The Alps with ULKC - Part 1, To Italy!

Over the last few years ULKC's Alps trips have settled on a tried and tested format which maximises enjoyment, safety and progression for everyone involved. In keeping with this formula myself and Andrew Regan were asked to plan the first week of this years trip, which would involve bringing 15 of the best paddlers in the club to Italy and running a week of coaching on personal paddling and rescue skills. Fortunatly there's a limit to how much planning can be done for a week like that, with a lot depending on water levels and people's abilities which we wouldn't know until we were out there. This meant that once we had a chat and came up with the basic format for the week I was free to sit back and focus on college stuff until exams finished.

My last exam was on a Friday, that evening there was a going away party for friends who are leaving for Canada for the forseeable future. The following day would be spent packing the vans and trailer for the trip, followed by a club BBQ at the boathouse. On Sunday morning we left for Les Alps. So I headed into college on the day of my last exam with everything I would need for the next three weeks. Yes I got lots of funny looks walking into college carrying a pile of camping kit. Thankfully all my kayaking gear was already in the boathouse, that would have just looked ridiculus!

When that exam was over (Heat transfer; yuk!) I finally got to taste freedom! It was straight to Curraghbrin for a BBQ, followed by Costellos, followed sleeping in the back of a van cos we lost everyone who owned a house, followed by packing the vans, followed by another BBQ, followed by crashing on a sofa, followed by being woken up and being told to get in a van to go to the ALPS!! Pretty epic start to an epic trip! Apologies again to Bry, a vegetarian, for insisting that she tried my perfectly cooked steak on Friday night, that can't have been pleasant!

 

Practising the dance to what became the most anticipated song on the playlist, Nelly the Elephant, at the BBQ on Saturday night. I'm sure anyone who saw this in action didn't know what to think!

 ...a word on those vans, since they attract a lot of interest wherever we go. The belong to the UL Students Union, and they are there for clubs and societies to use whenever they want. It's a pretty unreal set up! Competition for them can be pretty fierce between the different clubs, with a lot of negotiation and give-and-take going on to make sure that that they are fairly shared and that they go to the right club if there's an especially important event on, for example an intervarsities. They are driven by students with sufficient driving experience who have been nominated by their club committees and have passed a specific driving test organised by the SU. They get well used, most years the van will travel to the alps three times, with us, the mountain bikers and the skydivers! The minibus gets used less, as you have to be 24 to drive it and have a specific licence, which excludes most students.

 

The Wolves are escaping! At the ferry port.

 

Mark, Andrew and Eoin loaded up and ready to go. Coming soon, the most anticipated music video release of the summer, Mark Scanlon covers 'My Milkshake Brings All The Boys To The Yard', filmed on location in the ULSU Sprinter, with backing vocals by Niall Crosbie and Emer Farrell.

Back to the trip, we made it to the ferry port at Rosslare remarkably on time and without incident, rolled onto the ferry and passed the 16 hour journey by chilling out, catching up on sleep and laughing at people getting fantastically drunk on their last Irish bottles of wine for a while. When we got to Cherbourg, after a moment with French passport control (Have you checked your pocket Rob?) we settled in for the long journey to Italy. Almost immediatly, the trailer starts making funny noises. Having had more drama due to misbehaving trailers on previous Alps trips than its possible to count, we get extremily worried, stop, think we can feel a rattle in a wheel bearing and run off to find the nearest mechanic. We find one who rattles it around a bit and then tells us through a mixture of sign language and facial expressions that it's fine and we should piss off and stop wasting his time. So we turn up the music and press on, trying to ignore the intermittant banging that we decide must be coming from the draw-bar. Thankfully, the music was a playlist made by getting everyone on the trip to submit one song which luckily were a.)  95% excellent and b.) mostly well suited to being turned up loud and used to drown out unwanted noises.

 

As you approach the Alps the mountains start to grow in front of you and the scenery gets more and more spectacular.

  Thanks to the tachometer in the minibus, epic non-stop drives across France are out of the question. The minibus is also electronically limited to 100 km/h which considerably slows progress. We make it as far as the outskirts of Lyon that first night, where we stop at a truck stop for a few hours rest. Thanks to warm, dry continental weather, we spend that first night sleeping out on the ground under the stars, with no need for any kind of shelter except a sleeping bag! Who would wish for a bed when you could have that! The next morning we get up early to beat the traffic and spin into the middle of Lyon to pick up one of the lads, Niall, who spent the winter working in a French ski resort. We get out of there and onto the road west asap, since if we make decent enough progress we might just make it to Val Sesia in time for a warm up paddle.

 

Stopping for the obligatory photo op at the entrance to the Mont Blanc tunnel. It looks even better in real life, and no, I'm not talking about Rob's tattoos!

Several hours of driving banter later we make it to Val Sesia tired, smelly and a little dehydrated but hyped up for a few weeks of epic boating. We quickly set up camp and leg it off to paddle the Alpine sprint section of the Sesia. The Alpine Sprint is a sweet few kilometers of bouldery Alpine river, which gets beautifully steep and pushy in places. It's a sudden wake up call after the days of travelling but we get down it with no drama and it leaves everyone buzzing and ready for whatever the next few days will bring. We even got to do a few sneaky runs on the start ramp that was set up for the Sweet rumble boaterX that was happening the following weekend, in case the opening paddle on the Alpine sprint wasn't enough for anyone! 

Idyllic setting for a campsite, on an island in a river in Italy's Val Verde, or green valley. Photo by Sean Murphy. The view we wake up to every morning is spectacular, and covers 360 degrees. Pictures simply don't do it justice.

That's it for now. Stay tuned for another update in the next few days giving the full story of our training week in Val Sesia, Italy. Later!

Spring Semester 2014

So as a bit of an explanation as to why I havn't had time to write anything on here in ages, here's a run down of what I've been up to for the last few months. On top of all that there were college assignments to be done almost every week and lots of work went into planning stuff for the summer. It's nice to finally have a chance to chill out and have a look back over it all!

January 26th. Freestyle Team Trials - Tuam
Baltic cold, rainy, biting wind, sheltered by trees from any hint of warming sunlight ...it could only be a winter competition at Tuam. The day saw ok water levels and a solid enough turn out of competitors, despite the miserable conditions. My freestyle boating obviously needs work, I came 7th on the day, not exactly where I want to be at. Congrats to all the guys who managed to do well, trying to throw down freestyle moves while suffering from mild hypothermia is not pleasant!

 

A bit of messing at Tuam while training for team trials. Photo by Caolinn Doran.

Febuary 15th. Ennistymon Race - 2nd behind Colin Wong.
After a scheduled race on the Glens was called off due to trees and unsuitable water levels, we moved the whole circus to the Ennistymon Falls in Clare. Ideal water levels and brilliant weather made for a great day on the water. With a big turnout, including a lot of paddlers who made the trip down from Wicklow for the day, and a short, intense race course that was ideal for a boatercross the craic on the water was mighty.

 

Great waterlevels, great turnout, great weather, great river, what more can you ask for?! 

Photo by Willie Doyle.

Febuary 21st - 23rd. Kayaking Intervarsities - 2nd in Freestyle behind David Higgins.
A medium length book could be written about this one but suffice to say it was epic! Fair play to the organising colleges for putting on such a great event. The weekend lived up to all the trash talk that went on facebook before hand. To the dismay of all the spectators, the most anticipated polo match in recent history, which would result in the losing team going swimming in the middle of the pitch, resulted in a draw between ourselves and DIT. Unfortunatly this put us out of the polo competition on goal difference, a bit disappointing considering the amount of work we had put into preparing for it. There was no time to get too upset about it tho, there was still three events and two massive nights out to get through before the weekend was out.

 

In action against DIT

The Friday night party in the Maynooth SU was deadly craic but I had obviously picked up something dodgy at polo in the canal earlier that day. I started feeling like shite that evening and was completely wiped out for the next two days. That took me out of the whitewater and long distance competitions but fortunatly the UL guys were well able to survive without me. Simon McCormac subbed in for me and I slept while the lads did great in both competitions. Even worse, I had to miss the main event of the weekend, the Saturday night party. Disappointing but shit happens, what can you do.

The next day, I decided I would be able to pull a few freestyle rides together, despite still feeling like utter crap. Especially since the competition had been moved to flatwater at the Canoeing Ireland training centre due to unsuitable levels at Sluice. In the end it worked, I got to use the flatwater Phonixes and Tricky-Woos which I had spent the winter working on in the pool. I got the highest scoring ride of the competition and came in second behind David Higgins of NUIG. Delighted. The work that the lads had put in the day before meant that we won the event for the fifth year running!




March 1st & 2nd. Galwayfest - 4th overall, behind Barry Loughnane, Bren Orton and Andrew Regan.
Another event that could well have a book written about it! I'll sum it up by saying savage whitewater race, epic night out followed by the best freestyle competition I've ever seen in Ireland! Fair play to Barry Loughnane Andrew Regan and the rest of the Galway crew, they really have things figured out and the event rightfully grows bigger year after year. This year they even got the weather and the water levels right, both of which were perfect for the weekend! The only thing that needs improving is the competition, this year Bren Orton and George Heyworth-Hill made the trip over from the UK for the weekend but wasn't enough to knock Barry off the top of the podium at the end of the weekend. It looks like we're going to have to look harder for next year but it's going to be tough, the list of better paddlers in the world is pretty small!

 

Mid Space Godzilla at Tuam, photo by Emer O'Brien

Koray McGowan put together a sweet video from the event, which can be seen here: video. As you can see, the feaure and the jam session format meant that paddlers could really let fly at the freestyle event. I've never seen moves that big thrown in Ireland, and not just the ones done by Bren and George. I really hope it's a sign of things to come for Irish Freestyle!

March 8th & 9th. Surf training weekend.
One of the cool things about the inaugeral inter-club championships was the raft of training events put on by the different disciplines in the weeks leading up to the event. Although the conditions for the surf event weren't great, a lot of people got the opportunity to try out surf specific boats for the first time and a lot of fun was had by all.

March 15th & 16th. Freestyle Training Weekend.
Same story as the weekend before, with most of the same people only in a different place with different boats. Almost 60 people showed up to be shown the basics of freestyle and with two friendly holes with easy eddy access the location was ideal. By the end of the day lots of people were left spinning to their hearts content. It was also obvious that the competition itself would come down fun moves, as trying to land any moves other than left spins in the 6 inch deep, flushy holes at Greensbride weir is extremily difficult! Unless you're Dave McClure of course, then phonixes and mcnastys are also possible. How they're possible when the water isn't even deep enough to get a full paddle blade in I still have no idea!

March 29th & 30th. Windsurfing Intervarsities - 1st in bronze fleet.
So I took up windsurfing last summer when I was stuck in Ireland with no water in the rivers and no surf on the beaches and ended up competing for the University of Limerick clup at the intervarsities. It made an interesting contrast to a kayak varsities. Numbers were much smaller and with only one discipline there was no hectic rushing around between multiple locations, making for a much more chilled out weekend. So much so that I even got in a lovely surf on Saturday evening before the party. Unfortunatly there was also far more guys running around in lingerie on Saturday night, thanks to the rocky horror theme to the party. I don't think the mental scars have quite healed fully yet...

 

Beautiful fun surf at the windsurfing intervarsities.

April 6th. Dougy surf trip
Every so often, when the weather, wind and waves align perfectly we throw all the sea related toys we can find into the van and make for the beach. This day we got perfect 4-5ft waves, light offshore winds and glorious sunshine so off went a gang of us from ULKC. In one day I was able to go body surfing, surf boarding, body boarding, wave skiing, surf kayaking and freestyle kayaking! And we played some rugby on the beach. I can't think of a better way to spend a day!

 

Unfortunatly we don't always get it right. This photo is from an earlier surf trip in the semester. I think everyone is just delighted to be off the water; lashing rain, howling onshore winds and big waves meant that paddling out was interesting and all the beginners got a bit battered! The waves were fun tho, lots of big air!

April 12th & 13th. Club Champs - 1st in Freestyle, 1st in Surf, 2nd in BoaterX but got disqualified for not wearing a bib in round 1.
Another savage event, and one that I really hope turns into an annual or biannual thing over the next few years. The recipe, taking the intervarsities and enlarging them to include all clubs and all disciplines is an excellent one, but it takes a complex event to organise and turns it into a monster. Thankfully Benny, Shane, Kris and everyone else up in the Canoeing Ireland office were well up to the task and the coordination of all eight events went perfectly. Too much went on to try and write about it all here but UL entered all disciplines and did respectably in all of them. In the end we came third, behind Galway kayak club and Wildwater kayak club which we're delighted with. Its a pretty savage result for a club with no juniors and no masters. The plan for next year is to refine how we enter people in each discipline, get more people into more disciplines and possibly go one better in the final rankings. Wildwater kayak club look almost untouchable in the top spot, with world class paddlers in juniors, seniors and masters categories in almost every discipline.

 

A delighted looking crew at the prizegiving for the Club Championships.

April 26th - Clare Surf Comp & AGM
Yeah, it happened, the surf was rubbish, my boat was leaking, I think the less said about this one the better! I did come 1st in IC tho, which is some consolation. There were a few new faces there which is great to see, all paddling impressively well. A few east coast Sluice rats even showed up. Much to their surprise, the salt water didn't burn them and the people don't bite, so hopefully we might start seeing them at a few more events in this part of the world. ...Ye hear that Bernie and Adrian? Ye should bring some friends next time too, it has to be good to wash that Liffey water off the skin every so often!

May 7th - Exams Start
After the surf comp it was time to knuckle down and get come college work done. Exams started on the 7th and lasted for three weeks. I think they went pretty well but I'll find out just how well in a few weeks time.

 

Finally the day that sometimes felt like it would never come arrived. Exams ended and we headed down to the river to drink a few beers, say goodbye to some friends who were leaving after their time studying in Ireland and look forward to what the summer promised to bring. Photo by Eoin Farrel.

 As soon as the exams were over the real fun started, I'll get a write up of how that went up here in due course. Stay tuned to find out what happened next!

Thanks for reading!
 Keyes

It's been a while!

It's been a an awful long time since I posted anything up here, due to a ridiculusly busy six months of college and kayaking events, but that's about to change. I might post up some kind of summary of the past six months at some stage if I get the time, since a lot of things happened that deserve to be mentioned! Highlights include the Irish Whitewater League, the Kayaking Intervarsities and the inaugeral Club Championships, all of which went extremily well!

For now, this is just a heads up that I am just back from three weeks cruising around Italy and Slovenia with the legends that are ULKC, and expect one bumper trip report when I find some time to get my head around everything that happened and put it down on paper!

Bis bald!

 

Legends to the last!

Kayaker's New Years in Kerry!

This year I finally made it to Glenbeigh for New Years. For years I've been hearing crazy stories about the annual pilgrimage to the Ross Inn and the antics that go on there around New Years but for one reason or another I never actually made it before. So this year I made sure of it and joined a crew of solid paddlers from remote places like Galway, Dublin, Monaghan and the UK for the six day trip to the farthest reaches of the Kingdom.

  

Louise Fingleton, Dan Rea Dickens and (out of photo) James Edward Smith made the trip over from the UK for the week. Hopefully they'll go home with enough stories to persuade a few more to travel next year!  

Now at first there are a few things about the whole plan that don't really make any sense. One is why go to west Kerry when Glenbeigh is a solid 40 minute drive from the classic runs like the Flesk and the Roughty, which are all the way on the other side of Killarney. The second is that if several hundred (yes I said hundred!) kayakers are staying in Glenbeigh for a week, why do we walk for half an hour and 2 km every evening to Rossbeigh for a beverage or two, and the same distance home again? (of course if you're lucky/sneaky you can chat up someone who's driving and get a lift, but that doesn't happen every night and you're still more than likely going to end up walking home again afterwards)

The answer to both of those questions is the Ross Inn! Rumours abound that it only ever opens around New Years specifically because the kayakers are around, and that it's changing hands and won't be open next year. I don't know how much truth there is to those rumours and it's not important, what matters is that the staff are there to serve drinks, and that's what they do. Very capably. What happens on the 'dancefloor' doesn't seem to concern them which means that all the fun stuff like crowd surfing and people dancing on other people's shoulders, which are usually a quick way to find the door of any other venue with a bouncer's boot up your backside, is fair game! At the same time, many paddlers who's crowd surfing days are behind them are attracted by the other, quieter, rooms in the pub and the chance to talk story and catch up with old friends. Several epic nights out were had there during the week, starting relatively quiet before the main horde arrived and building up all week until it culminated in a mental New Years Eve party. Well worth all the late night walks in the pitch black to get there!

 

The photos from the nights in the Ross aren't really PG so I'll go with this one instead. The place got battered over the last few days, on New Years Eve night when we were walking home the road in front of the pub flooded and conditions have only got worse since, resulting in severe damage to the beach front, sand dunes and properties close to the sea. Hopefully everyone down there is ok and they get everything cleared up easily enough.

Besides the mental parties, I was staying in a house full of hard core paddlers and we did manage to get out boating every day. The first day we got a low level evening run on the Flesk to learn a few lines for the race the next day and that night the water showed up, with 13 hours of rainfall over the whole country. When we arrived at the river the next morning most of the valley was under water and Dave Glasswell, bible of all the local rivers, told us that sections of the river weren't really runnable at that level. So plans for the race had to be swiftly modified and we decided to hold the event on the gates section, the 200m or so of rapids above and below the bridge. 

It was a great race course, with levels so high it was possible to paddle the full thing and not touch a single rock, and I think only one paddler, Barry Loughnane, managed a clean run with no mistakes. Because the course was so short, only a minute and a half, times were really tight and when I screwed up on the last rapid it was enough to push me back into 5th place. Pretty disappointing but oh well, back to the training and better luck next time. The original plan was to hold a fun boaterX after the time trial event which would have been epic on that course but everyone was itching to get out and paddle the Flesk at all time levels. By the time the racing was finished levels had dropped from crazy to doable and we headed out with the most solid group I've ever paddled with, including Barry Loughnane, Orky, Len and Moe Kelleher and Dan and James from the UK. Some of the ULKC guys came out as well including 2/3 of the Gentlemen, Eoin Farrel and Simon McCormac and we had a great run, very pushy but in the end everyone made it down with no major drama.

        

Video by Dave Glasswell of the days boating on the Flesk. Much more interesting than the scrapy average levels that it's usually paddled at!

The Flesk Race was the first event of the 2014 Irish Whitewater Race League. The series is still wide open, and with races still to be held on the Annamoe and the Boluisce, as well as the Glens and Glenmac if the weather plays ball, it's all to play for. Jackson Kayaks have very generously said that they'll donate a Karma as a prize for the highest placed non-sponsored paddler in the league and there'll be lots of other prizes besides. And of course the races are great opportunities to paddle some great rivers with brilliant safety set up and get to know lots of fellow Irish paddlers. So if you're not in already, keep an eye on here: Irish-Whitewater-Race-League and come along and give a few of the races a go!

 As well as that savage day on the Flesk, one of the highlights of the trip was the day we spent on the Owengar. Located somewhere in west Cork, it's been top of my to do list for a long time and it was great to finally get out there and see what it's like. It definatly lived up to expectations, I'll let the videos and pictures do the talking!


         

Dave Glasswell's video from the day. It's a pretty savage river! With more water I'd say it cleans up even more and gets much better again so it's definatly one that I'd like to do again.

 
                                   

Boof on the main drop on the Owengar, photo taken by Dan Rea Dickens.

 

And a sequence of photos of a freewheel on the 28ft main drop, again taken by Dan Rea Dickens!

After all that, we had a sweet day on the Roughty with NUIGKC with nice water levels and a fun crew who are really stepping up their paddling and looking really impressive, and then it was time to start thinking about heading back to Limerick. I'd like to say thanks to Barry Loughnane for organising everything, including the house, a savage bunch of people to boat with and the Flesk race. (rumour has it he's even found a way of booking the water levels!) And thanks to James Edward Smith and Andrew Regan for all the driving. James' early morning, hung over expedition to the Owengar was paticularly heroic! If anyone has never been to Kerry for New Year's, get a few people together for next year and make it happen! You won't regret it! That's it for now. Hopefully in the next few weeks the Atlantic will calm down enough for the coastal towns and villages that have been getting battered to recover and the rain keeps going so that there's plenty of paddling to be done. Till next time!

Another Epic Weekend!

Ok, long story short, early start Saturday, Clare, Caher river x4, Ennistymon Falls x4, Munster Polo League, night out in Bunratty, Tuam! I'll let the photos do the talking, it was a great weekend!

 

Boof on the Caher in the Exo XT. Photo Eoin Farrel

 

Myself and Andrew happy out after the 4th run! Photo Eoin Farrel

  

Clean drop on Ennistymon Falls. Photo Eoin Farrel

The Falls look pretty good from this angle! Photo Eoin Farrel

   

In action against Galway in MPL. Photo Lorcan Keyes

 

Loop at Tuam. It was at a high, flushy level but still great craic! Photo Jarda Pavlicek

 

Lots of tired, cold and happy faces after a day at Tuam! Fair play to Brianne, Zaria and Dana who only learned to roll in the pool last week, they're flying! Photo Jarda Pavlicek

Video by Andrew Regan of our last run on the Caher. It's a gem of a river, about 2km long with no real eddies, just one grade ~3 rapid all the way!

One more week of work left and then I'm into two weeks of paddling over Christmas and the new year. The next date for the diary is the Flesk race on the 29th of December, keep up to date with the plans here: Flesk Race Event Page