Team Marginal

Them Kids be Alright

2010-04-29T11:10:00.000-07:00

Capo running "Little Niagra" on Hospital Rock

We’ve made our way through California and up into the great state of Oregon. Through the patchouli saturated hills of Arcata and past the buck toothed smiles along the Trinity we have paddled some of the best that Cali has to offer. Some of the most quality runs I’ve ever done; Hospital Rock of the Kaweah and 49 to Bridgeport on the South Yuba. Coming from the snarling jagged mountains of Montana and running such clean beautiful whitewater has been a blessing. A particularly prideful moment was watching our entire group run 49 to Bridgeport at a respectable flow.

Low water boofin' on the Tule, Seth Stoenner

Our group has a wide range of skills in it, making it difficult to push some students while providing a fun and safe environment for all. On top of this, having 15 people on the water turns into a circus once the eddy space gets limited. Despite all of this, my athletes did a great job.
Hannah Kertesz sticking a boof on 49 to Bridgeport

Passing signals back and forth, setting safety, and whooping and hollering after every drop made the experience safe and exhilarating.

Money slide on the Kaweah, Seth Stoenner

Seeing some of the more inexperienced paddlers deal with the stress of fear, the anxiety of maybe not knowing exactly where to be, what stroke to take, or what the consequences might be if an error was made is an interesting affair to be a part of. Watching them decide to run a drop and flip that switch in their brain and focus all their energy on ONE thing is an interesting lesson for any coach. Seeing CJ fire up some tough rapids, flip, regain control and composure and continue on without becoming too flustered shows how much these students have improved.
From Nevada City we traveled north to the Trinity River to paddle a different type of whitewater; BIG water. We were lucky enough to get a solid flow of around 3,000 cfs in Burnt Ranch Gorge. The section starts off with some gorged in class IV. Apparently at lower flows it can be a bit manky, but with the water piling up and over most rocks we floated right over potential pin spots. After a short few miles we hit the big section, or as we called it the “Falls Section”, where there were three drops with significant gradient. The drops were stacked back-to-back-to-back. While by themselves they might only be IV+ together they made for a class V experience. Easy lines were available, but for a more exciting experience big lines through retentive holes, over waterfalls, and past jagged rocks could be run. The students paddled the gorge twice and came away from the experience one river wiser and one week closer to graduation.

Capo in the white room on Hospital Rock
From here we will paddle the epic whitewater of the Hood River area and pass into Idaho for some classic overnighter action. With two weeks of school left nostalgia sets in at camp. It feels like our group has meshed and truly enjoys the time they spend together. With the year ending soon the group is savoring every last sunset, bowl of cereal, boof, and gas station stop. I excitedly anticipate summer and the chance to go from Coach to friend.

The boys scouting out some of the juicy juice on Burnt Ranch Gorge

Brian Jamieson running the first big boy on Burnt Ranch

Risto lays down his caring pimp hand on Capo and Hannah

California here we are!

2010-03-30T11:42:00.000-07:00

We made it to the promised land. After several months of boating in Chile and a short but refreshing break we are back in action. The start of 4th quarter has found us just outside of Yosemite National park on the Merced river. Before that we were picking our way down the North Fork of the Feather River outside of Chico.
The Feather was great fun. Enabling the students to work on their boofs and communication skills. I saw a great deal of improvement in them and hope to continue the trend that we have started. Watching the gears turning in their young minds is a very exciting priviledge. To know that they honestly want to get better and heed the advice I give with focus and determination is a prideful point for a coach. From swimming one day and then sticking the line the next, they grow with each day on the water. I look forward to seeing them progress even more as the semester continues. The following are some slick shots from the Feather River. I just bought one of those fancy Go Pro cameras, so look for a little head cam action here in a few weeks!

Closing of a Chapter

2010-03-15T05:21:00.000-07:00

We're on our last day in Chile. It has been an epic ride to say the least. With highs and lows, earthquakes and waterfalls, trials and tribulations we traveled the Chilean landscape with kayaks and calculus books in tow. From the Maipo valley to the Futaelfu the students have seen myriad places and people. Someday these kids will look back on this experience and truly understand how incredible of a journey it was. Even I am having trouble grasping the magnitude of awesomeness that this trip has created for us here at WCKA. Words cannot fully describe the journey we have gone on, but I know that it is one I, and the students, will never forget. In that light I give you this video edit of the Futa, edited by Connor Jackson.

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2010-02-21T09:26:00.000-08:00

Volcan Villarica from a distance
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The rain continues to pour. The students huddle around the wood-burning stove, and reminisce about the ambivalent slaughter of a sheep for an endless feast that made full bellies and empty hearts. Our driver and cook converse over coffee, deciding what should be done to repair the van that has lost it’s trailer hitch, accelerator, starting mechanism, and drive shaft in the course of two weeks. Capo, our Spanish teacher, gazes into the distance, no doubt fantasizing about el Rio Fuy with a smirk on his face. As I take in my surroundings and compatriots I ponder the meaning of it all. Why are we here in this place, where it is cold, raining, and devoid of sunshine?

I can’t help but become nostalgic, thinking back on my childhood. Thinking back in my father, who first brought, and left me, at Cub Scout camp. I was nervous, scared, and fiercely excited to explore my natural world. Entering the woods as a starry eyed child I wondered at the unending immensity of the North Woods, the beauty, grace, and vehement power it contained. From that summer experience I began to realize my place in this world. I loved the blue sky, green earth, coursing waters, tranquil snow, and towering mountains. I knew my place from that point on.

Being here in Chile, working as an educator, kayaker, and world traveler I realize that I am still on that quest, that quest to find the next adventure, my personal legend if you will. I don’t know where I’m heading, but I do know that this is indeed my path. I cannot believe how lucky I am. My gratefulness to everyone who has helped me get here is abounding. To be able to watch these kids grow, learn, and mature into young men and women is a gratifying experience. I am so proud of what they accomplish day in and day out. Learning how to work together, share, and in some cases place trust of life in each other. The amount of trust that they must develop with each other is profound. It brings them together in a way that no other experience could, and being an influence on that process is exciting.

So here’s to you, young man or woman. Maybe you can read this and find a shred of yourself in my words. I too was once a confused youth just looking for his place in the world. I indeed do not have all the answers, but one thing I can tell you for sure is to follow your heart, dream big, and run some stout if you have to. This life’s worth living, and as Morgan Freeman put it, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”, damn straight.

WCKA video update

2010-02-13T17:42:00.000-08:00

Hey there caballeros y damas. This is the first post from one of my students on the Maipo river. It gives you a nice little intro to the students at staff for this semester. Check it out! (It is low quality... working on a better one soon!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x94ufxLs3_E

Long awaited post

2010-02-10T10:21:00.000-08:00

So a lots changed since the last TM post. For one Team Marginal is now spread across the world traveling, working, schooling, and generally just getting life figured out. For myself I am now sitting in a cyber cafe in Pucon Chile with a few of my students. I now currently work at World Class Kayak Academy as the head coach, math & physics teachers. This fine school has been around for almost ten years now and has bred some of the best kayakers in the game right now from Tyler Bradt, Rush Sturges, and Evan Garcia. I truly feel priviledge to be a part of this school.

From here in Pucon we are going to head to el Rio Fuy and then over to Argentina and on to the Futalaefu, one of the most beautiful runs in the world. I'll keep this one short and give you guys a little taste of the WCKA lifestyle with some sweet pictures from our travels across the globe!

WCKA at Skookumchuck in British Columbia

Not part of WCKA, but its purty

The crew on the Apurimac in Peru. It was a sick five day multiday with a High School. Now those are some lil' shredders!

Hucker Erik Johnson giving 'er on Gorilla. Good day on the Green. Thanks for showing us down Shane and Adriane!

Erik getting beat down on the Apurimac. This rapid was called "Purgatory" and it was an incredible place to be able to make some strokes.

Capo dropping into the gorge on the Urubamba. This is the river that flows beneath Machu Picchu and is a super quality classic Andean run.

First Decent on the Rio Urubamba. The potential for epic whitewater in Peru is crazy. You could spend a full month just doing self-supporters.

Some of the boys heading to the put-in of the Cotehausi, a five day river trip in the deepest canyon in the world. Needless to say it was a incredible adventure!

The boss man Scott Doherty firing up a big one on the Cotehausi.

Hudson Moe giving 'er the juice on the Cotehausi. This run kept the pace up with sick unique drops around every corner. Truly a World Class mission.

Scott "The Man" Doherty taking some time for the little ones after an epic descent of the Cotehausi.

Outdoor Leadership class takes in the view in the Chilean Andes. Today's lesson: "If your heart speaks, take good notes"

Eric Parker stylin' the first drop of Siete Tazas.

Brian Jamieson looking good on the goods of the Palguin. Watch out for that cave!

So there you have it. The adventures continue, and I'll try to post up here a little more regularly. Next we head to Rio Fuy and then off to the always bonito Rio Futaelefu. Ciao Compadres!

-Ben

Trailer!

2009-04-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

Hey there marginal folks, we FINALLY got the trailer up online. I hope you all have facebook cause that was the only way we could get it on the web. Check it out!

TWO SUMMERS TRAILER

Thanks to Brian Christiansen for the sweet trailer!

-Ben

2009-04-03T14:12:00.000-07:00

TEAM MARGINAL ASSEMBLE!!!!! That's right, the Bozeman Paddling Film Festival is snarlin' and ready to get let out of the cage on April 22nd at the Emerson. Show starts at 7 pm with Tickets available NOW at Northern Lights (and the Barn on huffine) for $8 stinkin' dollars! Raffle prizes will include such wonderful items as a Werner Paddle, Astral life jacket, Predator helmets, Fiveten footwear, NRS goody bags, and way to much shwag for one person to fathom! All proceeds from the event go to First Descents, a kayaking camp for young adults with Cancer. Put on your gnarly boots, cause we're about to get EXTREME!... in a very organized and civil sense of the word. Check out the poster, and tell your friends, this ones gonna be sweet! I better see all you river rats there!

P.S. - Thank you Outside Bozeman for the blurb this issue, check it out!

-BenJamin'

- "It's not peer pressure, its just your turn!"

Two Summers!!!

2009-02-04T17:05:00.000-08:00

The editing of the next movie in the saga of what is now known as Team Marginal is well under way back in Bozeman. Our new movie, "Two summers" is going to premier at the Emerson Theatre in Bozeman along with "Africa Revolutions Tour" (A movie created by another local kayaker about kayaking and recent alternative energy revolutions in Africa) on April 22, 2009! So keep checking this blog and keep your eyes out for posters as the premier date rapidly approaches. More immediately, an article by our very own prized author Pat Rogers will appear in the February 5th edition of Montana State University newspaper "The Exponent." As if you weren't already excited enough, the trailer for "Two Summers" will make it's official debut at the 2009 Cold Smoke Awards!!! Come join the festivities at the Pour House in Bozeman the night of Thursday the 5th at 7PM. Keep checking this site as we will post the trailer among other updates as soon as possible!!!

The road goes on forever... and the party never ends

2009-01-12T08:12:00.000-08:00

There´s something about a road trip that brings out the fun in driving. New friends and new places blurred together at 80 km/h creates a sense of solitude. With blue skies and hospitable people, how I wish the road just went on forever. After many hours behind the wheel of our cuad cab Chevy LUV pickup we so lovingly named the ¨go kart¨,amongst other things, we finally arrived in the promised land: Futalaefu. The town is smack dab in the middle of the Andes mountains. With craggy peaks surrounding us on all sides the feeling of paradise was hard to ignore. Once we reached the river though, all thoughts of any problems or trials and tribulations of the outside world just melted away.

The Futa is a pristine turquoise blue with magnificant glaciated peaks rising sharply from the river banks (I better stop describing in such detail... I might start to weep like a little girl). I cannot tell you how excited I was to finally take my first paddle strokes in the fabbled waters of the Futalaefu river. As we peeled out from the eddy Pat and I looked at each and grinned, knowing full well that the both of us had been dreaming of this moment for years.

The whitewater can only be described as perfect. With classic big wave trains, play spots, and even some pretty stout big water I felt I had, for myself, discovered a place I will return to for the rest of my life. By the end of our few short days of the river we left the Futa repeating ourselves incessintly, ¨proximo año¨...¨next year¨ to our new friends. If you boys are reading this Memo and Marcos, we´ll see you next year!

Alas, the road trip turned back north. The go-cart made it all the way back to Pucon, where we dropped it off at the rental agency who, of course, tried to con us out of $300! But with a little elbow grease and some punching of the roof, the ¨dents¨the agency claimed to be irrepairable were indeed repaired.

With bus tickets bought, and planes waiting on the tarmac, we prepare to make the epic journey back to Bozeman to see our friends, kiss our lady friends (pat), and get back to work and school.

Adios from Pucon,

we´ll be back Chile.

Into the land of BFGs (Big Friendly Giants)

2009-01-09T15:35:00.000-08:00

The big one on middle Palguin began a none stop mission of large incredibly beautiful drops.

We began by driving down to the Gol Gol south of Pucon. This river has seven increasingly large drops. It begins with a 12 footer and ends with 45 footer. Ablsolutely ridiculously awesome.

Jared Seiler inspecting the gnarly low water slot

Ben Kinsella boofing huge on Indio

All of us watching Ian Garcia the probe

After the Gol Gol we headed over to Nellawe which is a big steep slide to a vertical drop. With a cave on the left a good line here was the concern of everyone.

Super fast, super fun. This drop is quite unique in the feeling when

launching down it

After boating such quality drops for days in a row we headed back to Pucon with plans to head for Argentina. We woke up at eight and headed to the car rental place to procure a truck for the next 6 days. Getting the correct papers to cross into Argentina proved difficuolt and we didnt leave until 2. After boating non stop since our arrival this was out first day not kayaking. Pretty good really. We drove through the night and didnt sleep until 6 am the next day. Spending the night searching for an illegal waterfall called Alerces we finally acepted defeit and slept for a few hours. upon waking up we found the drop and had a blast!

Bradford McArthur boofing into the curtain of Alerces

Doing a little boat repair

Ricky Lambert checking out a carnage shot

Team Marginal!

We packed up and moved on out to our next mission of a stealth hike in of the also illegal Cafe creek. Unfortunately with the same luck as before we spent most of the night until 4 am hiking our boats around the Argentinian wilderness searching for the run. After Pat rescued a lost Ben and myself we slept for a bit and in the light of the day found and started hiking up the creek. The daylight showed us the way but kept us nervious the whole way up. Getting buzzed by a helicopter once was exciting as well as nervracking. Once locked into the safety of the gorge we enjoyed extremely beautiful quality drops. Mandatory clean 15 and 40 footer, oh my gosh we are getting so spoiled.

Bradford McArthur seconds away from mega wall douche
40 footer of Cafe

We are now back in Chile on the Futaleufu, but that is for a different post.

So Clean!

2009-01-02T18:03:00.000-08:00

Ben Kinsella on Middle Palguin

Well we have had some warm up days. And so it was finally time to huck! The middle palguin has a perfect 70 footer ready to say ¨Welcome to my whitewater paradise!¨to anybody wanting some extra splashy splash.

Ben and I started off on the upper palguin with Adam and Ricky. Very very enjoyable as usual. At the time I was contemplating running the bubbly 10 footer right above the seventy so I was quite nervious actually. Decided against it and felt much better from there on out.

We finally get to the seal lanch rock right at the lip of the 70. it is really quite a ridiculous drop geologically speaking. The 10 foot drop used to fall into a 40 followed by a 30. Recently during an earth quake the rock forming the 30 fell away creating the pool of the 70. It is difficult to explain, but once you are there seeing the actualy rock you can visualize the old drop and think of all that cascading down stream during the earth quake.

Anyways, Adam one the hand toss and had a very nice line falling off the lip. Ben went next with a roll right above the lip due to the squirlyness of the seal launch, but popped up and went beautifully as well. After the hit his paddle unfortunatly shot towards the only bit of wood which we eventually got out. I plopped in next and dropped my paddle as we all had planned felt the hit and then the boat tried to fold in on me! some how I had ended up upsidedown under the watefall. felt kinda weird and definatly left some creases on the boat.

We finished up with the lower section and took out finishing off a very very nice day. Tomorrow we head to the Gol Gol. It is pointless to make plans, but at the moment the idea is to stay there for a bit and then head to the Futa region. We shall see.

Bradford McArthur is quite happy

And the lord said... let there be hucking!

2009-01-01T18:49:00.000-08:00

Hola amigos! Well, its been an eventful couple of days since we last posted. We hit up the Rio Palguin and the Rio Fuy, which are both crystal clear agua waterfall runs. Coming from the chunky angry whiteawater of Montana it is truly amazing how clean all of these runs are.

No wood, no big f-you rocks in the middle of drops... just beautiful whitewater EVERYWHERE!

New Years eve saw the descent of some truly stout whitewater as Ian and Jared fired up Gerd´s drop. A very large 60 footer with a class V lead in. Jared went first and ¨stuck¨the line as good as he could have. Ian on the other hand dropped into the fold of doom and disappeared inside the waterfall. All we could hear was the loud crack of his paddle smashing the side of the rock 30 feet down from the lip with another 30 feet to fall. With no visual on him everyone was quite scared for a few moments that seemed an internity. After that epic little huckfest we dropped the most beautiful 30 footer downstream. Unfortunatly we have no pictures accessible right now because Adam left Pat´s camera on... no battery... dammit.

After that most epic of days we partied the night away on New years. I personally ended up sleeping on styrofoam with Bradford´s paddling gear laying on me as my blanket (note to anyone who thinks Chile is tropical...its not, its cold) Today we struggled to wake up at the crack of noon. With a refreshing dip in the lake that just so happens to be out the front door of where we are staying we slowly mounted up our gear and headed to the Palguin to lap the upper section 3 times. Afterwards we checked out the middle Palguin´s gorgeous 70 footer. Looks good to go. Who knows if and when we´ll run it, but I sure hope we get the chance.

Hope all is well for you reading this in our new year of 2009! And remember... its not peer pressure, its just your turn.
Adios from Pucon
-Ben

Pucon!

2008-12-28T18:27:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, here goes... I have limited time before they close down this internet cafe, so this will lack any sort of grace... and spelling correctness. So we got to Pucon at around 8 this morning and made our way to Kayak Pucon where we met up with Rodrigo and Ian. Ian took us to Rodrigo~s place on the lake...beautiful by the way... where we met up with Adam and Jared. The four of us headed to the Rio Llanchaue for our warm up.

Our first paddle strokes were off a beautiful 15 footer. And the rest of the day continued like that... OH BOY, he wants to kick us out of this joint, here are some pictures to please you all... Check back to see if we actually run the shit!

By the way that is B-ford going backwards off the drop... It was the stoutest drop on the run, and it messed up 2 out of the 3 who ran it.

Chile Begins!

2008-12-27T09:23:00.000-08:00

Well Pat, Ben and myself just arrived in Chile. Two out of three boats arriving is not bad. The weather is perfectly reminiscent of a Bozeman summer. Needless to say we are extremely excited to hop in our boats as soon as possible. Passing over a flooding river in town a few minutes ago only adds to this.

Ben instructing me on the finer points of kayaking during our wait.

We are now waiting on our bus to Pucon which departs in seven hours. Arriving around 645 tomorrow morning we will hop on a river as fast as can be.

Its quite awesome leaving Bozeman´s negative 16 below weather and come to a place like this. We have no where near the right amount of time to boat everything here. As soon as we get some kayaking shots we´ll stick them up here real soon for you guys. Alright, full steam ahead!