Tuesday, May 09, 2006

King of the Castle

This weekend, I introduced a few new paddlers to the Castle River and what can I say... some happy paddlers.

(Me dropping in)

The paddle starts at castle falls, which is a great class IV to start with. That is if you've never run a class IV and want to start, this is the one. It's easy access and it's at the start so if you change your mind, you can skip it. As you can see, they didn't!

(Nathan on his way out of the falls)

(Ethan on his way in)

The run is about 8.8km and is a pretty action packed run for the first half. After that it drops down to the mellow tempo of class II. Here we see Janson "the vice" Smith dropping into Narrow Gate rapids. I believe it's a class III+




See you on the river!

P.S. you can download full size images on www.flickr.com! Just join up and search under my name to find all these pictures!

2 comments:

Ethan Smith said...

WOW>>>> what a great trip.... Thanx Mark for that freakin awesome trip. Everyone had a great time... got past some fears and gained some skills. Ready to hit it again...ya..

Nathan said...

Yeah, Mark, thanks. Castle is a great river with some fun features and fantastic scenery... a little intimidating to us beginners, but the adrenalin rush makes it worth it. I'd do it again in a heart beat.

All the dents popped back out. My thumb missing on my neoprene glove will stay around as a friendly reminder that it is better to roll than to swim :-).

Remember to keep your smiley side up!