Paddlemania 08

Paddlemainia turned out to be a beautiful day between the random rain drops. Rosie and I headed up to Carlton for the festivities and had a great time. It's always fun up on the Louis and even more so when there's a party going on. I was able to see several of my Duluth paddling buds that I haven't seen much of this year. Most everyone ran the Upper Louis today at 2800cfs either in kayaks or in Jorge's raft. The highlight today was the Slot Machine Showdown. The House lost today with the score being House, 1, Players, 3. Not saying who though. You had to be there. Swag was raffled off and I won some Sex Wax...OK!? It was either that or the nose plugs. The new venue was great! Thanks Team Midwest Mountaineering!

Lesser Scaup

With the water getting really low it's nice when something new shows up on the Vermillion. Tonight it was a Lesser Scaup hanging out in RR pool. This is the first one I've seen down there. My photos of him didn't turn out because of the lighting and distance so I pulled one from the internet. These ducks winter down south and head to Canada during the summer. He made some remark about the tame water and mentioned he'd be surfing Sturgeon by this weekend...lucky ducky!

6-17-08 Update on the Scaup. Still there...tonight we saw ducklings with so she'll be hanging around Railroad for awhile. Talking to my co worker whos a big duck hunter he says that is unusual for a Scaup to nest down here. He see's them come thru in the fall on the third week of October every year.

WOW! Guess Who's Getting Married!

Congratulations Dennis! I couldn't be happier for you and Lisa! Best news of the spring! Plus you get Karthik as a son...now that's a cool kid! You'll have him throwing ends in no time!

Barn Bluff

I got a call this afternoon and joined Lisa, Aaron and Richard from the Wednesday Rocks crew for some climbing before hitting the Verm. I did some leads and top roping today and am getting more comfortable with climbing outdoors. I did some awesome routes like "Goofed on skunk weed" and "Hump the dog." Today was also the first day I got to try my new rope and draws. Fun! Aaron was doing his first Trad leads today and Lisa and Richard were styling all their routes. I went on to meet some paddlers at the Verm and had a relaxing cool down paddle.

"Wood In It"...Have Been Nice...

What an incredible weekend!! I packed the pug and headed north to Carlton. Rosie was a couple of hours behind me. The rivers had gone insane with the huge amount of rain we had just recieved. Everything was running! Rosie and I scouted out the Lower at around 5000cfs. It was pretty impressive! When driving back to the Outpost Aaron called and said he was on his way and lets do the Upper. Ok! It was just us two running it Saturday evening. I have only ran it to about 2500cfs so I really didn't know what to expect with it being 7000cfs. By far the biggest thrill of the weekend was Rescue Rapids! Looking down from Electric Ledge it looked awesome. I wondered what the heck was going on down there! Well I followed Aaron and being Aaron he went for the biggest water he could find! The waves were huge! So much fun! That was some big water for sure! Afterwards Rosie, Aaron and I scouted the Lester at high water. Aaron met up with Mike and Melissa the next morning for his first run of the Lester...he styled it! On to the Knife with the rest of the crew from the cities and Two Harbors. Running the Knife today was Aaron, Art, Bryan, Brian, Bill, Dave, Graeme, and I. The water had dropped quite a bit but it was still runnable. I was so looking forward to running Fish Falls again but as you can see from the photos there was some huge wood in it. I would have liked to have seen what the water looked like at it's highest level. We ran the river down to the bridge and scouted the ledges. There was one log to avoid going into the chute. We all ran it thru and stopped to check the next drop...more wood. Several opted to run it down a bare bones slide and then take the falls and it did work quite well. What an incredible weekend for sure! To top it off I found the most awesome agate on the Knife today! Be sure to check out Bryan's blog as his photographer friend Ole took alot of profesional photos of us and Bryan will be posting them soon! Thanks Ole!

Photos of the Lower Louis

While waiting for my paddling buds to come up on Saturday I hiked the Lower to see what the drops look like when it's running about 5000cfs.



The Beek.
Octapus below the Beek.

Looking up river from the Swinging Bridge.

Super Canoe U 08!

What a fantastic group of students we had!! There were three classes of beginers and all three rocked! This was my second year safety boating for Canoe U. With my schedule I can only boat the graduation weekend so I get to see the students put to use the hard learned skills from the previous classes. Our group had a great day on the Kettle today! 100% no swim run down Blueberry! 100% no swims down Mother's Delight and 100% no swims down Dragons Tooth. We stopped and seal launched them off "the rock" By time we arrived at Hell's Gate we had tired them out quite a bit. Just a few mishaps in Hell's Gate...but hey...that's Hell's Gate. Jim was hitting his combat roll! Rosie came within a hair of hitting hers!!! So close! One gentleman in Art's class had an OK roll but WOW surprise...he had a killer hand roll he learned off You Tube! So much fun! You can tell everyone of these people will be on the rivers tearing it up! Great time!

Rosie
Kathie
Bea
Sara
Lynn
Jim

More Sturgeon Photos

Bryan has photos up on his blog from our Sturgeon Falls trip. I blatantly snagged a couple of myself off his blog. Check out the rest at http://liquid-addiction.blogspot.com/

And also one video that Bryan kindly posted of me!

Sturgeon Falls!

Bryan, Graeme and I headed to Sturgeon Falls over Memorial Day. If there was ever a trip that was Blessed this was it. Everything went perfect and when it didn't we had solutions drop into our laps. We arrived late Friday night and set camp and went to sleep. We were up early and hooked up with Craige and Tom for a little Sturgeon action. The day went great! Sturgeon was huge and very intimidating...for me. The swim would be long if you missed a roll even with the motor boat we brought along. Happy to say no swims that day with our group. Bryan told me right off the bat not to even consider "warming up" on the little stuff. Just throw yourself right into the big stuff and get it over with. This spring Mike L. told me when he learned to kayak in Colorado that his instructor told him to try three rolls...and if you don't come up after three rolls...to try five more. Bryan suggested I try the second wave and I declined and said I was going right for Chamelion. As I was getting into my boat Bryan said...Nora...try three rolls...and we both laughed! I was off. I paddled out above the island in the biggest, glassiest water I've ever paddled and looked down at Chamelion waiting for me...no turning back now. The guys were all on the Island watching as I slowly dropped closer to Chamelion. We were all smiling (for different reasons) and I think we were all holding our breath. I hit it dead center and started surfing...WhooHoo!!! Whoops...I caught a vertical cartwheely thing and flipped. No problem setup for my roll...oopsie...rolled on the second wave...back over...setup, roll again...son of a gun...I rolled up on Learner's wave...back over...setup, roll again... %?&*%$$# where the %^$*&? did THAT wave come from?? Back over...setup, roll..whoo hoo finally up! OK that was BIG FUN and the start of a great day! Natalie and Mike came out and joined us and it was just us from the states enjoying the beautiful, warm sunny perfect day! That evening we headed to Whitemud. We arrived late and Bryan, Craige, Graeme, and Tom went out to play. Whitemud is incredible! Huge!! I opted not to paddle and just ran Bryan's SLR camera. The sunset was fantastic and the clouds mirrored the waves we had paddled that day. Of course that meant storms moving in. I had left my tent windows open and was worried as we raced the lightning home. Bryan reminded me of how perfect this trip was going and not to worry. Sure enough..the rain held until about 15 minutes after we arrived back at camp. We slept thru rain all night and more thunder in the morning. Over an inch fell that night. The rain stopped and our group was added to with Bill, Brian, and Marie joining us. Evan also joined us for his first time at Sturgeon so it was a great group going out. We all went to Sturgeon Falls with the exception of Craige and Tom who went to Whitemud for some huge air blunts on Scarey Wave...they got em! Bryan Z and Graeme were going big and got their blunts in also this weekend. The rain held off until late afternoon when the temp dropped and the storms hit. Back at camp it was a no brainer to "upgrade" our camping situation to yurts. We packed and moved into our yurt and enjoyed warm accomodations and watched video and talked stoke from this weekend. This morning I was up early and packed my tent up while ice pellets came down...brrr! I think this trip everyone of us successfully accomplished what we wanted to do...truly a Blessed trip! Manitoba just ROCKED! Now as for the photos I only ran my camera as an after thought so I didn't get many. I did use Bryan's alot as we all did and he had close to 700 photos on his card on one camera and plenty of video on the other, so be sure to check his blog out.

Look what I found in my begonias when I got home!

Climbing High!

Monday I was finally able to climb with Lisa and the Wednesday Rocks crew. I almost over slept as I had to work a twelve hour midnight shift Sunday night when I got back from Papstapalooza. I'm glad I didn't. We were able to get some climbs in before the rain started. Climbing outdoors is so different from the gym. I really think I need to do it on a more regular basis. The strength that climbing builds and the mental challenge is something that I like. My new draws were waiting for me in the mail when I got home. Next is a rope and I should be set for the summer at least.

This weekend there are three of us headed to Sturgeon Falls. We're taking two pickups and I will have room for one more person in mine. Leaving Friday morning...home monday night. If interested let me know.