What a fantastic and awesome area for kayaking (all year round) and other outdoor activities…if quite large!!

Anyway as they say reality bites, or in this case sucks, as being back home means the humdrum and ordinariness of everyday life sets back in…Oh well there’s always the next trip and next year to look forward to and in the meantime memories always bring back a smile or two. On that note here is a short video of some fantastic memories of our trip to the North West States and British Columbia..

Paddling North America Summer 2009 from James Van den Broek on Vimeo.

Laziness has been a feature of mine with updating this blog….so here is a quick post with a slideshow of some shots of our awesome multiday trip down the Babine River in BC…

The Babine is located in Northern BC approximately 1.5 hours North of Smithers up gravel roads-the drive up gives you the opportunity to hopefully see moose, bears and some stunning mountain scenery. The Babine / Skeena trip we did involved putting on at the start of the Babine as it flows out of Lake Babine, running the entire Bbaine and taking out on the Skeena at Cigarette Corner; in all it is about 140 km and we did it in 4 days, with 2 camps on the side of the Babine and the final cmap on an island in the Skeena, not long after the confluence.

The river was running on the high side of medium making soe of the rapids and continous sections a little more pushy and misleading than we thought, or were led to believe. In all it is an incredible river in a majestic setting and has the highest concnetration of Grizzly Bears in North America. Not to be disappointed we saw 6 grizzles at Grizzly Drop; a sow and 2 cubs each side, ensuring that everyone ran the rapid, centre-left, without the option of scouting or walking! This was not the ned of the grizzly sightings as some more were sighted just before Kisgegas Canyon. Another notable feature of this river is the huge amounts of eagles encountered, seemingly around every bend in the river.

The crew for this trip was Fran and Steven O’D and myself plus 6 Canadians: Carl and Jess, Josh, Jake and Reny and Matt…thanks.

Here is my entry for this super night at I-Canoe organised by Colm and Adrian…great effort lads and aslo a big thanks to all who entered videos and turned up with a big congratulations to Fran who won with her entry Why Canoe…

We are off for North America next week..taking in the Snake River and a few others in Idaho / Washington area before heading back up to BC…yeehah…happy days are here again!!

I am looking forward to hooking up with some friends over there for some more wicked times boating…here is a slideshow to whet the appetitie (well at least mine!)

…and…

Here’s a savage video put together by Mikkel St Jean Duncan as part of the Endangered Creek Expeditions who are a local group of dedicated paddlers in BC based out of the Kootenays, who are fighting to highlight the huge threat facing countless creeks and rivers throughout the Kootenays, and BC, from IPP’s and the liberal provincial Campbell Government….I can say Fran, Steven and myself, along with Ronnie and Gearoid, were delighted to play a tiny part in the ECE when we helped Carl and Randy document the lower half of Caribou Creek…

The Endangered Creeks Expedition from Mikkel St.Jean-Duncan on Vimeo.