SMALL WORLD ADVENTURES GOES ON TOUR

Now is the time to join Small World Adventures for a paddling vacation in Ecuador! Things have never been better down south—access to Ecuador’s plethora of outstanding whitewater is easy with our local knowledge, Small World’s riverside lodge is the most deluxe place to stay in any of Ecuador’s kayaking regions, and we have just recently discovered four new runs to add to our already long list of great rivers to paddle.

In our effort to spread the good word about Ecuador’s whitewater, we created a “win a free trip” contest where people can visit our website and enter their name into our online raffle. The winner gets a free week of kayaking in Ecuador on any trip during our 2007-2008 season. Don and Darcy are traveling around to river festivals and great boating destinations throughout Canada and the US signing people up for the drawing.

The first official festival on our tour was the Puntledge River festival held on Vancouver Island. This great festival is held on the Puntledge River near the towns of Courtney and Comox on the northeastern side of Vancouver Island. The lower Puntledge has some outstanding play features, and the festival organizers have coordinated with the dam keepers to assure flows for the weekend. The upper Puntledge is a wonderfully odd piece of whitewater for British Columbia. Festival flows were between 65 and 110 CMS (2800-3500 CFS), and on the upper run, all this water comes crashing down 30-70 degree slides with a couple of vertical waterfalls thrown in the mix. Check out http://www.surfkayak.org/puntledge.html for more information on the Puntledge River festival. It might just be the perfect excuse to go see Beautiful British Columbia for yourself! If you want to see some photos of both the play run and the upper run, check out http://www.waynebarson.com/photos/puntfest/index4.html

After the Puntledge Festival, it was time for Don and Darcy to move out of Vancouver and head back to the US, but before we left we tried to squeeze in a few more days of boating on the record snowpack that was just beginning to run off into the rivers. We rallied together the great friends we made over the past two years in the Sea to Sky corrider and hit up a few classics before we left.

The photo of Darcy above and this one of Roger on the “balls to the walls” falls are courtesy of Steve Rogers with Bread and Butter. You can check out more of his fine work at www.breadandbutter.me.uk/

Our next stop was the Wenatchee River festival near Leavenworth and Cashmire, Washington. This was another great festival that included shuttles on the play run of the Wenatchee River and featured a rodeo at “Granny’s Hole.” Due to some cold weather during the week preceeding the festival lots of other Leavenworth area gems were in while we were there including the Tumwater section of the Wenatchee, Icicle Creek, the Little Wenatchee, and the Nasson. Seattle Raft and Kayak http://www.seattleraftandkayak.com/ and Leavenworth Mountain Sports http://www.leavenworthmtnsports.com/ were there lending out the newest kayaks on the market, and people were doing impressive things with them! Colin Kemp from Jackson Kayaks http://www.jacksonkayak.com/ was on scene giving clinics and pointers as well. All and all it was a great festival. Unfortunately Don and I had to blast out of town fairly quickly, but we did manage to get in a few runs before heading south to Hood River.

On our way to Hood River, we stopped and paddled the Lower Wind River on a suggestion from our local contacts. After that, we arrived in BZ Corner just in time to meet our friend Jason from Outdoorplay.com for an after work run down the Green Truss section of the White Salmon. Jason definitely hooked us up in Hood River, and gave us a memorable, and outstanding 3-day stay.

Day 1: Wind River/Green Truss

Darcy Gaechter following suit

Beveridge brothers portaging the log in lower Zig Zag

Day 2: Little White Salmon

Don at Wishbone

We opted not to run Spirit this time around as our backs were still sore from the last time we did it.

Day 3: Salmon River Gorge

preparing for the hike in Darcy on the “put in ” falls

Shortly after Frustration Falls is a 75-footer that most opt to portage. We sent the boats flying–Don’s had a nice line–and then repelled down into the pool below.

Lana and a few other local paddlers helped our trip to the region to be as good as good can be—thanks to all of you!

I am amazed by the number of paddlers in the Hood River area. It’s great to see so many people getting out there enjoying their world-class rivers!
I hope to see a Hood River crew come down to Ecuador this winter! I know you can paddle year round in the Northwest, but you gotta admit, putting a shorty top on in January is a damn nice thing.

to be continued in September

Unfortunately we had to bring our Northwest tour to an end in order to get back to Colorado to put in a couple months of work. We will, however resume the tour on September 5th when we head back east. We plan to spend most of September and October hitting up river festivals and releases in the eastern US. So far, the Gauley River Festival and the Moose River Festival are on our schedule of events as are paddling the Russell Fork and Youghiogheny Rivers while the releases are going on. Since Don and I have both spent most of our boating days on the west coast, we are somewhat clueless when it comes to the east, so if anyone out there has any suggestions of festivals or runs we should do while we are out there, please send me an e-mail! I welcome all suggestions.
info@smallworldadventures.com

Stay tuned for reports from the east.

ALSO, DON’T FORGET TO ENTER TO WIN A FREE KAYAKING TRIP IN ECUADOR. THE LOTTERY IS STILL OPEN, AND WE WILL PICK A WINNER IN OCTOBER AFTER OUR EAST COAST TOUR. GO TO OUR WEBSITE AT
https://smallworldadventures.com/ AND ENTER TO WIN.