These past two weekends I have been fortunate enough to run a couple of Introduction to Creeking weekends for the Aquabatics Kayak School.  These are new to our list of courses this year and have been super popular (16 people over 2 courses), and the feedback has been excellent.  We are super stoked and look forward to our final creeking course for the season later in June.  Below are some images from the second course plus a couple of Cataract Creek images from a personal trip late last week.

CATARACT CREEK

Birds eye view of Zig Zag Falls on Cataract


Johan first time on Zig Zag ready for a hit


Blair preparing for a nice soft landing

CREEKING COURSE(S) - AQUABATICS 2008

This course is basically designed for strong Class III boaters looking to step their boating up a notch into the world of 'creeking', this often overused term has been thrown around a lot of late and due to it's rising popularity has seen a large increase in people paddling stuff that maybe a little out of their league.  This program focuses on boat control in creekboats (as opposed to playboats), on river communications (verbal and non-verbal), safety, scouting, leadership and rescue along with key creeking skills such as the boof, eddy hopping (boat scouting), throw bagging, basic mechanical advantage systems and more.......basically a good base for the skills required to enjoy this paddling discipline safely.

DAY 1:  KANANASKIS RIVER
The first evening is spent on the Class II+ Kananaskis River, working on boat handling, river running tactics, posture and most importantly boofing.

DAY 2:  HIGHWOOD RIVER
The Kananaskis session leads onto a medium volume run on the Green Ford to Ings Creek section of the Highwood River.  The first half of the day sees us really drill in on paddling techniques, river leadership, safety and rescue, the second half offers up some excellent Class III+/IV rapids which require the group to implement their newly learnt scouting, safety and leadership.  Check out the photos below for some images from the Highwood.















DAY 3:  ETHERINGTON CREEK
After a day of controlling creekboats in medium volume water, day 3 sees us head to the ultra low volume Etherington Creek.  This is a short, steep run which gives the crew a feel for some non pushy steeper creekboating, including the 15 - 20 foor Mindbender waterfall.  Clients put all the skills learned over the past few days into practise on this run, which is a super cool experience.  Essentially by the end of this course we aim to have people thinking about making wise decisions, setting up appropriate safety and having a good feel for selecting lines on Class III/IV runs.  Check out some images of the team on Etherington below.

















For more information on these courses check out www.aquabatics.com or contact Simon at courses@aquabatics.com.