The Open Canoe Festival edition 2011 is over.

For me it was the first time to drive up there, not knowing what to expect. There was a 50€ subscription fee, which I intially found kind of high, but the organisation proved me wrong.

Anyhow, it's a huge (over 200!) gathering of paddlers. Not only single-stickers are welcome, other water crafts are also very  welcome, but open canoes are the majority of the boats on the river.

The OCF to me is something totally different in comparison to the Armada. Where at the armada it is still fairly possible to get to know most or even all participants, that's totally impossible at the OCF, even though I think Paul, the organizer, did a brave attempt.
There is also a commercial part at the Festival, a part that, having the idea, made me a bit nervous. But it ended up with a nice presence of Esquif, Mad River, Hiko, not to forget Pentax, ... . But all that presence was not bothersome at any way. And I must say I was really pleased by the amount of test canoes being provided by Esquif and Mad River. There even was the new L'Edge to try!

Another advantage of going a bit commercial, was the really cool group setup by Tent Tipi:

That being said, in such a large gathering, people group together. And even though there were quite some old friends, the 6 Belgians present joined for beers, wine and paddling.  For the first day, some mini-trips have been foreseen. Not guided, but if desired, a shuttle service was available for those who wanted.
4 of us decided to paddle the upstream section so we could get out again at the camp-site. Though it was said to be only a 10km section(?) and a 2hour paddle, we took largely 3 hours to paddle that section. But with a prelude, a spanish fly and a zoom present, it's playtime on a river, even at rather low water levels. Our 17 foot companion had to wait from time to time on the 9 and 10 foot playboats.
No paddling here without swapping canoes. That way I ended up in a spanish fly, a canoe I already know I like and a zoom. Wow, compared to a prelude it's stable, fast and tons of fun. I should be able to give it a more thorough test and review it!
This little section has close to the endpoint a really nice little surf wave. Side surfing in it is a blast, and 360's go rather easy in those little playboats. Sure that's one of the spots where we did spend some time ;-).
It's a pity that due to the low water level, the last, very short rapid was unrunnable. It's kind of a 2 stage drop, but seen on the pictures from last year, a fun ride and probably impressive for those who haven't been on such a rapids before.

The evening is filled with a good meal and the evening filled with good talks and wine.

Sunday is the big-trip day, a 28 (which appeared on a gps to be 32km). The spanish fly is replaced by the L'Edge, and off we go. We take of as one of the first groups, but end as one of the lasts. There are not many fools around there, that do such a long stretch in playboats. We refrain from playing and catching too much eddies, since there is a lot to paddle. But some nice rapids are served as a reward, and there of course we play.

The surf wave cannot be left aside, and even though we are all pretty tired, we do play a bit more in there. And that's the place for me to give the L'Edge another short try. Sidesurfing, 360's and rolling. I don't want to say too much about it, since I want to test this canoe on more pushy water before reviewing it. But the general remarks I can support, slower then the prelude, stable and forgiving, and did I mention stable?

The evening serves yet another meal for us, followed by a tombola. I think at least one thirth of the participants got to win something. Some of them were not really practical (a small t-shirt from Teva, I don't even get in...), but there were really cool prizes as well: kokatat PFD, helmets, pentax waterproof camera's and as main prize, a fully fitted Esquif pocket canyon!

Monday is clinics day. There were sessions on rescue,  poling, tandem canoe technique, ... . I did not join either of them, I already had 5 days of intensive whitewater paddling before I joined the festival, and decided it was a good time to break up the camp, and start moving to Belgium, "I'll see where I end up"

Don't mind my complaining above, about the Teva T-shirt, that was too small, I've got a much more pleasant and really unexpected present afterwards:

Paul selected one of the pictures he took of me, to create a cover for the French magazine "Canoë et Kayak", edition june 2011. So I made my first cover picture ;-).

There are lots of other pictures available, and some video footage too. Here are the two created by Paul Villecourt and his colleagues:

Open Canoe Festival 2011 - Trailer / Bande annonce from Open Canoe Festival on Vimeo.

Open Canoe Festival 2011 - Diaporama / Slideshow from Open Canoe Festival on Vimeo.

Our first day is a day on the lake, doing flatwater teaching and working on our own paddling skills. It is amazing how many differences one can put in one stroke. Even amongst a group of skilled paddlers, there still remains a huge difference in stroke quality (especially between Kent and us, Instructor Candidates).
A nice way to stop the day of flatwater paddling was a rolling session. Some of us had already a very solid roll, another one had a roll but not really reliable and some were close to the point nailing their first roll. It's always nice to get good feedback from skilled paddlers with a good roll. Some more training remains though, even on this field.

The second day was river paddling: Versam - Illanz.  We worked on some basic skills, and got to know the river. Each of us got 2 or 3 topics that we need for river paddling to explain in a short and comprehensive way. It was our own choice where and how to tackle these topics.
It must be said that this section is a really nice section of river. Not too hard, well suited for beginning whitewater paddlers. And some great spots to practice or to point out hazards (like an easily avoidable massive strainer).
But of course there is room as well for some personal skill development and some playboating. Maybe something like boofing rocks?

And as the charmes of paddling in the Vorderrhein valley describe, you take the train back from Illanz to Versam. Not really something where I'm used to, but definetly a fun experience:

The last day of our level 3 instruction started with checking our learning profiles. It was really interesting to see we had a do-er, a thinker and a thinking watcher under the Instructor Candidates. During the day we saw some nice results of people being of a given learning type.
We decided to paddle the same stretch of the Vorderrhein again: Versam - Illanz.  Now we knew the section better, it was time to improve our drills, select the right spot for explaining our topics and improve our own technique.

But James and Kent did their homework as well. They found us a spot to challenge our paddling skills, to see if we could tackle this level of paddling good enough to instruct on it.

The paddling day ended with a swim by James, all of us lined up to thrown him a throwbag to test our skills on rescue. He deliberatly ignored all but the last lines, so we all had a throw in one swim.

Great, I got certified up to Level 3 and I was not physically dead yet. Neither would from paddling part the level 4 impose a problem according to the estimation of James and Kent. Hollidays and Gasthaus were still reserved, so up I went for another 2 fun days of playboating.
The group changed, since I was the only one of the L3 group still having time to continue, and some new people joined for the L4 update or upgrade. Mostly instructors from Kanu Schule Versam itself.

Since it was a update/upgrade, not too much attention was put anymore on the teaching itself, since we all were certified instructors. The more attention was left over for some specific whitewater drills and our own paddling technique. Some parts of the L3 were coming back. But it is useful information and  repetition is unavoidable.

We found ourselves a nice little nature slalom section with interesting currents. That's a nice spot for us to paddle. We all get a couple runs of playboating and good fun. Further down James shows us some really cool lines on his hometown river. But as it's said, it's his hometown river, so these moves are not easily ore not at all repeated by us.

I still have one subject open for my L4 certification: surfing. But the Vorderrhein has it all, and James shows us a great surfing wave. Another spot to keep on playing for a while. And why should one stay seated in a boat if you can stand up?

Summertime, hollidays and feel like some paddling. Yes, of course, one could go for some alpine paddling, but we thought our group wasn't strong enough to go for some alpine paddling. After all 2 of the 3 were in a new boat, and I learned a hard prelude lesson on the Salza.

A more defensive trip then, go for paddling on artificial slalom courses in France: Sault-Brénaz, Saint-Pièrre-de-Boeuf and eventually Huningue.

We do frequent Sault-Brénaz oft enough, so it was nice to get there once more, especially with the new boats. The modifications on the slalom course were only minor, so not much changed to the paddling.  A really nice discovery was that they have some open canoes from Esquif to test. That way I got the chance to test the raven for 2 hours, of which you can read the review on this site.
Paddling on Sault-Brénaz is always a good measuring point to check for progress or level. For me paddling this course was clear that I'm not paddling on the same level with the prelude as I am paddling with the viper. But hey, fun guaranteed!

After 2 days of paddling we moved on to SPdB. This course is served with warm water from an electrical power plant. Add this to the warm weather in southern France and it adds up for some nice paddling environment. Getting down top to bottom on this course is slightly easier then it is on Sault-Brénaz I think. But you do can run much harder lines here.

Really nice in SPdB is the smooth, relatively easy bottom part of the area. There is this very tiny poor-over where you can perfectly work on boat tilt in a side surf and even do your first 360's.
Navigating through the slalom gates is also a way of putting nice pressure on your paddling on rather easy water. We did a few runs, all in the same boat - an esquif spark -. It showed to be not as easy as it looks to put down decent times or event hit the line we agreed upon!

Rescue training was also part of our time in SPdB. We started with basic whitewater swimming to cool down, moved to jumping into whitewater, throwline recovery of a swimmer, second throw recovery of a swimmer (we actually did not stuff our bag again for this training). The last part was a lined jumper to recover a swimmer. Getting the exact timing right on a stretch of whitewater that was not that hard, proved to be a challenge for all of us. More and regular training is not a luxury to get these skills really up to speed!

We had the luxury to be camping at the bottom part of the area, right after the shortcut that allows you to paddle back to the lake and the input without running the bottom section. So we started paddling the bottom section. And actually you can run the greatest technical class III level lines right up there, just below the shortcut. There are simply some things  you have to do right, if you want to run a nice line. Just drifting down is not an option, you actually have to navigate a bit to avoid the rocks.
The problem with this section, or actually the whole area, is that it is quite shallow. I nearly broke my paddle here, running a neat line. When tipping over I had a serious hit with my elbow on the bottom on some rock resulting in a ugly looking painfully swollen elbow. But hey, that's part of paddling, no?

Paddling the whole section down is relatively easy I think , and that's what we did on the first run. But you can put interesting challenges in front of  yourself. There are some nice sticky holes and interesting rocks enough for challenging lines. It's just a matter of how hard you want to push yourself. But it's also a matter of how strong  you are mentally. The upper stretch does not have a real smooth drop-n-pool character. So if you mess up, you'd better have good self rescue skills, a good roll or prepare for a long and sometimes bumpy swim. And since the area is quite shallow, I especially did not like the bumpy swim part.

 Oh, did I mention there is this luxury transport belt? You paddle down, do some flatwater paddling up on the lake, paddle on the transport belt and down you go again. You don't have to get out of your boat if you don't want to!

Unless of course you want to hit the big hole right above the actual start. At the water put-in, there is a nice drop, with a big hole and wavetrain. Looking at it, the hole did not seem to be too sticky and recovery options after the wave train are plenty. Fatigue was crawling in on my side, and I decided not to run it, that'll be something for next time.

 Here is some footage of our week:

Paddle safe, and see you on the river,

Jan

Yet another whitewater course this year. This time at Wildalpen on the Salza, with Heinz Götze. And Andreas was joining for some fun paddling days as well, just as Irmi who would join us on the second day.

To the Salza there is not much more to say except: WAW! It's a nice landscape, great river and having the possibility to head for really hard lines, just as well as just flow through. Of course going for the hard lines was what we did. I took the prelude, thinking that if I could handle the Loisach, I should be able to handle the Salza as well in it.  Well, I actually could, but not for 3 long paddling days in a row. After all it is still hard work for me to keep the prelude under controll. But the good thing was, that the prelude showed me the smallest mistake. It's a severe teacher, but if you can handle the steep learning curve, it's also a good teacher.

The Salza is not a completely harmless rivers, it has some rapids or sections that require a bit more of attention, but most of it is just pure fun. You can measure that by the amount of 2 person rafts that come down there for trips. And even then in June, we saw quite a lot of them.

This course is worth it's money. It's all about getting the most out of a class II section, hitting lines you probably wouldn't even need on a class III river, but without nasty consequences. The worst thing that could happen is a somewhat longer swim (and I went for one in the "biggest"' rapid we were on.

 But a video says a lot more then 1000 words, so maybe  you just want to have a look:

This years gathering of European C-boaters was located in Imst, Austria. In contradiction to last year where we had sunshine and close to high water, this years edition was blessed with medium to low water levels and winterish weather (even fresh snow on the passes!).

Never the less it's always a great pleasure to join old paddling friends and make some new ones.

The same as the last year, the group is split at least into two parts, those who go hard on easy rivers, and those who go hard on harder rivers. I prefer to go really hard on easy rivers instead of going for some harder rivers. Especially since I'm out here with my new boat: an esquif prelude.

We're a relatively small group, and head for the Lech, over the pass to the other valley.  Even at low water levels the Lech is a nice paddle, not only water technical which allows for some nice technical paddling,but also the scenery is great. Above all, it's a great river for me and the prelude to get to know each other. It is the first time we hit alpine whitewater together.
On our way back to the campsite, fresh snow is part of our way back. If you add fresh snow to a whole day of rain and cloudy weather, you can image we envied the group that went for a paddle on the Imster Slucht. They had sunshine all day!

The next run was in a slightly different group. We decided to go for the section of the Inn, starting where the Inn flows into the Inn, up to the input of the Imster slucht. It's a long stretch, just as the Lech one was, but weather was better though. Except at the output, there it started raining like crazy. Also here the low water levels left some interesting rocks above water, adding some challenging lines for those who felt like it.

The last day was a choice between Sanna or Loisach. I've been paddling the Sanna 2 years ago, but I didn't feel like hitting the Pianzer Cataract in the Prelude. So after some discussions I decided to go for the Loisach, at 1.15m. We went down with a group of 5, whereof only Stefan had been paddling the Loisach before.
WHAT A RUN! It's simply an amazing river. And even though I had a serious drop in my technique at the start, I got back to my normal paddling. For some of us it appeared a bit too much, and they got out halfway. We went further down with the 3 of us. It was a good thing that I recovered my technique for the rest of the run, since what we did up till now, was only a warmup. Amazingly beautifull and technical whitewater.
The Loisach is one of the rivers that should be added to my "must-paddle-at-least-once-a-year" list!

 We ended with a great chilli-con-carne by James and Martina. By now their cooking abilities are well known amongst the armada visitors.

See you again next year in the Pinksten Weekend in Wildalpen, for another exciting 4 days of paddling.