Steep Creekin’ Wales 09

I signed up for the Gene17 Steep Creeking and FreeRide course in North Wales to improve my skills and run some different rivers, although 2 1/2 hours away from home, Dartmoor is my local WW area and I wanted to paddle some more rivers in the UK. An email was sent out by Simon Westgarth on the Wednesday informing us to meet at the Alpine Café Betws Y Coed. There I met the other two candidates and Matt Tidy, this was not the first course I have done with Matt and I knew he would ask use each what we wanted to get out of the weekend.

It will come to no surprise to those that know me that I have already thought about this and had four things I wanted to work on. These were to improve my technique in paddling my new Jefe Grande, to sharpen up my turns, to make better use of rock and to improve my steep river paddling. The other both had similar things they would like to work on. Matt had seen me paddle on the Upper Dart the weekend before at the Gene17 Adventure Paddler’s Weekend and the other two had been paddling on the Tryweryn the day before. With this info Matt decided that Swallow Falls would be our first destination. After paying our £1 to access the falls through the visitor turn-style Matt introduced some concepts by getting us to sit on the ground and jumping down the stairs. After all of this we were suitably warm and headed to the bottom of the falls and put on the water. Matt ably demonstrated the technique then we had multiple runs down. Alex had a camera and the video mode was used to great effect in giving immediate feedback. All of us had thing to work on and mine was the timely application of Key Strokes at the top and bottom of the drop which I finally go the hang of on my the fourth attempt as you can see from the video clip. One of the main objectives was to get us used to the gradient which we certainly did as when we left, the falls certainly looked smaller! After a quick lunch we headed to Pont Cyfyng falls and ran a short section of the river. I had a clean line down both the drops which was very satisfying and helped re-enforce the concepts of Body Tension and Key Strokes in the steeper environment introduced at the beginning of the day.

Due to a noticeable drop in temperature the rivers in the area had dropped, despite this we still went to the Arddu to see if it had enough water. After a couple of test runs by Matt, it was decided that the best place for us to work on some skills was the Tryweryn. Initially I found this news a little disappointing for a Steep Creeking course, however, it did enable us to do some distinct skills in using rocks to create lines down the river and for tightening up on our turning and accuracy and was the right decision. We spent some time on a number of different skills, following Matt’s imaginative lines down the river and setting challenges of hitting specific eddies by using rocks. I have spent many years developing a technique to avoid rocks and it will take me a little time to get fully comfortable with this technique but at least now I know the concepts and will have to do some more practising every time I am on a river. After running the Graveyard section a couple of times and doing a run all the way down to the footbridge Matt enquired if we wanted to do another run down. The other two decided to call it a day and after arranging how we would all get a copy of the video Matt and I headed to the top for one last run. I was given the option of what we did on this run and declined the suggestion of a race to the bottom in favour of following Matt down as he linked together his favourite moves on the river. This run was great fun and a fantastic way to finish off a great weekend.

During the long drive home I reflected on my objectives from the beginning of the weekend and realised that they had all been addressed and with so much more. I feel this is down the the skill of the instructor rather than me and I would like to thank Matt for all the great coaching that was delivered in a relaxed and fun way.

Ross Macildowie