Settling into Austria

Since the last post we've pretty much spent our time going looking for rivers to paddle, chilling out and doing a bit of work here and there.

After the first nice day or two the weather turned pretty shite. We went on a few missions looking for steep creeks to paddle but somehow everything we've travelled to so far has been too high and we actually havnt got on any decent rivers here yet. We have scoped out a few rivers that we want to paddle when the levels are right tho, there definatly are some sweet ones to be found around here if you're on the ball with levels and stuff.

In the last few days the sun has come back and we've done a good bit of work painting and stuff, getting the place looking shiny for when the busy times start. I've had a few good freestyle sessions too. They started off pretty woeful thanks to not paddling the playboat for around two months but things are improving pretty quick. At the moment my goal is to get McNasties down reasonably solid in the next few weeks.

The real work starts in the morning. We've got 90 people coming in to go rafting so every raft that floats is getting onto the river and we've even had to borrow a few. Sunday should be something similar and next week I'm going working in a different company around two and a half hours away from here since they're short staff. I've got 5 days guaranteed work out of it so I'm happy out :)

Coming Soon...ish!

Austria Part 1

After a 16 hour drive across Europe minus GPS and a day paddling 35km along the Salza to get to know the river again we had our first days work with Liquid Lifesyle in Wildalpen today. I was raft guiding and Neil took a beginners kayak course; a good few more days like that and the budget will start to look a lot healthier! We're living in a room/shed/shack thing thats warm, dry and about a 30 second walk from work and 5 minutes away from a few sweet play holes. Hopefully we'll get to explore all the local creeks over the next few weeks as well as working and freestyle paddling. Good times!

Finishing Up

After a few savage weeks things are starting to wrap up here in Italy. Most of the people who were here for the festival have already left and we're getting ready to head away from here in the morning. The festival went really well. I came second in the Freeride competition and Neil qualified for the Sweet Rumble boatercross, really good going since the rest of the field was basically made up of pro's and Italian slalom paddlers! The party on Saturday night was pretty epic too, there was a big crew of Irish lads out for the weekend and as a nation we definatly won that event! Even the main prize of the competition, a creek boat that was raffeled off, went to Willie, one of the lads that came over from Wicklow for the week!

The last few days have mainly been spent hanging around with the lads from ULKC. I guided a group of their most advanced paddlers down the Egua the other day which was pretty stressfull since there was 10 of them and I was the only person on the water who knew the lines but it went really well in the end. Everyone paddled really well and we got down it with no drama at all. They all loved it too which is always good to see. I've done a few of the sections of the Sesia over the last few days with the full group which is always good craic. We had a little incident yesterday where one of the girls had to be evacuated off the river and brought to hospital with an injured shoulder but she's recovering from that now and apart from that it's all been plain sailing. Everyones having a great time and paddling really well so it's a pity that they have to head back home in the morning.

We're off to Austria in the morning to work for a few months to pay for this whole trip. Hopefully the drive will go smoothly and we'll get lots of work while we're there. Fingers crossed!

Festival Start

So, yesterday saw the start of the festival thats on here in Campertogno for the weekend. It kicked off with a freeride competition on the top drop on the Egua, which is maybe a 6ft slide into a 10ft drop. It was savage craic! It started off with everyone going for real moves and finished with everyone doing the most ridiculus things they could think of on their way down the ramp, from paddle spin freewheels to going down the drop lying on top of their boat. I landed front and back freewheels and then started on the stupid stuff like jumping out of my boat half way down the drop and sliding down it standing up! I got the whole thing on video too so I'll try to upload a clip soon!

There's a movie night tonight in the theatre in the village and then the rest of the weekend mainly consists of races and parties. There's two separate competitions going on, both starting out with time trial qualification rounds and finals, with the top 32 paddlers overall going into one combined BoaterX final. One of the competitions is mostly filled with local Italian paddlers, Exo and Adidas team boaters and slalom paddlers so it's going to be super competitive. The other is less competitive but is super expensive so choosing which one to enter is tricky. I think we'll probably end up entering the cheaper one tho so fingers crossed that it goes well!