High Altitude Adventures

Beer, Kayaking, Rain: Lyons Outdoor Games

Yum Oskar Blues Brewery hosting an outdoors event I was sold to go check it out.  Well that and the weather had been terrible around Boulder.  It had rained almost nonstop everyday for a week so doing almost anything had become miserable or at least good training for living in the North West. But with all of the rain the rivers were flowing at extremely high levels and super dangerous, so an even hosting Whitewater kayaking sounded entertaining.

On the day of the event it was raining so the mountain biking, run and other events had been cancelled.  When I showed up the Junior-Pro freestyle kayaking was going on. This is an event on the national kayak circuit for competitors under the age of 18.

This was the first kayak event that I have ever been too, and aside from seeing people paddle rivers and a few videos at festivals I had never seen Freestyle Kayaking. It was crazy! The competitors would paddle into a rapid and then do tricks that were similar to snowboard aerials, back flips, rodeos and Mctwists but they were sitting in a Kayak and jumping out of the water.

Because of the rain I only stuck around for the juniors before I had to retreat to Oskar Blues to enjoy some food and drink. But non-the-less I still left very impressed by the technical moves that these kayakers could do and the pure strength that it took to get out of the water like that.

Cheers!