Nepean River Packrafting - Bents Basin

Earlier this month I bought an Alpacka Pack Raft and have been waiting to give it a try on some rapids.

Last year when Darren bought his packraft we did a few trips on the Colo River.
I used a $50 blow up boat which was great as an introduction into the sport, however my boat was not as portable or durable as a proper packraft and certainly would not be as usable in rapids.

The raft I bought is called and Alpacka Denali Llama , it is 2.4m long and 2.4kgs and is designed to be carried in a backpack to allow you to bushwalk or mountain bike to a river and then after running the river bushwalk or ride out, you can even lash your bike to it its that tough.

Anyway on Sunday we decided to try it out on the Nepean River at Bents Basin.

We drove to the reserve and walked a few kilometres along a ridge to get to the other end of the ravine that runs into Bent's Basin and put in on a gentle part of the river.

Paddling it on flat water was surprisingly easy and its a very comfortable boat.
After a while we came to a weir and then straight into some moving water which was fun.

There are about 4 sets of rapids ranging from Grade 1 to Grade 3 which was perfect for me as a beginner

Here is a link to Darrens blog, I left it to him to do the trip report as he was the photographer.

Darren's Blog link

Heres a link to a video of one of the rapids

Video Link

Water Dragon Canyon

Since I'm still exhausted from the weekend which consisted of about 14hours of canyoning 6 hours of cleaning out the shed and then Sunday arvo at the Scouts day, I have taken the easy way out and linked to Darren's blog

Link to Darren's Blog 

I have some GoPro footage of the abseils that I will edit one day this week

Great canyon and great experience
I'm getting more confident on my abseil technique and even set one up myself this trip.
I wont go into details but it involved a dodgy log and a slippery waterfall.

I need to get more confident in my climbing though, I had to get Darren to take my pack a few times as I felt like I was going to overbalance and the exposure was too great for me to risk it un-roped


Will update when I edit all the dead time out of the footage.

Lake Parramatta Stand Up Paddling

It was over 35 degrees C last night when I picked the kids up so I thought I'd take them down the lake.
There were quite a few people down there swimming, walking dogs, cycling or just sitting around the foreshore trying to cool off.

We usually take the kayaks and it takes two cars or the trailer to get them down there.
This time I thought we would try Stand Up Paddling as I can fit the small  board in the van and the larger two on the roof.

We didn't have much time ( about 1hr before the gates shut)  so I rushed around to find swimmers and paddles etc and as such forgot our rashies, life jackets and the most important thing the GoPro so I had to use the iPhone.
I actually need a bit of time to experiment with the GoPro now that I have a fancy new LCD attachment to turn it into a more usable waterproof camera for happy snappy stills as well as fully sick 60fps 1080p action vids.

I wonder if anyone has ever done Stand Up Paddling at the lake before?
If so for the record, it was Angus who got to do it first.

He used a small kids windsurfer that I picked up up for a song a few years back from Cash Converters
Must try to actually use it for windsurfing one day!

It's not that stable as you can see he fell off a bit (mostly on purpose to get wet) but good enough for him at the moment.

I spoke to Wind Surf and Snow on the weekend  about getting a small board for him or Emma to use.
The options are not that cheap as small second hand SUPs go for almost a grand.

Emma used my 9'6" board and had no trouble paddling it all around the place






I used the new 11 footer which went pretty fast on the flat water once I removed the leg rope

Thanks to Angus for the photo

Here's a vid from my iPhone
I tried to upload the raw footage but it seems every time I try to upload anything decent size/resolution it rejects it. DOH!

Maybe I need to upload it to somewhere else and just link to it...i dunno... I hate bloody computers

Emma and Angus at Thredbo circa 2006

After editing the recent clips from my GoPro and doing some house keeping I was cleaning up one of my PC's hard drives and I found some crappy old videos off my Nokia phone of the kids skiing and mucking around in the snow from about 2006..

It just shows how much technology has advanced in multimedia, even my old Nokia N95 did DVD quality

I know I'm slack but worse still I have footage of Emma's first ski on Mini DV tape somewhere that needs to be edited.
We setup a PC a year or so ago to do this but haven't got around to it.

Now that Jenny has become our resident photographic and multimedia expert I might let her do the back editing of the old low res standard def VCR stuff and I'll concentrate on editing any new HD GoPRo stuff that I may capture.


When she was too young for ski-school we used to drop Emma at the creche and go skiing and then pick her up inthe arvo and walk across to Friday Flat and let her have a ski by just walking up. She started by skiing down between my legs and then progressed to skiing a short way on her own.

We did the same for Angus I think this was the first year that hehad a go on skis, he was almost 3 I think , then next year he was old enough for Thredboland.

Here is a few clips of them skiing Friday Flat and making snow angels in the picnic area near the river across from the service station / alpine apartments, poor Angus was the butt of a few jokes after his comments at the end of the clip, he sounds a bit like Elmer Fud eh?

Bike Skiing Mount Kosciuszko

Craig "Telecrag" Martin  and I decided to do a "last ski for the season" trip since the weather was looking good.


I hadn't done much skiing since our holiday in August when it rained and the snow was crap, I tried to get down for a back country ski in late August / early September but weather, snow conditions and other issues prevented it until I went kite skiing with Darren and Tim ( see below) in late September link to Darren's Blog


 By the time October came around I was thinking of the beach but when the oppourtunity came along to "bend the knee"  I thought great lets do it.


We brought our bikes as well as we thought that if the snow was'nt that good or the weather turned we could ride on Sunday. 

Our intention was to go up towards Blue Lake and ski the bowl or chutes behind it however you cant really see the runs from the start of the track and the snow was a bit thin up on Carruthers Peak which would have ment down climbing to start the ski run. We would also have had to walk all the way from the crossing to the top so we decided to ride to Rawsons Pass and ski Kosci, that way we could spend all day out there and ride back to Charlotte Pass in minutes!

Morning on the main range

We headed up the track and stopped in a few spots to enjoy the spring scenery

A little way along the road we were passed by a truck carrying a digger, Telecrag said they were going to extend Mt Kosciuszko due to gloabal warming - my guess was they were just gunna dig out the toilet pit at Rawsons! Well someones full of shit - :)

At the Snowy bridge there was a rare site in Australia - Icebergs!

One of the Power-Rangers stopped by for a visit

Only a month ago we were snow kiting over this valley

Its Morphing Time !!!

Wonder how deep it was in winter

My bike decided to leap into the Snowy River whilst we were gone

 I knew the toilets weren't full!!

Etheridge

We stopped at Seaman's Hut for a rest

Earnin' ya turns

Lake Cootapatamba

Telecrag

Some of our tracks



The lake from the walkway

More of our tracks

Mount Kosciuszko

Main Range from Rawsons Pass

Northcote

Carruthers Chutes

 The digger had done us a favour

We got back to the car at about 6pm and thought we would just camp in Jindy, have a hot shower and get a nice meal at Bacco to go with the red Craig had brought so we drove to Perisher to find some 3G signal and Googled the caravan park and booked a spot over the phone

View from our Campsite - notice the water level - you could walk to those islands not long ago!

Pre-dinner beers by the lake

Sunday We went to the new track that starts at the dam wall and goes to Tyrolean Village

We parked at the dam and road to the trail head and back
You can see the plume of water in the background as they have been letting water out of the lake

It is a very well made track with banked turns erosion control and expensive bridges.

These motorcyle riders have such cool ideas 

Like I always say "There's plenty of time for golf when your dead" !!! 

New Stand up Paddle Board

This week I decided to get a new stand up paddle board

The one I already have is great for surfing and recently I have become more confident on it and I am finally able to paddle into proper waves, surf it like a short board and pull off and paddle back out without falling off.

Its a Naish Quad Fish and surfs better than some of my longboards

Its dimensions are 9'6" x 29 1/4" x 4 3/8"

Due to it's high performance nature it is not as good in choppy conditions or for paddling on flat water. I knew that when I bought it but was convinced by the guys at Wind Surf and Snow that since I was an experience longboarder that it would be only a matter of getting my balance.

I' m glad I took their advice and got one that actually surfs.

However, I wanted a larger one one to use on the lake or for at the beach after nippers when the nor-easter gets up or for reeeeeaaalllly small waves.

Having recently acquired a new longboard ( see blog March 15th) earlier this year from Bennett's (along with a few unplanned purchases that I will document in my next blog ), I noticed they had their own line of SUPs at a really attractive price, so after deliberating for almost a year, on Friday I decided to get one.

It is 11' x 30" x 4 5/8", has a single box fin with FCS style side fins, not too much rocker but not a flat as a down winder (race board) which would be better for ocean or lake paddling but not usable in the surf.

So I decided to take it out for a surf while Jenny was there with the camera taking shots of the kids at Nippers, there was a club championship and Emma was waiting to start her Iron Man event.

Not too much heavier than the 9'6" but more of a hand full with a cross wind due to its area

 Immediately I noticed how stable it was paddling through the lumpy rippy shore brake

 Due to the more flat rocker profile there was less fore-aft movement when charging through breaking waves 

 Catching waves was a snack due to its size - momentum/glide was better than the 9'6" too

Obviously doesn't pivot as well as the 9'6" but surfs pretty good for its size
Only thing I noticed was that it wanted to pearl (nosedive) a bit if you were too close to the nose

 A great machine for the slop and for micro days or just paddling on flat water

Looking forward to getting it on the lake for some flat water fun too

Oaks Ride with Angus

I was keen for a ride after not doing much riding over winter so I thought the Oaks would be a good way to blow the cobb webs out.

Angus had not done it before and I thought he would like the train trip and the adventure but I knew from taking previous newbies that there would be some complaining.

We got to Glenbrook and geared up and bought a ticketed and waited for a train with a heap of other riders
Angus was wondering if the train was only for bike riders since there were no other travellers on the platform.

My phone was buried in the back pack so it didn't get smashed or smash me, so I did'nt get many photos except when we stopped for a snack.
I'll have to find somewhere to keep it in easy reach for these trips
Stoopid iPhone to big and too easily damaged ....might have take the old digital camera or an old phone just for photos.

So we headed off from Woodford and down to the park entry being passed by most of the riders who were on the train.

Angus did a good job of the first section even though the hills eventually wore him down.
The uphills were just that bit too steep and long for him to make it up and the downhills were a bit rough for his one inch travel forks as he had a couple of "get offs" without injury.

His bike is a Giant 20" mountain bike with front forks and 6 speed on the rear.
It is really only a 5 speed with a large first gear for hill climbing, he could do with a granny gear.

He was feeleing better when we go to the clearing( first helipad) and had another snack and met up with a guy taking it easy on his own who rode with us to the gate.

Luckily noticed I had a flat and decided to change the tube there before the downhill bit.
Angus bolted ahead of us at high speed but we reeled him in an found that he only slowed down due to the vibrations that were making it hard for him to hang on to the bars.

We made it to the Gate and Angus was keen for the "techy" bit and also releived that there were no more uphills. ( I didn't tell him about the road out from the causeway)

We had made it through the first bit of single track before the main helipad, we knew we were there due to the helicopter buzzing around.

They had landed and re fuelled, i thnk due to the smoke eaarlier at the foot of the mountains that they may have been overseeing back burning.

Anyway we made our way along the last bit of single track where the ride became a bit more challenging.

After a stop at the Blue Pool we faced the last uphill and made it back to the car, next stop Glenbrook Bakehouse for a pie.