A freestyle kayaker who goes olympic in slalom ? What is this world coming to ?

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Mick Flacher and his unidentified gliding object :


So, river surfing or wakeboarding ? ...who cares !

Mick Flacher, a longtime friend and also an excellent kayaker, had this idea about 3 years ago. He set up a rope on a small bridge just above a long but shallow wave located on our local artificial course, and started surfing it using his small surfboard. He spent quite a lot of time at it and became good enough to throw impressive aerial moves.

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I've finally put my hands into the tens of tapes brought back from Russia, and I've extracted a couple of stills to provide an overview of the trip. It's only mini-DV stills, so you'll have to wait for the next issue of Kayak Session for the stunning pics taken by Raph Thiebaud and Sebbi Grundler.

I've added a new album in the photos section of the site, which only features the Tompuda river so far. Pics from the Kitoy river will follow soon.

Enjoy !

That's it, we're leaving Russia tomorrow morning to get back to Munich, and from then drive to France. Spending a month in Siberia, one of Russia's most remote and isolated regions, is something I will remember for a long time. And the surprises kept popping up until the very last days !

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Hi all,

I'm back earlier than expected ! It took us 8 days to complete the Kitoy river instead of the 11/12 we had planned. We paddled 240 km from the put-in to the take-out, which makes an average of 30km per day. But the truth is, we paddled as less as 2 kms per day on the difficult sections, and made more than a hundred kms over the last two days !

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After crossing the lake from north to south in a speedboat yesterday, we're back in Irkutsk to prepare for the second part of our trip : the Kitoy river.

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We're finally back to civilization ! Our team managed to take the helicopter on June 25th as planned, and we were dropped in the middle of nowhere in the mountains, with 120 kms of wild rapids and canyons between us and the Baikal lake. The trip was absolutely stunning. The waterlevels were at least 10 times higher than what the previous expedition found in 2000, which forced us to portage the 4 km of the first canyon, which would have been suicidal with our boats heavily loaded with sleeping bags, tents, food and various gear.

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After a long drive from Lyon to Munich, where Raphael Thiebaut and I met with Sebbi Gruendler, we took our plane to Moscow, followed by a connecting flight to Irkutsk, the main city around the Lake Baikal. Of course we were heavily charged by the airline - but nothing surprising since we were allowed 60 kg of luggage (20kg per person) and we showed up with 170 kg... We tried to negociate with the russian robot they had put at the company desk, but obviously it was useless.

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That's it, tomorrow I'm leaving to Russia for one month. I'm going there with Jens Reinhold, Stephan Huber and photographers Raph Thiebaut and Sebbi Grundler, who initially proposed the idea. This is a franco-german expedition, in a word.

We're gonna fly from Munich to Moscow, and then to Irkoutsk, which borders the gigantic lake Baikal in Siberia. We plan to explore two rivers during this expedition. The first one will be the Tompuda, for which we'll have to use one of those impressive and sometimes scary russian helicopters, and paddle until we reach the lake, where a boat will pick us up. This should take approximatively 6 days.


The second river will be the Kitoy, for which we've planned 9 to 11 days of paddling. The section we intend to paddle is 250 Kms long, and hopefully we'll have some time to explore and open a few tributaries.

Such an expedition requires a good preparation, so I've been working hard on this project over the last few weeks ! Our kayaks will be heavily loaded with all the necessary equipment for these long multiday trips. Tents, sleeping bags, food, medical kit, satellite phone, clothes, and of course cameras and camcorders, everything has to stay totally dry if we don't want this epic adventure to turn into a nightmare. Oh, I'm bringing some mosquito repellent too, and a spray for bears as well...

Hopefully everything will go smoothly and you'll have a nice report to consult here in about one month.

Stay safe !

Guess what ? Morocco isn't just about desert and camels, and actually offers great whitewater in the Atlas mountains. I was there last may with Jay Sigbrandt, Dje Bazin, Matt Robert and photographer Paul Villecourt to enjoy the good waterlevels, nice rivers and the Berbers' way of living. Go to the videos section to check a new video clip made after our trip, or read on to learn more about the country and its whitewater gems !


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