Monday, March 10, 2008

David gets his vertical mile and then some! He sets huge TVF records on Suck Creek...in the Snow!!

Launching off Pinnacle on David's 12th lap...


This year for TVF, David joined the renowned Stanley Steamers Team, which includes Jeff West, Chris Townsend, Jonathan Shanin, and Mark Bowman. These guys are fired up! Starting before daylight on a snowy cold day, David and Jeff blew away the records on our local manky class V run, Suck Creek. Specifically, David did 16 laps all the way to the bridge, beating the old record by over 8 miles and 1500 vertical feet! Then we realized, not only did he get a vertical mile, he had beaten the East Coast TVF personal record by over 300 feet...He logged 6320!! Also, the team logged over 7,000 feet and Jeff ran Knucklehead (a regularly portaged drop) 10 times in a row!!...You can read a detailed story about this adventure and others at tvfkayaking.blogspot.com. Here are a few shots from the day. Below is Jeff at Pinnacle, around lap 8, boofing the Dagger Nomad like a champ:
David and Jeff getting ready in snowy twilight:


Snow fell in the morning and blanketed the ground. A rare sight in the southern corner of Tennessee.

David at Road Construction on lap 3: Jeff running Knucklehead for the 5th time in a row:David runs the bottom of Road Construction while Jeff enters:

David at Slow-N-Low on lap 10:

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Going Big on the Mighty Tellico


I've been seeing guys freewheeling their creekboats, so I decided to try it for myself. It turns out that I can do it too! I love my Burn! After practicing some serious creeking boofs, and a couple good freewheels at Baby Falls, I pulled a log out of Diaper Wiper and we headed down to Bald River Falls for some "plugging practice." I took a shot of David (below) and we finished two complete laps. Woohoo! Next, we headed to a 'secret creek' in the area to clean wood out. David manhandled several logs, and all the best drops on my secret creek are ready to run! :) Kat