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Steve T

Last night Bob, Phil, Lisa and I went to Brookbank in Stockport to hear Doug Ammons talk about his paddling. He is a hardcore American white water paddler, touring the UK at the moment to raise money for a Nepali educational charity.

An article written by him was in a recent issue of “Canoe & Kayak” magazine, and from reading that I have to say he seemed a bit full of himself. In reality this wasn’t the case – he has done some amazing stuff and basically he’s just talking about what he’s done. Refreshingly he was just as enthusiastic about the scenery as the white water, and stressed the importance of taking time out from focusing on the paddling to take in the sense of the special places he gets to.

The talk took a while to get going, but picked up when he got onto his main subject - the first self-supported descent of the Grand Canyon of the Stikine, in British Columbia. This is an amazing river, with some enormous grade VI rapids, and totally committing as it’s 1500ft deep in a vertical gorge. He recounted some scary adventures, but also gave some idea of why he does it and is genuinely inspiring. Doug has also completed a solo descent of this river, but hardly mentioned it. For an audience of paddlers, some of the slides and video was edge-of-the-seat stuff. Often he had to point out the tiny speck of a boat in the picture to show the huge scale of the river.

Once Phil's nailed his roll we'll try and sort out a club weekend there

It was nice to hear that his favourite river is a Class II / III local run. I’m not sure if he uses local in the same sense as us as he started off talking about some local runs within “just 5 hours of home”.

We all bought his books, of essays and stories about white water, and again the proceeds went to his charity. I did, however, manage to resist the temptation of being surrounded by all that shiny new paddling kit.

For me, the best line of the night:

Phil · Joined: 27 Jan 2009 Posts: 91

[/quote]Once Phil's nailed his roll we'll try and sort out a club weekend there

Unfortunatly im busy that weekend.
But on a serious note it was well worth going i totally enjoyed it,just to hear the passion he has for the sport and to hear the experiences hes had was amazing.
It was also good to see him at the end have the time to talk to everyone and be totally genuine.
He also give me a big boost to my confidence with something he said to me when i told him i was struggling with my roll.

For me it was a Brilliant night
Phil[