Swiss freestyling

The past two weeks I'm spending an awesome time. First, a couple of friends from Moscow came to Graz to our local wave here. Weather was fine, the level awesome, the company great. Lots of rides on the wave and a couple of vodka-induced headaches later we together headed on to Munich, where some of the group had to leave back home and others just arrived.

Harald Glanz caught a nice moment on the Radetzky

Well, having lots of free time at the moment, I quickly decided to join the second and move on to Bremgarten/CH. Firstly we wanted to go to Lyon, but Peter Csonka was there a week earlier and recommended not to go there at the actual level. That's what we did, and found a perfectly working wave in the nice middle-age town. Narrow, not too easy, but lots of speed and a nice eddy.

Boys (Kirill and Misha) on the playground

One evening I went to the Gotthard Reuss with the local and new Swiss freestyle Champion Severin Häberling (who fed me with tasty food and homegrown salad, until I almost exploded ;) ).

Severin Häberling in Bremgarten

The first three nights we managed to stay on an army training base in the woods under a big wooden tent. The fourth morning they didn't like us anymore. Anyway, now we're spending our last two days on an official camp ground with WLAN connection in the close village Sulz.

Swiss Army

Switzerland is nice. Friendly people everywhere on the pros, highly priced food on the cons.

Moscovitian Ninja Misha Burov

Our new basecamp

Last but not least...

Reiner's Altay film is ready to watch on youtube:

Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:



Enjoy!!!

Daniel

Déjà-vu - Radetzky is on!

Having lived the past month back at my parents' place, working in a sports outlet store I'm now in Graz again for a couple of days. My beloved Radetzky wave shows itself from the most beautiful side - half wave, half hole with a ramp in the middle.

Luki kissing the lip

...and taking off

Not having too much time to spend I decided to paddle twice a day and check out my new freestyle boat for this season. So far it's pretty cool. For sure not as fast and crisp as my Thruster, but really easy to handle and fun!

bounce it...

...bounce...

Together with my new paddle (a Werner Double diamond - luxury, but is there a better one out there???) I'm feeling kinda like a river pimp :) Well, seems like I gotta catch up my equipement with my paddling too. At least clean blunts are getting realistic already...

...platsch!

Rothbach

Manfred Stich

On Sunday David, Bernard, Max, Mandi, and me caught the chance and carried our boats up to the Rothbach creek. Never having paddled this pretty steep river I was pretty eager to get to know it.
Well, as we quickly found out, the river will not stay an early spring creek THIS year. The 1,5 hour hike entirely led through 1,5m deep snow. Fortunately temperature is already rising, and nights are still cold to keep it reasonably compact :)

Max at the put in

The creek itself is quite untypical for the area. Close to the beautiful class 2-3 Salza river, it reveals nice drops and slides that are worth the sweat of getting up.

Max at one of the first smaller drops

Unfortunately some of them are blocked by trees and have to be portaged through the snow. Seems like next time we have to bring a saw.

David aka MC Danger

Bernard on one of the more spectacular slides

We'll for sure get onto this river again the next weeks!

One evening

Low light weir paddling on the Mitterweissenbach. Flo and me.

Sunshine Ragga

Last sunday was really nice. Bernard, Max, Babsi, Ralf and me went to the Ebensee area to go for some boating finally. Our plan to paddle and shoot (Ralf is a professional photographer) the Offenssebachwaterfalls, a nice triplecombination was somehow crossed by the high waterlevel and our long night before.

Max on one of the first drops of the Gimbach

So we decided to head on to the Gimbach, another classic in the Salzkammergut Area. Water was low, but paddlable. Clear, cold water, nice drops, sun. Good.

Bernard in the cascades

In the later afternoon we drove over to a park and huck action on the Mitterweissenbach. A three meter weir leads into a slide with a double drop in the end. Kinda nervous (it was my first time creeking this year anyhow) I had to wait for Ralf to get his position (which was great actually!) and at the same time hear a passenger telling my - to paddle the waterfall, but by no means the line I told him...

Basti at the tubedrop of the Naarn river

Well, happily the line was not too bad and my Critical Mass just flew over the small table. The following small gorge was pretty much fun too... concentrating on the fall I didn't really scout and was surprised by a almost three meter drop in the end (having suspected that it's about a meter high)... Ok, somehow chaotic, but really fun!

Roman boofing a nice one

This weekend was cool too. I have to admit, that being born in Upper Austria, it's a shame not having paddled any of the "local" creeks here. So this weekend I finally did. The Rodl river was already low, but the Naarn gorges and the Waldaist still had plenty of water.
Being without a car at the moment, my dad spent two hours of his holidays driving me to the boys! Thank you! Nicest weather, good waterlevel, and a saw in our stern we had a great 8km run Sunday afternoon.

Luki clearing one of the tougher lines on the Middle Naarn Gorge

We somehow decided to cut any tree, that's close to our lines, so we spent a little more time than "necessary", but except one nasty one, we cleared the river :)

Fabi getting ready for action

After lunch we made up a fire and spent a chilly evening. Next day we did the same again, just using the Waldaist as a warmup run in the morning.

Daniel

It's been a long while....

but I'm alive again... haha. Bodily I mean. Having spent the past months mainly inside of my brain, panically writing my thesis, I yes, finally defended it and - don't know what to do yet!
I mean, I don't fear that I'll get bored too quickly. It's just too many plans that wanna get realized, so I gotta sort them somehow.

Anyway. I'm as happy and exited as i could be. And well. I wanna go paddling.

Sunshine out there!