A few weeks ago, Geno had the idea to run Mill Creek, near Fresno. When I was trying to find information about it, I kept seeing write-ups about a Mill Creek in N. California, and it looked good. I put it in the brain as “Paddle someday” run. Went and did Mill Creek near Fresno. there were some really fun rapids on that one, but not many and miles and miles of mank to deal with. I didn’t care for it much, though others in the group were more enthusiastic. …

The North Fork of the Kaweah is an absolute gem of California paddling. This was my first trip down, and I love, love, loved it. 6.5 miles of classic class IV-V whitewater. We took our time, only Geno had done the run before, so we looked at a lot of rapids. There are a lot of rapids. We did a fair bit of read and run too.
Bill Pooley has rapid by rapid description of the run on his site,
http://c2.com/kaweah/log_n​orthfork.html
but take my word for it, it’s just awesome. Absolutely a favorite …

Mill Creek is an infrequently run creek that feeds into the King’s River. We didn’t have much information about the run, only the barest of descriptions from American Whitewater. It said there were some junky miles, some good bedrock drops, and a few significant rapids. I searched, and couldn’t find a single photo of a rapid online, a rarity in often photoed California paddling.
We got to the put-in, did a hasty put in due to testy locals, and paddling a …

Kim’s Uncle Hoa was in town in January, and we decided to take him kayaking. Kim’s mom joined us, along with Kim’s brother Ton and sister in law Cecilia. Kim’s mom was a little nervous, so we put her in the tandem with me, and rented a single for Kim, while her uncle paddled my single sea kayak.
It was a gorgeous day, warm and sunny for January. We stuck to the Newport Harbor, but had a very nice paddle.

A few months ago, I found some cheap fares to Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands. Kim and I decided to spend our thanksgiving there, and had a great time.
Rarotonga feels to me much like Hawaii in terms of the ocean life and the geography and plant life, though it’s much smaller than most of the Hawaii islands we all think of. It’s surprisingly undeveloped, no big hotels, no golf courses, I didn’t see a single chain store or restaurant I recognized, and mostly pretty affordable, with the exception of food, …

I had, Friday and Saturday, the best contest I’ve ever had. I was on fire and it felt incredible. This was the US Waveski National Championships, with about 78 competitors in a variety of categories. Over 40 were entered in the Waveski Open Division, so we started with 10+ heats of four paddlers each. There were guys from Australia, South Africa, Spain. At least 10-12 competitors were from out of the country, and probably 50+% were from out of …

Kim and I, with our friends Ray and Jeff, went out to Santa Cruz this weekend. On Saturday, we paddled from Scorpion cove to Smugglers Harbor, then back to sCorpion where we camped for the night. Sunday, we loaded our gear into the kayaks and paddled to Prisoner’s Harbor, then hiked 3.5 steep, hilly miles to camp. today, we hiked back out, then did a nice short paddle before catching the boat back to the mainland. We saw sea …

This wasn’t a big year for me for whitewater paddling.  Not a lot of new rivers, except for my fabulous Ecuador trip, and not a lot of paddling in total,  but I did get on some old favorites.   I didn’t do much in the way of photos though.  Here are a few…

Kim and I celebrated our anniversary this weekend (April 9) with a weekend trip to Monterrey Bay, CA. We went paddling Sat morning off a point near Pacific Grove. It was windy, and big, and stormy, so we didn’t get far, but it was a lot of fun.
After-wards, we hung out in the tide-pools, then checked out a street fair in PG. Checked into our hotel, then had a nice dinner.
Sunday we went kayaking again, with amazing wildlife. Otters, seals and sea lions EVERYWHERE. Really, …

Santa Cruz surf kayak contest is the biggest contest on the west coast.  Great waves this year, and fun people as always.  Every year I think I’m surfing much better than last year, and I probably am, but so is everyone else!  So i didn’t do as well as I’d have liked, but I had a blast and will be back in 2011.