Paddling tips, tricks, news and gear reviews from an Unsponsored point of view
Yak are part of the Survitec Group, who provide high quality rescue and safety gear for the marine, offshore, defence and aviation sectors. As a result they have a huge wealth of knowledge on how to design and create highly effective gear.
I spent a fair bit of time with the guys from Yak at Paddle Expo this year. The number of well executed designs blew me away. If you still associate Yak with the lower end of the market or canoe clubs then you need to take another look.
Gerd is the older half of the famous paddling Serrasolses brothers. Hitting big whitewater, competing in world class competitions (and winning) and crafting superb GoPro edits is where Gerd spends most of his time. If a country has quality whitewater the chances are that Gerd has already been there or is planning an expedition to seek out first descents.
I’ve been following Gerd’s travels and adventures for some time and am super stoked that Gerd agreed to take part in the Unsponsored Q&A series, especially as he was in training for the Sickline event (which he won).
How did you first get into kayaking? Who introduced you to the sport?
One day I was biking along our local river, the Ter and saw some people paddling around. I got curious and with some persuasion from my mum I decided to join the local kayak club, the Salt-Ter. It all started really slow with only a couple hours a week on Saturday morning, but as soon as I could go to the river by myself riding my bike and pulling my playboat on a little trailer I started to get obsessed about kayaking until it became my life.
Mariann Saether is one of the worlds top paddlers. Having numerous big water competition wins, first descents and expedition epics under her belt. It is a great pleasure to have Mariann take part in the Unsponsored Q&A series.
Tell us a little a bit about you accomplishments in the canoeing/kayaking world. – heheh… I am gonna kick this over to my webpage: http://mariannsaether.no/achievements/
In addition I have had a great 2015 season with winning the prestigious Branset extreme race during the Voss extreme sportweek, the Sweet Rumble on the Sjoa (Sjoa festival). I also made it to my first ever semi-finals in canoe slalom in a major competition (World Cup in Pau, France) and placed 24th. Today I also became the Norwegian Champion (beating all the men´s times) in canoe slalom K1, and also in C1.
Dagger athlete Brad Ludden takes you inside the amazing world of First Descents, an organization designed to get cancer fighters and survivors into kayaks.
Monday again. Before you get too engrossed in work check out these carefully selected edits from around the globe.
A Cloudy Day At Great Falls
a Cloudy Day at Great Falls from Bret Goering on Vimeo.
The category 4 Hurricane Joaquin brought some serious rain to the South East of United States. With flood warnings and most of the rivers rising incredibly fast, we decided to run Thompson Creek, one of the steepest stretches of whitewater in the East Coast with a staked loss of 800ft. in less than a mile, before the river meets Lake Jocassee.
The HF stand at Paddle Expo had a range of really cool gear on display from both HF and Astral.
The cowtail shown here stood out as the tape/bungee used did not have a flat profile when stretched but was actually cylindrical as a bungee cord has been used. Simple idea but looks really well executed.
Double Dutch are a paddle company who are mainly known here in the UK for their superb slalom paddles. After spending some time checking out the rest of the whitewater range at Paddle Expo 2015 I’m wondering why we don’t see more of these paddles over here.
The whole range looks superb, a range of blade shapes made with different materials that are available on a range of shafts.
Dagger have released detail on the new colour line up. It’s great to see them trying out something a little bit more in your face with the Aurora colour scheme. It looks awesome.
A pretty serious piece of whitewater is shown in this edit from Adam Freeman.
I would like to show you a little piece of the most committing and beautiful creek in Virginia. Bottoms Creek sits on top of Bent Mountain just outside of Roanoke. The gorge is carved out of Gneiss is a type of rock formed by high-grade regional metamorphic processes from pre-existing formations that were originally either igneous or sedimentary rocks. It creates perfect slides and classic cali whitewater drops in parts of the gorge.
Superb big water and big falls action. The Oscar McBurney Norway 2015 Reel is very well filmed and edited. One of the best edits I have seen so far this year. The use of the drone to give different filming angles has worked really well.
Here is a short and sweet summery of my time in Norway this year. Big water, Waterfalls and first descents, it was a pretty special scandinavian trip!
This year past and present kayaking students made the pilgrimage to the Scottish Highlands to take part in the British Universities Creek Race 2015. The race is based in the catchment area of the Glen Etive and Glen Coe with the final venue for the race being dictated by the prevailing water conditions.
The event
Sickline wasn’t the only Pyranha 1, 2 victory this year – check out this cool edit of the BUCR Alumni BoaterX by Team Paddler Mark Mulrain; we’re not sure if he’s sped the video up or if he really is that fast, but either way, he won (and even had time for a quick surf in the qualifiers!)
#FastIsFun #9RLove
© 2025 Unsponsored
Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑
Recent Comments