After getting back from the awesome trip to Uganda and it´s amazing waves I went back to my local playspot, Helliwelli.
It´s so different to paddle in the cold water and weather again - but I got used to it pretty fast!
Here´s a video of the first few trainingsessions:
I felt good paddling on this feature again and I think I´m even progressing quite well!
So on the last weekend I intended to take part in the IX Open Polish Championships in Cracow!
It should have been quite a big competition including also the Slalom Championship!
When I arrived there on Wednesday evening the weather was the same as in Austria - cold and rainy but the hole at the end of the slalom course looked really good!
I decided not to paddle that evening but to help Bartosz Czauderna (the organizer) to make a few adjustments to the hole and wanted to be the first one next morning paddling the hole!
Unfortunately the rain kept going on so the next morning the bottom of the course including the playspot was flooded!
Plan B was to have a wave competition in the middle of the course - which made the training schedule a lot more difficult due to slalom and freestyle training in the same course!
But in the afternoon I got to paddle the wave - and I really liked it!
In the evening Ewa Balon (one lf the local paddlers) took me to the meeting of the local university canoe club - we had a blast!
I was really stoked for the next day to get my back blunts working (which I didn´t manage in the first session) but unfortunately the whole event was cancelled early next morning due to the flood.
The whole slalom course was flooded!
So a small group of paddlers including Ewa Balon (who kept me very pleasant company), Bartosz Czauderna and Adam Olesinski decided to go "Wave Hunting".
We drove around the southern part of Poland for many hours finding huge amounts of water but not the desired waves.
Some flooded river eating away the riverbanks
So in the late afternoon we decided to run one of the local rivers, the Dunajec which also is the border to Slovakia and runs through a national park. Take out was at the city of Kroscienko.
Flooded promenade at Kroscienko
We found some smaller waves on the way down and really had quite some fun on the river!
After that Ewa invited me to stay at her families house for the next 2 nights and I got to taste typical polish dishes and we also went to a concert of a famous polish band - it was amazing!
And the hospitality was amazing too - thank you very much again, Ewa!
When I drove home to Austria on Sunday, what did I find?
Snow on the mountain passes!!!!
Snow in the middle of May...
Thus ends a awesome journey to Poland - my first but definitely not my last!
And here´s another video of my training sessions at Helliwelli:
Helliwelli Session 2
As always a big thank you to my supporters:
Mitchell Blades Kayak Paddles
So in the late afternoon we decided to run one of the local rivers, the Dunajec which also is the border to Slovakia and runs through a national park. Take out was at the city of Kroscienko.
We found some smaller waves on the way down and really had quite some fun on the river!
After that Ewa invited me to stay at her families house for the next 2 nights and I got to taste typical polish dishes and we also went to a concert of a famous polish band - it was amazing!
And the hospitality was amazing too - thank you very much again, Ewa!
When I drove home to Austria on Sunday, what did I find?
Snow on the mountain passes!!!!
Thus ends a awesome journey to Poland - my first but definitely not my last!
And here´s another video of my training sessions at Helliwelli:
Helliwelli Session 2
As always a big thank you to my supporters:
Mitchell Blades Kayak Paddles
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