One battle lost but still fighting!

Again with some time lag I finally had the time to cut the footage of our Reichenbachwave-Sessions on the Isar-River in Munich this summer. Probably it was the last season that paddlers and surfers could enjoy this awesome wave like you see it in this video. The excavators are already working and most likely the wave will never be as big again or even more likely will be totally gone when they are finished with it! But as we are still fighting for other surf-spots on the Isar-River please keep on signing this online-petition, if you haven´t already and keep spreading the word, link or youtube-video as every signature helps us!
Thanks for your support!

Sign the online-petiton here: Save waves on the Isar-River



Power on!
Markus

Scandinavian Paddle-Trip - Wave hunt from Finland to Sweden and back

Arnd just posted our travel-diary on the Teva-blog. Go check it out here: Teva-Blog

Power on!
Markus

Help save the Reichenbach-Wave in Munich (Germany)

During the kayak freestyle world cup tour this summer the Reichenbach-Wave was already working and showed its potential. Paddlers like James Bebbington aka Pringle stated that it was one of the best waves they`ve ever surfed. The last weekend we had the pleasure again to surf it as the water was high enough. Many surfers and paddlers shared the wave and the bridge was packed with spectators the whole day. Now that the Eisbach-Wave is saved, we got the next destruction of one of the best inner-city-waves worldwide approaching. The city plans to destroy this awesome Reichenbach-Wave this autumn as they alread have renaturated most of the river-banks which where channeled before. I.e. the river got more wide and the features changed totally or rather mostly disappeared. And exactly this widening is planned for this autumn for the area around the Reichenbach-Wave. Generally we also support the renaturation, but we would prefer it, if it would be done with the consideration of the sport culture and tourist attraction element for the inhabitants and visitors of Munich. Therefore when the work at the ground sill is done it should be tried to preserve the wave or rather change the sill so the wave could run the whole year and not just when the river is flooded. As exactly the renaturation would be the perfect time to do this with a minimal effort. Please help to prevent this and sign this online-petition! Forward this link to your friends and everybody you know!

Sign the online-petiton here: Save the Reichenbach-Wave

Here some impressions from the past weekend:

all pics by Maria Stelzig

Thanks!
Markus

Trenčín aka the wave hunt on the river Váh in Slovakia

After we´ve seen Peter Csonkas video last week from their sessions on the Trenčín wave our misson was clear. Skip the Soca testival for another year and pray that the waterlevel stays up enough on the Vah. We had three days holiday last weekend and after around 7 hours drive we arrived in Trenčín. But unfortunately the water has gone down around 1m during the last few hours before we got there and we just missed the perfect level of one of the waves. The only thing that calmed me down was that apparently the level was just perfect for maybe 15 minutes. So when we got there the level was around 400 cubics, i.e. the just mentioned wave is not any more in as it gets too hole-like and trashy (you can check out that wave below on the pics with the entry moves). So we waited a few hours the level fell another 10 cm or so, as the margin there is really small and then a smaller wave with a nice foam pile on the other side of the river kicked in . Besides the wave you see a really large hole in the middle which covers nearly half of the river but does not quite invite to get a beating in it and at the other end of the hole you find the "entry move-wave/hole".


During the next two days the level rose and fell again between those 10 centimeters and we had a lot of time for talking shop with our local guide Miloš Trnka ;-)

Well as said before the trashy wave was ideal for doing high out entry moves. Here a sequence.

On Monday our third and last day, suddenly the water rose and the wave started to open up and it really got superb. So I sticked this nice clean helix and it was generally nice and smooth to launch nice wave moves. But unfortunately the wave was in for maybe 2 Minutes, no kidding. As I walked up (oh yeah, all waves have to be catched on the fly) the wave was totally gone.

Just one minute ago there was a huge hole/wave at this spot! So now a really crazy thing happened and it was the first time for me to experience something like that. I.e. the weir-gates were opened up totally, the water rose around 1,5 meter in just a few minutes and we experienced all the different waves which are at offer. And I have to say those few minutes were worth it and I want to be back, when they are in for longer! After those few minutes the gates were closed again and the water dropped even further than before (i.e. below 300 cubics, which is too low to have decent waves) but it didn´t matter for us cause it was already time to head back home again. Check out the pics below and mind that nice castle in the background of the first pic. Trencin is a nice town with an old inner city and the Palatschinken are just delicious!

Here still with closed gates

You see the two middle gates are opened up and the water starts floating in

Even nice waves before the main hole/wave row come in so you have two sets of waves behind each other.

And this is the formerly small but wide hole. Now the hole rather resembles La Malate and the shoulder is an equivalent to the Wittelsbacher wave in Munich in the good old times at its best level.

All pics by Maria Stelzig

Power on!
Markus

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... Rank: wait... Traffic: wait... Price: wait... C: wait...

Sign online-petition and thereby help save an awesome river!

Once again your online signature is needed to help stop the damming of another awesome river in Austria: the Untertalbach

sign here: online-petition

here the explanation for the data you have to enter:

Name = surname
Vorname = first name
Straße und Hausnummer = street and house number
Postleitzahl = zip code
Stadt = city
Land = country
Ihre gültige Email-Adresse = your valid email-address
[] Checkbox = tick it if you want the owner of the petition to see your email-address
CAPTCHA = type in the numbers/letters you are shown which should help to tell that the signature is done by a human and not done automatically

Thanks for your help!

power on,
Markus

Easterweekend in Lyon - Hawaii sur Rhone in Dutch and German grip

What should we do over the easterweekend when "all" French paddlers are on Corsica? We thought let´s see, maybe Lyon is because of that not too crowded. And you won´t believe it, during four days of paddling we just met one frenchmen, fellow Nookie-team-member Leo Carpene of the DK-Boys who was travelling with Dutchy Casper van Kalmthout. Leo was checking out his new GoPro camera and even made an interesting wooden pole-construction to film himself on the wave (check out pics of the construction in action below). All in all the wave was clear in German and Dutch grip over the Easter weekend as a few more Dutch paddlers arrived and most of the Kanu Freestyle Team Baden invaded Hawaii Sur Rhone. Check out the best pics of the weekend below:

Maria throwing a massive air-blunt

Big Cheeks

Maria airborne

Leo and Casper having fun

Daniel Riedmüller going for the donkey

Sandrina Hornhardt doing an air-blunt

Philipp Hitzigrath having fun

Thanks to the photographers:
Maria Stelzig, Jean-Pierre Benacchio and Eric Bui

PowerOn!
Markus