Last weekend we drove up north on Vancouver Island to the first Annual Puntledge River Paddle Festival organized by our great folks at the Vancouver Island Whitewater Paddling Society.
The amazing amount of work put into getting this event going by Shayne, Wayne, Don, Sean and others paid off. The events was an awesome success. More than 100 active paddlers and their friends and families came up to Courtney/Comox to enjoy the brilliant whitewater of the Puntledge river. This play river has waves all over the place and invites to play everywhere. Together with a serious creeking section uprivers and the river gradually dropping off in difficulty to WW1-2 at the put out everybody was happy.
We had guided runs, clinics, playboating without end, people just running down the river, rafts and canoe trips and a whole lot of fun. The new campground across the Condensory bridge was off to a record business start thanks to all the camping kayaking and the shops, restaurants and pubs in town surely felt the impact of our business. We had a great dinner at the Atlas.
All this was made possible by the water release for this festival done by BC Hydro. You see normally you can walk across a lot of sections of the river dry footed and if you paddle it with water it is probably sometime in winter with rain and cold weather. So this was awesome.
So thank you BC Hydro and VIWPS for the event from all paddlers, onlookers and the profiting businesses in Courtney.
We hope to be welcome again next year.
Manfred – VI paddling mailing list
