Are you ready to have one on your boat, got a team for the Sesia Alpin Sprint, or just wish to charge it out on the individual race. Why not compare your practise time with our Kayak – Sesia Alpin Sprint, Strava Segement section. The main Saturday race is for all Class III/IV paddler’s sponsored by leading Italian retail Gravita Zero, with Pyranha Kayaks.

We’ll have the famed Sweet Rumble Boater X, time trail on Friday evening, with Finals on Saturday evening, just before the party at il Gatto e la Volpe, with Ies Fokiwa leading the live music and the Wokka Wokkie as DJ, to spin the decks into the night.

Be sure to check out the programme and register online early if you wish to us win on the clinics from Gene17.

At present, it’s prefect paddling days here in Valsesia, with a fine blend of rain and then several blue bird sunny days, we’ve had the very best of spring steep creeking in Italy. There’s rain due next week, and a low front arriving, so more snow up high and more fine paddling conditions down on the valley floor well into the second half of May.

With this year’s Valsesia River Festival a mere month away, we’ve opened up the Online Booking for english speakers, and will add Italiano soon. For paddler’s wishing to get on clinics, we strongly advise booking early so we can have all of Gene17′s plus great guest coaches available.

More Options
We’ve adjusted the offerings from last year, these again include the FULL, COMPETITORS, WEEKEND & RELAXED PASSES, in addition to Sesia Alpin Sprint and/or Sweet Rumble Boater X stand alone bookings. Also an option for paddler’s just to purchase a day’s clinic with Gene17. The Friday’s Race Training is FREE for all race entries with GZTeam & Team Pyranha heading this up on the Sesia Alpin Sprint section. Plus we’ll have FREE guided descents by GZTeam on Sunday.

More Competitions
In the booking we have not included the Egua FreeRide nor Palm Throwbag Olympics, both these are simply drop in events. The Egua FreeRide will be on Thursday late afternoon, whilst the Palm Throwbag Olympics will run every evening in Campertogno, and is FREE to all Festival PASS holders.

More Choice
Leading Italian retailer Gravita’ Zero along with Pyranha Kayaks and the guys from Sweet Protection will be at the Valsesia River Festival all week. Gravita’ Zero & Pyranha will have a host of test boats to try out on the prefect slides and drops for which Valsesia is famed for. Also Gravita’ Zero will have a pop-up shop on site in Campertogno, for those wishing to get some new gear, or perhaps need to replace something broken!

As we get closer to the event, we’ll keep you up to date with water level conditions and news of the latest lines run, on the great granite bedrock of Piemonte.

Ciao

Simon@Gene17

We are pleased to announced that this year’s head line event at the Valsesia River Festival in Piemonte, Italy, will be the Sesia Alpin Sprint race on Saturday 2nd June. This race is from Curgo to Mollia in the high Sesia valley, down 6km of Class III/IV white water. The prefect boulder garden white water will provide a great race track for racers, fun lines and good times.

Key contributing sponsors, are Gravitá Zero & Pyranha, who will provide a wide array of prizes, plus offer a free training day for all competitors on the 1st June, headed up by their Team Members.

Online Booking opens at the end of March, and Race Registration will be at il Gatto e la Volpe in Campertogno by Gene17kayaking from Wednesday 30th May.

The wait is almost over, the 2012 Valsesia River Festival programme will be coming online soon. We have a number of new sponsors, more focus on the Sesia Alpin Sprint and some of the best creeking in the Alps.

Thank you for coming and joining us in Valsesia. A great start for a new event. So much so, we’ll do it all again in 2012, although of course we’ll change a few things to make the event even better.

Plus it’ll be Gene17′s 10th Birthday Party, so we’ve a lot to celebrate.

Images from this year’s Valsesia River Festival the Egua FreeRide and Gene17′s coaching clinics

Results:
Egua FreeRide:
1st Ron Fischer

Sweet Rumble:
1st Enrico Lazzarotto

Sesia Alpin Sprint
Sponsored Team
1st Team Italia

non-Sponsored Team
1st Monsrossa Rafting

Next year’s Valsesia River Festival in 2012

Enjoy the rest of the Summer

Simon@Gene17

Our new Tee for this year’s Valsesia River Festival, designed by Pete Woods, and includes the shield of Piemonte with Monte Rosa in the background.

We’ve only 150 printed, so we have a Tee for the first 150 paddlers to join us in Valsesia, next week.

Pre-bookings are going well, with paddlers from all 4 corners of Europe and further a field joining us in Valsesia. Please look to pre-book if you plan on joining us.

We may also be able to show Steve Fisher’s new movie, Halo Effect, which will be introduced by Gene17′s Jakub Šedivý, one of the films featured paddlers. The Valsesia River Festival Movie Night, is on Friday 27th at the Campertogno theatre, that has a capacity of 120 people. Free entry to paddler’s with a Festival Pass.

Here is Sweet’s FB BoaterX invitation for you to their Sweet Rumble in Valsesia, see https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=167318133330106&notif_t=event_invite

More details to come this week, until then take a look at last week’s fun in Valsesia with Gene17 at work, http://flickr.com/photos/gene17kayaking/

Also if you can please pre-book, we’d love to know how many people are coming, see http://gene17.com/valsesiariverfestival/booking for details

Simon@Gene17

In addition to providing technique clinics, guided descents and photo clinics with some of the best around, at the this year’s Valsesia River Festival we’ll offer video clinics. Our Video clinics will be with one of the UK’s Next Generation film makers, Finn Burrows. A master of the post video tape era, where VOP and DSLR cameras are the main stay, making numerous productions for Palm Equipment, in addition to cutting his first films at the famed playboating spot of Hurley in the UK. Last year Finn was in Norway for the Summer, and made serval films, including the Megathron.

If you are very keen for any of our clinics, please pre-book for the Valsesia River Festival. These video clincis all part of our 4 day programme, a white water festival for all.

Do you want to go Steep Creekin’, you enjoy Italian food and love paddling? If so, we’ll bring all that together in one place, with a host of paddlers at the Valsesia River Festival.

This all new festival is for ALL paddlers; we have races for the competitive, clinics for the aspiring, entertainment for the cruisers and both a video & photo contest for those wishing to capture white water paddling.

See Gene17′s News Feed for details