…

As Norway’s whitewater popularity has grown over the past fifteen year, so too have the summer crowds on the southern rivers centered around Voss and Sjoa. In answer to this, a decade ago paddlers began heading north to the runs around Hattfjelldal and Rana, which offered excellent whitewater with few paddlers around. However, as media exposure of the northern regions has increased, so too have the numbers of paddlers. So what to do? For a small number of international paddlers in July 2014, the answer was obvious: push farther. Our core crew this summer was unusually diverse, with four women and two guys and none of them from the same country. Ron Fischer (SUI), Louise Jull (NZ), Diego Valsecchi (ARG) Nicole Mansfield (USA), Katrina van Wijk (CAN) and I paddled…

DAG SPY 235 This versatile creekboat was designed to meet the dynamic paddler’s needs. It’s a river kayak suitable for paddlers of all levels and for all situations, even the most technical. This boat is very nimble, precise, fast, stable, and forgiving. It’s a creekboat for paddler up to 85 kg. It’s a river runner for paddlers up to 90kg. length: 235 cm - width: 65 cm - volume: 260 l - weight: 19 kg - paddler weight range: 80 kg- max. cap.: 95 kg More info at www.dag-kayak.com YAK VANGUARD DRYSUIT When you go out in a drysuit you want the best protection from the elements combined with the comfort and freedom of movement you’d expect from a wetsuit and cag combo. The Vanguard has it all…

GREEN RACE – NOVEMBER 1ST, 2014 – GREEN RIVER, NC, USA Every year it seems the Green Race throws something different at us. This year it was the weather. Paddlers spent the week prior in their shortie paddling tops, then Friday night all hell broke loose. Sub-freezing temperatures arrived, 30 mph winds blew, and in the wee hours of the morning the snow started to fall, leaving 4” of snow on the ground by the time the sun came up. The local emergency officials didn’t want the race to go on and the race was within moments of being canceled. There were accidents and power outages all over the southeast. One group of paddlers coming from Knoxville got stuck behind accidents from the snow that blocked I-40 coming into North…

At 17, Chuck Kern was the oldest of three brothers who set off on a cross-country road trip in a high mileage Toyota van. Destination number one was a Grateful Dead concert in Wisconsin, halfway across the country from their New Hampshire home. Beyond that, their agenda was loosely based around finding a wave they’d seen Rob Lesser surf in a poster-ad, located somewhere in Idaho. Wide-eyed in the wake of the Dead show, the teenagers continued west until spotting the majestic Rocky Mountains, where they excitedly unloaded their kayaks, finally, at the Yellowstone River. Blissfully ignorant of the National Park Service’s no boating policy in Yellowstone, they enjoyed an afternoon on the forbidden water before learning from a passer-by that the run was illegal. The brothers escaped undetected, but…

POWER KAYAK WORKOUT #1 PREPARE FOR A LONG DAY ON THE RIVER Your body adapts and evolves every day to your environment. Go in the sun and get a tan; sit on the couch and watch your muscles atrophy; work the heart and cardio and lay some new capillaries. Cause and effect. There are no secrets, just a lack of knowledge and/or motivation that prevents people from creating the bodies they want to use in their daily lives. Today we’ll learn one of my tried and true, cardio, upper body, core workouts that you can do anywhere you have water,“Power Kayak”. WHY POWER KAYAK? GET PHYSICALLY READY FOR A LONG RAPID, A CHALLENGING RAPID, OR A LONG DAY ON THE RIVER! Increase your muscle power, tone, and endurance. Improve your…