It's Only A Hill

At 00.02 on the morning of the 17th of September 2011 I received a text from Daz Clarkson, having just completed one of his life ambitions, the Stikine, hats off to him! here's his first thoughts committed to laptop……….   "Haunted shadows awake me, a serpent cuts the land.  Burning with each beat of my heart.  [...]

by Jason, With their Italy trip down the pan due to this years low water levels in Val Sesia, the boys set their sights on the more obscure and further north, just south of the arctic circle, Iceland. 5 things to know: 1. However long you go for, it won't be long enough. Ten days [...]

Verdon Gorge It's late evening, warm, dark and I am behind the wheel of Pete's Skoda following two other cars along the D952.  It takes forty five minutes to drive the distance we have just paddled that took the same time plus eight hours.  I don't want to get left behind, if only because the lead car [...]

It rains in Costa Rica. a lot.  Combine that rainfall with mountains, which are in abundance and it can only mean one thing, rivers, and plenty of them. Forty of them are described in the guidebook, Chasing Jaguars, but there are plenty more, some have been run, some not.  We took two weeks out to [...]

We scrapped down the run in to this first rapid, but when the river steepens and tightens up, that low flow makes for perfect conditions for this Italien like run. Coming round the corner we were greeted by this view, where to go?  Initially I took us left, but Mike spied a route river right [...]

Leave your camera with native Costa Rican and this is the sort of shot you can expect to find on your memory card when you return. Luckily Juan Carlos also took some pictures of us falling off the Catarata Poza Azul, the blue pool waterfall! The Poza Azul is a trib of the Lower Sarapiqui. [...]

The Coruh River in Eastern Turkey is being dammed; this is the last year it will be running as one of the classic white water runs of the world. At least that is what some would have you believe. The reality is that although dams are being built at various points along it's course the [...]

Fionn woke, bleary eyed, yawn, brilliant its Saturday, a lie in, he stretched and rolled over. There was an almighty thump and suddenly Fionn was wide awake, what was going on, 7.00 OCLOCK, BUT ITS SATURDAY he protested, what was Orna doing getting him up so early on a Saturday morning, Bah! He spat out. [...]

Pain, drained, numb, dry, arid, desperate, living at the edge, barren, wasted, mind games, thoughts of the past and future, devils on the shoulder, monkey mind, plodding, plodding, muscles tight, the beaten down, hopeless, hungry, despair.  Ankle deep in human faeces we load the last jeep in Beni hoping to get out of town before [...]

How do you decide who is going to run a rapid first? I am sat in an eddy playing, rock, paper, scissors with Driller, it seems to be a sensible way of working out who is going to run the penultimate drop on the Gronda, falling onto rock, this is a must make boof. To [...]