Last weekend was saw the first event held at the new Adventure Sports Center International (ASCI) in Wisp, Maryland. With climbing and kayaking venues things went smoothly on and off the water.

Blunting on Feature “A”

The climbing event was a more professional bouldering competition with some of the worlds top pros brought in and the kayaking was more of a demonstrational affair to show off the new course and what can be done on it. Feature “A” (real creative I know but the features have yet to be named) can go from a sticky hole into a fast wave that you can get air on and perform quite a few of the newer moves…although you have to bring you’re A game for the hard stuff. Keep in mind that all of the features can be adjusted from not surf able to death hole! Feature “B” is probably the best hole at the moment. It’s fairly deep and retentive, you can cartwheel and clean cartwheel your butt of, do all of the loop moves, tricky-whu, and even get the occasional phoenix monkey and mcnasty. Feature “C” is another good hole that you can do a lot of the moves in and feature “D” is one that no one really played in except me. They’ve been running the course on three and three and a half pumps and “D” changes a lot at these different levels. The highest they can run the course is four pumps. On three and a half pumps it’s a flushy wave, or at least it is on it’s default setting, and at three pumps it’s a super sticky fairly shallow hole that’s walled in. After watching someone get stuck in the hole in a side surf, needing me to grab their bow to pull them out, I was a little hesitant to go in but I guess I’m a sucker for punishment. It turned out to be hard to get out of but when a raft is on a collision course with you things get a little easier.

Looping at Feature “B”

ASCI is definitely one of the best man made white water parks I have ever been to. The features are fully adjustable via air bladders underneath the feature, it’s probably the only place where you can surf and yell to a guy on shore, “make it more of a wave” and within seconds it is! The only course that I’ve paddled that is better than ASCI is the site of the 2005 World Championships in Penrith, Australia. I think with time and some tweaking the ASCI course will blow it out of the water.

Special thanks to Tanya Shuman for taking these sweet pictures, Go Go River Angels!

Kelsey Thompson