Play Sesh on the Mckenzie

by: Christina Russell
Date: March 6, 2007


After a long day of school Monday, Josh called with a kick ass idea...hit the Mckenzie River on Tuesday for a play sesh. The flows were perfect for Baby Clover and Neills surf wave....2.77 feet. We agreed to meet at 7:30 Tuesday morning to load up his truck and head over. The Mckenzie is about an hour and a half away (in Josh's WRX, it's more like 45 minutes :P) This time we took his big trucko.

We got to the old Mom's Pies at 9:30. Probably 50 degrees out. Crystal clear and no one around...except for logging trucks hauling by. We packed our kayaks with the goods:a crapload of snacks, our video equipment, cameras, waterbottles, hot tea :) , shoes, and a lone apple that was screaming..."eat me! eat me!" (We must not forget Josh's smell phone which wasn't getting any reception...more on that later)

We hurried on down to Baby Clover to discover a recent placement of wood made it mandatory to hike back up after each ride... lots of work. After about ten rides we each decided to try the new hole in the center of the river which turned out to be perfectttttt. Emphasis on perfect. Steep, fast, deep hole with NO eddyline and perfect eddy access. yup, you need to check this one out for yourself!

After about two hours of play at the "perfect hole" floated on down to Neills. At 2.7 Feet and up, Neills is a fast,breaking wave with an eddy right nextdoor.

Here's mister Joshua rippin' it up. I'm currently trying to convert him to a Liquidlogic :)























Basically blunt and backstab 'till you want to barf. Josh was throwin some big blunts while I attempted to Air Screw. Unfortunately that wasn't happening for me so I resorted to working on my blunts, clean blunts, and backstabs. All good fun :D






For Scale...mind you I'm pint size but eh...












Bluntin...













I should really quit sticking my tongue out...








Remember how I told you that Josh's smell phone had no service? Yeah so he had to be at work at 5:00. We wanted to stay and surf WAY past five. Conflict! NO!! His plan had been to call in sick but with no reception, we decided to head on down to the take out around 2:45(We still had to run a 2-3 mile shuttle to get his truck)

3o minutes later, we arrived at the truck stinky, sweaty and ready to get out of the drysuits. Marinating in a drysuit is kind of grody. Can't say I recommend it.

At this point everyone needs to hear about the awesome snacks we munched on while coming home: 4 chocolate covered-melted sugar filled eggs, a bag of cheeze its, a bag of ritz crackers, a box of Nilla Wafers, my cliff bars, an english muffin from breakfast, almonds (cuz I'm a vegetarian) and lot of agua. That was all between the two of us. We were hungry :D

We had a kick ass day on the Big Mac and plan on heading back this weekend before I get hit with two math exams, an Anthropology final and a Psychology final. Eeewwwww. 'Till next time-

Happy Paddling amigos!

-C