Team GoPro rallies Trophy Trucks

Recently I was fortunate enough to be a part of a Team GoPro Summit outside of Grand Junction. It was an amazing two days getting out of the river and into the desert. GoPro definitely pulled out all the big guns, literally, we were shooting guns, driving trucks, some poolside shenanigans, good food and close friends.

Check out our little Throphy Truck Rally course.

Cane Creek Falls

As I am sitting back in Tennessee watching a thunderous storm as a flood is pouring down off the roof, I am reminded of the amazing opportunity of whitewater and waterfalls in the South East. Tennessee alone is littered with waterfalls, many of which I still hope to run. Though I was excited to finally take my Karma and check Cane Creek off my list with the help of Eric and Dane Jackson.

Check out or little clip from the day.

Canadian National Championships/ Team Trials

Well we just finished up the Canadian National Championships and Canadian Team trials for Freestyle Kayaking. 

For me it all started a week before when I first visited Valleyfield, Quebec, the hosting city for the Championships. I was beyond impressed with the man made course build in the middle of the city. I couldn’t believe that this place existed only 3 hours from where I grew up and I had barely heard of it, and never visited before. The whitewater park itself was a great combination of olympic friendly slalom course with a fun and challenging freestyle feature smack dab in the middle. 

The feature itself was quite good, but challenging in the fact that it was so powerful and flushy, making it hard to stick a multitude of tricks before washing out the back of the hole. After a couple days of practice I started to figure out the hole a bit better and started feeling a little more prepared for this quickly approaching National Championships. 

It was long before the weekday became the weekend and the event started off. Saturday was the Prelims, and Semi-finals rounds, and Sunday held the finals and crowned the new National Champions. I felt good with my rides on Saturday, winning both the Prelims and Semi in Men’s K1, as well as continuing on to Sunday and making the finals in the C-1 class too. Sunday came bringing sunshine and spectators, as we battled out to crown a multitude of National Champions in the several classes. First up Sunday morning was the Junior classes, with Sam Duff taking 1st in Jr. Mens and Savannah Westeinde taking 1st for the Jr. Women’s class. Next was my first class the C-1 class. This was more for fun for me, being I usually don’t compete in this disciple of Canoe class. I ended up in 5th in C-1 and was really happy to have tried it and completing my ride, while Zachary Zwanenburg took home National Champion in C-1. Following the C-1 class was the OC-1 which is more traditional canoe style with an open cockpit. Zach Zwanenburg also took home another first place in OC-1 after breaking a tie for first with Andy Hill. The Pro women followed with some amazing tricks and some disappointing finishes, though Cheryl McGregor was more then excited as she took her first National Champion title and won a spot of the Canadian Team for 2017. The Pro Men’s class rounded off the event with some spectacular moves, and all around good rides from all the finalists. I ended taking home another gold and National Champion title for myself, and I couldn’t have been happier. 

After all the dust settled, and the sweat and tears dried up, what was left was some newly crowned National Champions and a strong field of competitors that will proudly represent Canada in Rio for the 2017 Freestyle Kayak World Championships. 

Time to switch gears and focus on the next chapter in life, and see you all in Brazil next year! 

Nick Troutman

The 2016 GoPro Mountain Games

Well, this year was the highest water levels I had ever seen for the GoPro Steep Creek race. The Homestake creek course is usually notorious for being low volume, and tons of sharp shallow rocks. A normal flow is between 80-200 CFS (cubic feet per second), though this year the race was in the 600’s and we had several practice laps in the 800’s CFS while leading up to the race. 

Though after putting in several practice laps, it finally came time for the race day. It was a great day, warm weather, sunny skies, and lots of racers and spectators, a perfect start for the 2016 Mountain Games. The water was high, powerful and fast.

The format was 2 runs with with best time counting, and then top 10 racers make it to a finals of 1 run fastest time wins. My first run felt pretty good, a couple very minor mistakes, but overall quite solid. I felt comfortable with my first run, though it still only landed me in 9th place. This had me a little worried going into the second rides and I knew I need to go a bit faster. Though my attempt at paddling harder and faster turned out a mistake as I bobbled and made multiple timely errors. I would have to stick with my first run time, which after everyone had finished their second runs, left me in 10th place. It was tight, but i had made it into the finals unscathed, which was more to say then most. The course had been handing out some beatings with the higher water levels. 

Going into finals in last place enabled me to go first, being it is reverse seating, which helped me focus on my line and not let the announcers distract me with talk of the other racers. I tried to go harder, though focus my energy on being smooth. My line was feeling good, though I had a minor mistake, I kept paddling and trying my best. I finished feeling good, not perfect but good. Though I knew that there were 9 racers still to go, all who qualified with faster times then mine. I actually got out of my boat to watch the rest of the racers, and my good friends finish their runs. Everyone looked exceptionally fast, though I was shocked to find out I still finished in 3rd place. 

After the day was done I was more then fired up to share the podium with my good friends Alec and Isaac, and exceptionally glad to walk away with only a couple starched knuckles. I can’t wait to come back and race again next year. 

'Road to the Mountains': GoPro Tech Tips- EP7

This episode we have made it to Colorful Colorado, and I have a couple tips on GoPro mounting, settings, and how to get some great shots and step up your game with your GoPro.

'Road to the Mountains': Family paddle with Tucker- EP6

After a couple weeks of training and competing I figured it was time to get the whole family out on the water and take our 2 year old son Tucker out kayaking. Emily and myself, along with two close friends, Jason Craig and Phil Sheppard, took Tucker down the Truckee River in Nevada. It was a epic day of river fun with some train spotting, looking for animals like beavers, ducks and geese, and a great finish with some jungle gym fun in the park. I know Tucker had a blast, check out the video for yourself and let me know what you think. 

'Road to the Mountains': Reno River Festival/ National Championships- EP5

The family is off to the biggest little city, Reno Nevada. Both Emily and I competed in the Reno River Festival and the National Championships for Freestyle Kayaking, where Emily took home the title National Champ, while I won the C-1, Slalom, Boater-X and took second in the Freestyle. So much fun to be had at the 2016 River Festival.  

'Road to the Mountains': Race Tips with Rush Sturges- EP4

I caught up with Rush Sturges on my way back down south for another quick lap on the Little White Salmon and a couple tips for Race Training. 

'Road to the Mountains': Skookumchuck- British Columbia- EP3

Well after several week in my creek boat I figured it was time to get back in the ol’ play boat and work some freestyle skills. So I figured I would take advantage of being on the west coast and make the trek up north to British Columbia to surf the world famous Skookumchuck tidal wave. 

Skook is one of both Emily and my favorite places to surf, and we knew Tucker would also love the experience, the purple starfish ended up being a big highlight for him. Dane and Alec both ended up joining us for an epic week of surfing this amazing wave all to ourselves. 

Check out the video from our northern adventure. 

'Road to the Mountains': L'Dub White Salmon- EP2

We have finally made our trek out to the west coast, and then we kept driving north to White Salmon Washington. Once here we met up with some friends to enjoy the outdoors and get some creek race training in on the famous Little White River. 

Northwest Creeking Competition

Well we finally made it to the west coast, and then drove north until we made it to Washington State. Our first stop was the North West Creeking competition. I have heard a lot about this event, though I had never been before. I arrived on Friday morning and it was pretty empty, I had to search to even find another kayaker to paddle the river with. Though by the evening the whole park was starting to fill in.

Saturday morning was a shocking surprise when I woke up to find a couple hundred car, trailer, tents and people that had swarmed and taken over the whole park. Registration started in the morning and even with the announced low water there were still at least 90 competitors for the Lower Lewis Race. 

I ended racing in the short and long boat classes, and had a blast on the amazing river and tight little gorge. The run itself was a blast, but adding the excitement of the race made it even more fun. After an exhausting 10 minute race my arms felt like jello, though my hard work payed off with a win in both classes. 

Though the real show began in the evening as the party kicked off with an amazing BBQ stake/chicken dinner. It didn’t take long for the Ninkasi kegs to start flowing and the music pumping. It was an amazing event and I can’t wait to head back next year!

Here is my winning short boat lap from the race. 

'Road to the Mountains’: On the Road Again - EP1

I am now on the Road for the next couple months, with Emily and Tucker and we have decided to document our journey across the country as we get ready for the 2016 GoPro Mountain Games.

Stay tuned and watch the series ‘Road to the Mountains’ as we prepare for the 2016 GoPro Mountain Games with episodes on training secrets, interviews with athletes, and lots of fun and shenanigans along the way.

Crooked Fork

I have been spending the winters in the South East for the past 9 years. Though with a busy schedule, and ample travel, I only get to spend 1-3 months a year in the South East. What this sums up to, is the fact that there are still tons of local rivers left for me to explore and experience. Though I did just get to check another one of the list, for a personal first descent, the Crooked Fork. 

The Crooked Fork an amazing run with a couple really fun and friendly waterfalls. We went with a fairly large crew, Stephen, EJ, Dane, Emily, Albert, Clay and myself. The young local Albert led us down down the river, being that he was the only one in our group to have previously run the river. The river consists of three main waterfalls with a couple miles of class 2-3 in-between depending on where you take out. The first big drop is LaMance Falls, which starts the run off with a nice 20ft drop. We lapped this a couple times being it was so fun. After LaMance is some boogie water rapids that are read and run until the next horizon line that is Potter’s Falls. Potter’s Falls is a really wide and clean 15ft falls with several different lines. We all stopped to session this drop, and we all tried several different lines. Immediately following Potter’s Falls is the third and final of the waterfalls. The final falls was a double teared 12ft drop consisting of an 8ft boot followed by a 4ft boof. Dane, EJ, Stephen and myself played around trying both the left and right options, and even ran both sides together. It was a really fun run and great to knock off another local river with our local Rock Island crew. 

Road to Hana: The Big Island

We left Maui with our heads low and our kayaks dry, and boarded our flight to the Big Island of Hawaii. As the locals told us, Maui has streams and the Big Island has rivers, so again we were hopeful. That hope grew strong once we peered out of the airplane windows to see rivers and waterfalls scattered across the coast. 

Once had arrived we got our rental cars organized, loaded the boats and gear and found whitewater 5 minutes out of the airport once we crossed our first bridge. Instantly our group vibes changed and the fire our of stoke grew to a blaze. We immediately geared up and headed to the river to laps the drops as many times as we could before the sun set down. 

The next day we got up early to start our mission on the mighty Wailuku River. Our focus was on the Wailuku River being it has the biggest drainage and holds it's flow the longest. After our experience in Maui we knew it was necessary to stick to the larger rivers, being that we still faced no rain even on the Big Island. It took us three day to make it from our Put-In, the Waluku falls, down to the ocean. Our first day consisted of hiking upstream to the Wailuku Falls, though after some serious scouting of the 40ft falls we all concluded that the nasty lip combined with low flows probably wasn’t a great idea. We continued down stream to find more massive low volume water falls, until we made it to Mini Pe’ePe’e falls. Mini Pe’ePe’e was as clean as an 18ft falls could get. The cleaner style lip became more common as we continued downstream over smaller waterfalls and through the Boiling Pots. We found out why that area was called the Boiling Pots- the infamous lava tubes. Watching an entire river go underground and pop up again is not ideal for a whitewater kayaker, so we went slower during this section to ensure the team was being safe and steering clear of the tubes. In the Boiling Pots section we found a clean 25ft drop that landed into a 10 foot pool with no exit. While the drop itself was perfect its exit made running it a tough call. The low water allowed us to set proper safety to ensure the team could run it and get pulled out of the water before reaching the end of the eddy.  After scouting down stream we decided that our best option was to call it a day and get out at the riverside parking lot before venturing into the canyon down stream. 

On day two we got ready to venture through the next set of canyons following the 25 ft falls in the Boiling Pots. Together we decided to get one more lap off the 25ft falls to start the day, and then worked our way around the lava tube and continued down a fun 15 foot slide with a bad cave on the right. Quickly we found ourselves at another lip, this one being a little bit bigger. The 55ft Raptor Falls had a complicated entry, little volume but looked like it could have a clean run. After much deliberation, Dane was full of spunk and confidence so he went first. Watching from the lip, Dane pulled off what looked like a perfect line, until he fell through the falls and hit the green water behind it and gave himself a slight concussion. After a radio conversation explaining exactly what happened, the rest of our group opted to cliff jump. We tossed our kayaks and paddles over the edge, waiting for the clear sign from Dane below, and jumped, careful not to slip on the take off. The scenery alone while paddling this river made it even more amazing. Tight canyons, clean low volume waterfalls followed the 55 footer, which brings us to our next sequence rapids- the 'Hawaiian bobsled', a tight narrow slide into a 15ft boof. Immediately following the narrow ‘Hawaiin Bobsled was an amazing sequence which we dubbed- Pineapple Express. This rapid is a fun short canyon with a 10 ft slide followed by a 5ft boot, into a narrow canyon that ends with a 35ft drop. This became one of our favorite sections of the Wailuku because of the visuals and the fact the whitewater was epic. We finished day two with another roadside parking lot at Rainbow Falls.

Day 3 of paddling the Wailuku started early back at Rainbow Falls. Our original plan for the trip was to come run the famous 120ft Falls, though still cursed with extreme low flows we chose to set up a repel at the lip of the waterfall and continue our way downstream. Below Rainbow Falls we found tons of great waterfalls and fun rapids stacked up onto of each other. One rapid quickly became one of our favorites- a 20ft drop with a kicker at the lip that we named, ‘Hyper Boof’. This rapid was so much fun that we lapped it more times then I could keep track of. Just barely taking the favorite rapid title from Hyper Boof was the following rapid-  a twisting rapid that slides into a 90 bend and drops off a 10ft drop. We named this the 'Shaka Brah’ which is the Hawaiian hand sign for ‘Hang Loose’. Later in the week we returned to challenge ourselves with different down river freestyle tricks off this awesome rapid. After a couple more slides we came to the the final canyon that ends into the ocean. The last drop has enough fingers and channels that each paddler was able to pick a different line as we dropped into the ocean. It was a crazy feeling to paddle in fresh water all day only to end it with getting splashed in the face by salt water. We celebrated the completion of the river with a couple surfs before taking out. We only had to walk a few feet across the street to our take out, which is also a Bar and Grill.

We ended our trip with a couple more laps on the Wailuku until the water dropped too low to even scrape down the amazing sections we had found. We finally and to put away the kayaks and pick up some surf boards as we spent out last days surf out on the ocean. Though we walked away from Hawaii feeling like the whole expedition was a success and we can’t wait to get back to explore some more. 

Road to Hana: Mission Hawaii- Waiting for Rain

Kayaking in Hawaii has been a dream of mine for several years, though the Road to Hana specifically has been a personal goal of mine and a project I have been working on for several months. You can imagine my stoke once the day finally arrived, and we board the plane to head to Hawaii in hopes to paddle some epic whitewater. 

Though the project hasn’t been as simple as I had originally dreamt. Our problems arrived early into the trip, even before we got to the airport, with a simple text message from United letting me know that my flight for the next morning was cancelled. The south east was getting slammed with a winter storm and flights were delayed and cancelled all up and down the east coast. After spending over an hour on the phone with United we had a new flight for the next morning several hours away in a small airport in Alabama. So we spend the night driving, checked in early and got all our bags and boats checked in, though while dropping our boats off at the oversized luggage area we got denied and were simply told that non of the airplanes could possible fit the boats. 

We then spend the whole day organizing with several different United employees to organize a flight for us to take our boats to Hawaii. Though with the huge storm up the whole east coast there were three days of cancelled flights added to a total of 1600 cancelled flights, and 6400 delayed. We were stuck, and after exhausting all options, including driving to any possible airport that flies to Hawaii, the only option was to wait out in Atlanta for the next two days calling to check if any possible flights had been updated. 

Finally our day arrived and we made it to the Island paradise, with kayaks and all. It was a quick celebration with the whole team, many of which had been waiting for our arrival in Hawaii for a couple days now. After the quick regroup, we started our focus on the project at hand with an early flight to the island of Maui, home to the famous Road to Hana Highway. 

The Road to Hana Highway is a extremely narrow and twisted road that is littered with hundreds of streams and creeks. This one road gives access to a plethora of creeks and waterfalls and was our main focus and draw to Maui. 

Upon arrival in Maui, everything seemed to be going in our favor. All the boats and gear made it on our inter island flight, we got our rental car set up with racks, the team was in high spirits and ready to go. Though after our first long and wiggled drive down the Road to Hana, we realized that to run the drops we had hoped for we would need some more water. 

We always knew that the whole trip was rain dependent, and that it is always a bit of a gamble when dealing with the weather. So while waiting for the rain we decided to spent our next couple days scouting out our river options. We found many epic rivers, and narrowed our focus down to four main options that we would focus our time and energy. After studying every possible weather channel, online weather website, different apps, and doppler radars we came to realize that not only is it hard to rely on weather, but that the weather forecast continually changes on these small islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We could look up the weather and see a forecast for 4 days of rain, then see the same forecast about an hour later with an update of a week of sunshine, then an hour later, scattered showers, and then back to all days sunny. It almost seemed the harder we tried to find accurate weather forecast, the more it would change. 

So with an Island filled with sunshine, we continued our search for runnable whitewater, driving around the whole Island, multiple times, and looking at every possible stream and dry river bed. Eventually after still no water and stir cray team we realized that the best thing we could do was to hit the surf. 

With some of the biggest swells of the year Dane and I thought it would be a bright idea to take our Jackson Kayak Karmas to the ocean and try to surf some waves, and launch some kick flips off the back sides. Though once out in the ocean, we realized we were a little out of our element. We had some fun, though after a couple beatings, we can to the conclusion that a creek boat wash’t the proper tool for the ocean. We went back to our house, picked up the rest of the crew, rented some surf boards and headed back to the coast. 

After two days of surfing our long awaited rain finally came. We got up before the break of dawn and started our search for flowing rivers. We were all excited after several days of scouting and waiting for this moment to come together, though our dream drifted away as we continued to drive of dry creek bed one bridge at a time. We drove past every river with nothing high enough to actually kayak down. Feeling a bit disappointed and almost cursed, we decided to sit up the two cars and each drive back home on the opposite side of the island, to possibly find water that we could have missed, or see if any of the creeks were late to rise. 

We drove the back side home, though the whole way I had a gut feeling we needed to head back to Hana. As soon as we were about to turn around and drive the island again, we got the call from the other car reporting that they had found the water. Our team, watched as dry creek beds flash flooded to form raging brown whitewater. Though in our speedy return to Hana we found that these rivers would drop as fast as they had risen. With little to no access for takeouts, flashing flooding and dropping rivers, angry locals and less rain then we had hoped for we finally came to the conclusion that Maui might not be all that I had dreamt of for a kayaking destination. 

It was time to head to the Big Island of Hawaii. This area seemed much more promising, and it was, but that story is for the next chapter.