NWCC 2013

The team has been busy as of late! With trips to California, the Illinois, and Leavenworth in the past month, I'm swimming (not literally) in media. And with Jacob and I both starting new jobs within the last 2 weeks, time has been short and we've been spending most of our free time actually kayaking, rather than writing about kayaking.

However, I did find time to throw together a quick edit from the 2013 Northwest Creeking Competition:
Northwest Creeking Comp Video

Good turn out this year.

The festival saw record attendance this year and was highlighted by perfect flows on the EFL to induce maximum carnage  DNF's tallied into the double digits and more than a few paddlers found the bottom of John's Swimming Hole. The safety team was busy. Let this post serve as a sincere thank you to all those who volunteered to rope folks out of the river on Saturday and Sunday.

John Edwards showing off at Sunset Falls

There were over 120 racers on Saturday (I counted) and at least twice as many spectators. The Sunset Falls campground was abuzz with activity throughout the weekend and was capped off with a excellent BBQ (provided by Next Adventure) and an even more excellent dance party (unofficially provided by Ninkasi).

Some random hero going for a ride at John's Swimming Hole

Into the Outside ended up with a pretty good showing in the EFL Expert Division with Jacob earning 3rd place and Matt and I rounding out the top 10. With the higher water level, times were fast this year. My time of 8:35 seconds would have only been bested by one competitor in the Expert class from 2012. I'll chalk that one up for the increased flows and not so much for the average overall progression of paddlers ability from year to year...

Mike Gotlieb. Ready, Steady, Go.

Sunday featured a much smaller group of racers (due to the difficulty of the river and ALSO the aforementioned festivities) Still, the canyon creek portion of the festival was a great success! Shout out to Lous Geltman for setting a new course record! Less than 5 minutes from Thrasher down to Tobey's. Pretty impressive.

Kahuna is one of the crux moves on the Canyon Creek Race. 

This is not a test!

The NWCC is one of my favorite weekends of the year and like aways, I'm wishing that the race came around more than once a year.

Boofing away on Hammering Spot with the finish line in sight!

We'll start to roll out more stuff as the Spring winds down and we progress into the low water dull-drums of summertime.

Full results can be found here:
http://northwestcreekcomp.blogspot.com/

Until Next Time,
Nate

All photos provided by Eric Adsit.