LANGUAGE

Wednesday 3 August 2016

Spring in Austria - part 2...


This is the second part of our Spring photos from here in Austria.
Our home river - the Rosanna was at fantastic levels throughout the Spring.  We had plenty of snow fall in the mountains throughout May and June to top off a very late Winter.


Ziv and Ayelet came for the first time in the Spring and they were not disappointed.  With plenty of action to be had on the Rosanna plus great places to coach their kayaking improved immensely.
There were a few nervous paddle strokes at the put-in in St Anton am Arlberg however, they styled the river and the smiles on their faces was so good to see!!


The Rosanna is such a sweet spot to practice your creeking skills, if you have never kayaked it then it is pretty fast and makes you really look ahead and become pro-active.  It is just a classic High Alpine River!
Here is a link to one of their videos they made during their time kayaking with us here: https://vimeo.com/174112417


This year we have also had a lot of locals come to the kayak school.  Peter and Sabine came on a Beginners Course and fell immediately in love with the sport.  From learning to paddle in a straight line on our stunning mountain lake and then progressing to the river their enthusiasm and natural talent made for a great 3 days!


Here is Peter putting some fundamental river running skills into practice on a glorious Spring day here in Austria.  At the end of the course they realised that whitewater kayaking was the future and could not convince themselves to get back into their open boat.  I suggested using it as a vegetable garden, lets see if they have put their canoe to good use?


We have also been running safety and rescue courses for local kayakers.  Here is Ramona putting here throw bag skills into practice rescuing her brother Alex.


During the week we are running an evening kayaking workshop with the local kayakers.  It is not easy here in Tirol to progress as a whitewater kayaker.  It is an emerging sport for the locals, seen previously as something for the crazy foreigners to do in the height of Summer!  The first picture was a great evening kayaking on the River Inn.  Above is Nick and Sparky, a couple of Englishmen living for years in St Anton am Arlberg.  They have been putting the kilometres in over the past couple of months making the most of the Rosanna.


Rudi was also back again for some intense coaching and kayaking development.  Again we were spending plenty of time on the Rosanna and it was so good to see Rudi becoming more pro-active in his technique and with plenty to work on when he is back home we look forward to seeing his big smiles here again in the Arlberg!


Of course it has not all been courses, coaching and guiding!  We have had some unbelievable river levels this Spring.  The photo above was taken in the Pians Rapid of the Sanna at 285cm.  The Sanna stayed around this level for over 5 weeks, it was absolutely amazing with some big hits and very big holes to avoid.  All this high water has changed the Sanna and it is back to its former glory after the big landslides in late Summer last year!


Finally Steve managed to kayak his highest level of the River Inn this Spring.  We had some torrential rain for a few days and with all the dams close to bursting point they opened the gates.  The photo above is Steve running the Landeck Gorge at a staggering 730cms.  Ute was on hand to capture the moment and so too were the team from the Tirol Government in charge of rivers.  They were checking the water levels and decided to stick around to watch the action.
For those who know the Landeck Gorge, the river level was halfway up the track and it took Steve just 13 minutes to kayak to the confluence of the Sanna!

And finally, we got some WAKA kayaks delivered!
We are hugely impressed with both the Tutea and the new Tuna 2.0 plus with our range of ZET kayaks and Peak UK kayaking kit we can now offer our clients world class equipment on all of our courses, clinics and river guiding.

Here is to a great Summer.......

Kayak School Arlberg
www.gokayaking.at

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