Checking In from Newfoundland!

After coming home from the Van Island trip, I spent a week dealing with final preparations for over two months of filming on the East Coast.  I always find it hard to leave the Northwest, but I was pretty stoked to get rolling on my next sea kayaking film Eastern Horizons and open my eyes to some new landscapes.  The first stop on the Eastern Horizons film shoot and tour was Newfoundland.  The main reason for starting the trip on "The Rock" was largely dictated by the invitation to be a whitewater guest at the Kayak Newfoundland Labrador Retreat held in Terra Nova Provincial Park.  Every year the KNL crew invites two guests to come paddle, teach and swap stories with them.  This year they invited myself and Fergus Coffey to share the honors. The keyword of this event is RETREAT.  It is not a frantic, hectic symposium sort of event with people running around with radios and dealing with logistics.  It is a gathering of both whitewater and sea paddlers from all across Newfoundland for a weekend of paddling, eating, stories, music, and catching up.  The KNL whitewater guys Darren McDonald, Dave Innis, and Dave Mac showed Fergus and I some quality whitewater. The Northwest River was by far the paddling highlight.

This was a really fun twisty, turny bedrock drop on the Northwest.

photo by Fergus Coffey

This waterfall was a pretty full on 30 footer that has only been run a couple times by Kev England. We spent a bunch of time scouting the entrance and then decided to give er. We both stomped this one out, threading the needle into the meat of the drop.

photo by Fergus Coffey

The weekend flew by and the hospitality of the KNL crew was unmatched. I found it ironic to be getting a taste of how good the whitewater paddling was, yet having to set it aside to move onto filming sea kayaking for a couple weeks up North. I will certainly be back to Newfy with a creeker after the seeing some of the rivers and waterfalls to be had.

Post retreat I packed up my gear and headed North to meet Lise-Anne, photog Phil Tifo and his girlfriend Chelsea to go sea kayaking with the ice bergs for ten days. Not a bad angle on exploring Newfoundland and an incredible start to the next big project for Reel Water...Eastern Horizons

Getting into the ice bergs in Twillingate

If you have never seen an ice berg before I recommend the experience

Lise-Anne all smiles after a sunset paddle with the bergs.

Lise-Anne and I will be on the road through the end of July and back in BC for the prime whitewater season. You can follow our trip on the Eastern Horizons blog. Phil Tifo took some unbelievable photos of this trip which will be up shortly on the blog. Hope everyone is getting after it and enjoying Spring!