Hi Y'all

I hope everyone had a great winter and is ready for the upcoming season. Things couldn't be going better for me. Let me fill you guys in on what has been going on in my life. I graduated from Michigan state in Dec. and stuck around in MI for another month. After that, I moved to Mt. Baker, WA and had a sick couple of months ripping pow. There is a nice class 3 run that starts right by my house that they do rafting on in the spring and summer. In march I went to the owner of the local rafting company's house to ask about working for him this summer. As it turned out, his girlfriend had won a permit for the grand canyon and they were leaving in two weeks. Someone had backed out last minute and they needed another guide, so he asked me if I was up for it and we were at Lees Ferry 2 weeks later.

The trip was amazing. We had 7 boats. 6 were gear boats and I got to guide the passenger raft. I had a 14 footer with a stern frame and 4 paddlers with very little experience. We were light and fast, and easy to flip.

I flipped the raft twice early on (house rock rapid and mile 25 rapid) both pretty insignificant, but I cleaned up just like any good WV guide would and didn't lose any gear (not that we had any in our raft). After that, I started to pay more attention, and learned how to use my ores(way easier then R1ing lunch for 90 people). I nailed all the rest of the rapids and only flipped 1 more time trying to run a huge hole at the bottem of another no name rapid. At Lava, the gear raft behind me fliped on the V WAVE and we were in position for the rescue. we pulled the boat to shore just before lower lava. didn't lose any gear and got the boat up right with out derigging.

floating the canyon is the coolest thing I have ever done. there is plenty of flat water to relax and enjoy the scenery and spaced out between that are the biggest rapids I have ever seen. The group was great. 16 in total. we bought 100 cases of beer and never ran out. we also eat relay well. The other guys rowing were relay experienced and great to follow in the rapids. we had 1 cloudy day in 21 days on the river, and it was 70 to 80 every day. they also had the wettest winter in 20 years, and we were there in full bloom. the canyon was green with flowers everywhere! my camera only made it through about half of the trip so i don't have many good pictures, but we had a pro photographer on the trip who took over 1000 pictures. She also took action shots at hermit and lava so i will post them when I get them. here are a few of mine though.

There kind of backwards. this last one is from Lee's the day before we put on

I also got a real job so sadly I will not be working in ohiopyle this summer. Its for a small aerospace engineering firm in Seattle called pacific rim aerospace. I am actual at work right now and have wasted way to much time so i will fill you in with the rest soon.

Peace,

Brian

P.S. sign up for the permit lottery!

NC/ TN trip

Since I broke my Hero, I have been in search for a new kayak…
My brother and I found a Burn in NC on the Nantahala, so I called some numbers placed some orders and headed South.

Sadly not much was running, but we made use with what we had and set off to meet Kyle Welch on the French Broad. It was pretty easy, but there were a few rapids that stepped it up. Upon running the first fun section, Kyle and I were attacked by a goose! It went after Kyle first, Big Ben came to rescue when he heard me screaming of course! However, he found it more amusing than serious, when he saw the situation. Overall, the river was fun, but the goose made it memorable.

The next day, we paddled the Nolichucky in TN. This was a really fun river, if the water would have been higher it would have been more exciting, but even so running something new is always cool. Once we got off the Nolichucky, we headed to the Watauga in hopes of running it. By the time we got there it was late, so we camped by the put in and waited until morning.



Our last day of the trip was cold, we decided not to paddle the Watauga because it was so low, but we did get to paddle Wilson’s creek. It was by far the best thing we did. It had several ledges, a rapid kind of like frogs back on steroids, and a ten foot waterfall. It was only three miles, but it was all road side and shuttle was easy. A must do creek if you are ever in the area.



Overall the trip was amazing, the scenery was beautiful, and the weather was nice. I plan to take a trip back soon, since we didn’t get to meet up with everyone we wanted to see. Let me know if anyone is interested in joining in...
Also, a special thanks to all of those who helped with gauges and directions. =)

New video on new blog

Hey guys,

First off, follow this link to check out my latest video - me and Susan on the Big Sandy.

And now for your call to action. Just because the season is nigh upon us doesn't mean we don't want to know what you're doing. Let's see some action at The Putin. Or, better yet, if you have something to say that you think our customers would want to hear, why not put it on the New Blog. Here's a review of how to post.
1. Go here
2. Click Login (top right)
3. Username: wildernessvoyageurs1
password: wvstaff
4. Compose your post and click submit
5. Once we approve it, it will appear on the blog

That's all! Please remember that the intended audience on this new blog is our customers. You can direct any questions to me Lou.

Now for some Ohiopyle news. We had our first trip this past Thursday: Max and two brave dudes in Eric's shredder at 7.5 feet while Brian Douglas paddled along. Temps have been low but water has been high. Since Saturday 3/15 I've paddled the Middle Fork into the Tygart Gorge, Teeter and Laurel creeks, Meadow, Fikes, Top into the Upper Yough, and Big Sandy. Other folks have been doing the Cheat, the B, and anything else with water.

The Top into Upper run was extremely fun. Top was running over 1000 cfs and the Upper was right at 3 feet. We had a sweet crew - me, Jess Hartman, Brian Douglas, Max, and Drew. Douglas and Hartman were firing up all the sick lines (even though Jess wouldn't stop whining about his loose seat). The rest of us stayed pretty conservative, taking sneaks and accidentally discovering a few places where we should have taken sneaks.

Looking forward to seeing more and more familiar faces as the season approaches,
Lou

WTF!?

I can't help but to think that this is really stupid.

I'll also take this opportunity to note that I am confused and intimidated by the new blog.

The New Blog

Hello all,

A little follow up explanation on the new blog. The log in is "staff", but it is a blog for customer's eyes. Please continue using this blog for staff updates and greetings, but we'd love your help getting the new blog going as well. Thoughts on ohiopyle, the river, the laurel highlands in general. Anything you have to say to help get it going would be awesome.

As Lou's blog below says: the link is http://blog.wilderness-voyageurs.com/

Username: wildernessvoyageurs1

password: wvstaff

Please blog away - but keep the greetings for eachother and personal updates to this blog. Thanks!

Eric and I are in Colorado. We packed up our laptops, filled boxes with work files and relocated our office to my parents house. No complaints. Good days working, followed by awesome skiinig in the evenings and the hot springs as often as we can. We've been hiding out in Redstone most of the time and haven't caught up with everyone else out here, but we're hoping to before we leave. If anyone comes through this area - stop in! The hotsprings alone are worth it. Last night there were Elk all around. Pretty cool.

Love to all-

Kas, Eric & Ancho (psycho Sandy is staying with Lou. We figured Sandy and my parent's cat would be a bloody meeting)

Mad Props, Son!

_Jason

WV gets new blog (again!)

Hey guys,

So WV coughed up some hard-earned cash for a professional 'compended' blog. Frequent posting will really help our company, so let's show some support for our fearless leaders and blog like maniacs!

The url for the blog is http://blog.wilderness-voyageurs.com/

Click and you'll find yourself on Compendium's site (this is Chris Baggot's company - Chris is Kaila's godfather). You'll be looking at a list of all the blogs. The first 13 are "compended," meaning they only exist because they pull content from the last two, which are regular blogs. Scroll down and you'll see a staff blog and a guest blog.

You can click any blog title to view it's content, but what you really want to do is check the top right corner and click Log In. Here's the login info:

Username: wildernessvoyageurs1
password: wvstaff

You'll be looking at a text editor for creating your post. You can do lots of things here: all the regular stuff (fonts, links, pictures, etc), plus pure html editing, and even inserting YouTube videos.

Once you're done, submit your post. It'll show up on the blog once one of us power-tripping manager types uses our Admin privileges to accept your post.

There's a lot more to this, though. If you want to get busy blogging, go ahead. For more info, check out the comments of this post.

Peace,
Lou