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