Whitewater kayakers are often called crazy and sensless when meeting locals on the way to a run or creek little do they realize that most of us most of the time are very calculated in our approaches to boating the gnar. This past sunday exemplified that last statement as one of the best NB creeking crews assembeled to do a first descent of the quidy river on the fundy coast. The lineup included the likes of “clean line gnar runner” Ian Cambel, “first day back in a boat running the steep” Andrew Devost, “ Always safe Always late” Danny Coates, “ Lengendary” Harry Cox, and Myself. You can draw your own conclusions of my character from what you might have heard, If you haven’t heard anything then I guess we’ll say that I posess varying degrees of both good and bad character in varying quantitees. Now back to the river.

The Quiddy river is a river that alot of local NB boaters have been looking at for a long time. I remember when I was a young kid and my dad Harry took me down to martin head to camp and fish that he dreamt of one day running this river. That was many years ago now and it required the right variables to line up for the equatin to work. On previous attempts the river was to low or the roads were unpassible due to muddy roads and iceberg rocks wedging in tires. Although the first drop was run three years ago by Harry, Jack Breen and myself the river has only been hiked in the dryer months since. On the may long weekend the equations finally came together.

It required three days of rain to get enough flow onthe river that alowed Ian, Andrew and myself to prepare for the Quiddy by running the calssic foley in Nova Scoatia the day before. Unfortunately Ian was injured on the infamous facceplant as he got a side wrenching blow while plunging into the pool below faceplant and Andrew bought himself a new boat by having the bottom of his boat hit a ghost object in the same pool this blunt impact ejected him from harrys former boat and dented the hull. Andrew gave his new boat a qucik boot and Ian consumed a steady supply of IB profin and we were ready to go.

The day started out fantastic after a walk around a backbreaker drop that cascadded onto rocks( this was the stroy of the day). We were able to run Wallace falls a super clean warm up 30 footer which was the highest vertical fall most of us had run. We then ran some boogie water until the next drop water slide falls which was about 18 feet vertical and had a entrance to the falls that pushed hard right which made a super deep plunge and popped of harry’s skirt. This was followed by some more boogie water then a three tiered set of falls about eighty feet tall that has a line but would have to be run near flawless to suceed without a cracked helmet followed by another eighty foot drop that would throw you left and right so much that it would require three helmets to keep your head on your shoulders. Theese drops were walked and so were the next three which were also back to back but also had some dangerous consequenses which we were not ready to test. We’ll be back for these and maybe a few of the others, The portages around theese rapids involved various rope setups to safetly avoid the dangerous thunder. The rest of the river was runable and had one three kilometer rapid that emptied into martin head. We were able to safetly style another NB source to sea run.

It was an amazing day on the river ina beautiful area that only a handfull of newbrunswickers have been to.