Welcome to Gene17kayaking
In the last few weeks, Simon Westgarth has returned back to our logistics base on the banks of the Soča in Slovenia, after our biggest and busiest UK Winter session to date. Currently he is preparing for the forthcoming paddling season, whilst Matt Tidy is running weekend BCU qualification courses in Devon for the rest of the Winter season, Deb Pinniger is Augsburg training for slalom and working at Kanu Magizin and new boy Nick Horwood is at present working in Marketing for Palm Equipment.
the Grand Canyon again, as once is never enough
On 3rd August 2011, we’ll be launching from Lee’s Ferry on yet another Grand Canyon Adventure. We go again on this once in a life time trip, its so good, go we simply must. Our adventure is for both non paddlers and paddlers alike, we run a large motor raft for the sun seekers, a paddle raft for the trill seeker, duckies for the adventurous and kayaks for the paddlers. Its a luxury camping trip, where we simply move on downstream to a vista of amazement and big volume fun rapids for the excitement. As the rapids build through the trip, we go through big volume paddling techniques and tactic, to ensure that when we get to the action, its the fun we’re focused on having. This trip is by pre-booking only, with the deadline 15th April 2010, but remember its so good we had to go again.
Test the best paddles, Werner of course
For the 2010 season, Gene17 has over a dozen top of the range Werner Foam Core Crank Shaft and Premium Fibreglass Straight shaft paddles for our guest paddlers to enjoy at every teaching trip venue. Two of Gene17’s core staff, Simon & Deb have been using Werners for river running for sometime, and are very happy to bring these benchmark high performance paddles to our destinations for testing. We have the absolute premium paddles like the Stikine and Sho Gun for test in a range of sizes.
Going Steeper in Norway
Our hardcore trip, yes you read it right, this is where we coach paddlers to run Class IV+/V. We cover all the skills for running steep drops and technical rapids, focusing on tactics and technique. In Norway we have some of the best white water on offer in the World, ramps, drops, rapid, falls, big volume, steep creeking and lots in between, for the driven paddler its a testing ground, for the core paddler its a paradise. For our Simon Westgarth its his 16th Summer in Norway, year after year its Norway Steep Creeking for him, and for you.
2010 Pyranha Burn’s in da House
At the recent Rosenheim Kajak Film Festival in Germany, Gene17 collected the new 2010 Pyranha Burn’s to add more premium boats to its test fleet of boats. Gene17 has always had Pyranha’s top river runners in its fleet and with these new additions strengthening our premium boat range. The new 2010 Burn, has undergone a number of small yet important revisions from its highly successful namesake, including more rocker to ride through the landings of drops and a softer edge to edge transition to make those highly prized dynamic moves ever more easy to make.
G17’s New Facebook Fan Page
Gene17kayaking has long since had a Facebook group, for group mailing and event updates. Gene17 also produces a large amount of content with images on its Flickr pages, reports on its G17K Blog as well as video on Vimeo. We add to these content streams all the time, and during this Spring we expect to add all the chapters from the Gene Teaching Productions online, and thus a Facebook Fan Page is the best way of getting updates out there. Hit the Gene17kayaking Fan Page link above to join us online.
As you can see March is going to be busy, potential new staff training start’s on the 20th, an opportunity for the next generation of Gene17 Coaches and Guides to reveal and share their hard core passion for paddling.
Happy Paddling
Gene17