things seem smaller

If your heading to Idaho for peak spring flows with a crew composed of post-injury/recently recovered and severely out of practice paddlers, dont expect to go big cause that shits scary and you probably wanna be feeling frisky for that. However, you can expect to have a kick ass time. Traveling light armed only with an iphone and some borrowed kayaks, highlights (w/notable quotes) included:

- Paddling an often overlooked section of the South Fork Payette - spicy take-out rapid terminating in steamy hot springs with Captain Bob at the helm -> "Should we scout? Nope? OK, Bobs going? Whered he go?"

- Sleeping on a tarp in a cave on the owyhee while transitioning into the first days of summer -> Day 1: drysuit, cold breeze, Day 2: shorts + flip flops + too many hot cans of PBR = sunburn and a big smile -> "Beer me."


- A rowdy night in Boise partying with The Black Lips and The Banks Mag crew at Neurolux -> "Did you see the crowd attacking security at the show? Who threw that beer? Oh shit there are beers flying everywhere!"

Now back in WNC the summer is in full swing and things here seems smaller. . ."is the green running?" Hope you have been taking photos and video cause The 7th Annual HOMEGROWN Photo/Video Contest is scheduled for Sat Aug 27 ->> details coming real real soon -

three rivers in three states in four days

memorial day is usually a mandatory work day for myself but not this year. Instead of being sidelined in the back of a raft on memorial day weekend i was able to sample some flow in the states of north carolina, west virgina, and maryland. Friday i splashed my face on the green river narrows, saturday i rode roller coaster waves on the new river, then sunday and monday i traversed currents on the upper youghiogheny river in maryland! Flows were ideal. this shit made me feel alive! Here it is as i saw it.

the new was at 8ft!
myself smoothing the line at national
photo: jackie selevan

nick pabst is back, bitches . . .

Currently, I'm layed up under my 40 x 12 tarp with a busted back from paddling 150 miles in three days on the middle fork of the salmon river, but in a couple of days I'll be back on top, working for Cascade Raft outa Banks Idaho, home of the notorious Banks Mag and the constantly frightening North Fork of the Payette. No photos this time, as my camera is buried along the depths of six-mile creek in southern AK, but I'll fix that soon enough.
From my summer home, i.e., the farm (i.e. my tarp), I can catch a glimpse of otter slide rapid, a beastly warmup rapid of the north fork. A few miles downstream and we come to the confluence of the north and south forks, creating the main payette. Looks like its gonna be a good season, as there's 120% snow-pack and plenty of spring rain.

teamscum x the chattooga conservancy

As part of our SUPPORT SOUL program we are stoked to be donating 10% of sales from the 2011 'support soulful kayaking' T towards The Chattooga Conservancy's Stekoa Creek City Park and Stream Buffer Restoration Project.



Available in 2 mens/womens colourways, the 2011 SSK Tshirt is printed using non-toxic waterbased inks on a %100 organic cotton Tshirt with a seasonally dated neck label. You can pick one of these up for $25 at our online shop .

feelin' the flow

march has provided some fantastic flow in the southeast. I managed to get twenty days on the water this month alone, not half bad for a kid without a car. Check out some pictures of our recent trip to Overflow. I'm sticking around the southeast this summer and I'm fired up about it!

mark miller droppin' singley's

jonathan dale doin his thing at marginal

see you on the river this summer.

arlyn-

seasonal affective disorder

Work slowed down mid-February and it was time to move on.

So with hundreds of pesos we took the overnight bus to Buenos Aires to indulge our last few days in Argentina. We spent one day at the US Embassy (Note here: when traveling, make a photocopy of your passport.) and the rest of the week was spent on seafood empanadas, wine, and the tango. Buenos Aires is a dazzling city with countless corridors of street musicians and dancers. It is one of the largest cities on earth with nearly 13 million people (that’s almost twice the size of NYC).

We bused back to Potrerillos and spent our final afternoon closing down the cabana and finding a new sucker to feed the Huevo and Remo. We flew out of Mendoza on the 27^th of February and landed in Atlanta the following afternoon.

We had arrived in Argentina as spring gave way to summer and left as summer was fading into fall. I was four days in Georgia as the first Bradford pears christened the Spring and then we were off again, this time to ride the final snowfalls of winter in Colorado.

It was dark and rainy when we left Atlanta and it didn’t clear up till after Little Rock. There was 900 miles on I40 and the intergalactic adventures of the lawless desert planet Dune before we reached the foothills of the Rockies. As we passed through Santa Fe the first traces of snow littered the highway and there were snow flurries on the road ahead. By the time we entered Colorado the storm was in full effect and didn’t let up our first three days in Pagosa. Nick and I started working in time for the spring break madness at Wolf Creek, and are shredding the gnar on our days off. No plans to head back east any time soon.

pasaportes, patagonia y perdidas

The water's high and work is rocking. Nick is kayaking everyday and I have a full time gig waiting tables and serving drinks at the riverside restaurant. It's been busy on Los Condores Ave with wayward travelers passing through-- Joe Numbers and Shannon both stayed a week, my brother was here for two, and there's an Irishman camped out back we can't get rid of. And we have another dog. Remolina Andina (Remo for short) showed up one morning with the Huevo and decided to stay.

My brother came down for the first two weeks of January. It was a two day trip from Homer, Alaska with a bit of bad water in Mexico and lost baggage in LA. After a weekend in town Tony and I took off for Patagonia on an overnight bus trip from Mendoza to Bariloche. We arrived without a plan, bought a map and supplies, and camped around nightfall well within Nahuel Huapi National Parque.




We spent the week backpacking a circuit of Refugios-- one room huts at backcountry camp sites that sell sandwiches and cerveza. Around day three we waited out a bout of cold rain and patagonian wind to attempt a secondary route of ridgelines and scrambling deemed impossible without good weather. The next morning was blue skies and sunshine. It was a full day of backpack bouldering, snowfield descents, and waterfall crossings. We traversed a pristine mountain valley and finished the day with a brutal climb to the shores of a high alpine lake. Johnny Walker was waiting for us up top.

We came out of the woods to more rain and full hostels in Bariloche so we headed north for Aconcagua. Note here-- if you want to spend a few days backpacking the tallest mountain in the Americas and aren´t Argentine be ready to shell out some cash. It was about $100 US dollars for a three day permit, $250 for a week and $1,000 for a shot at ascent. So it is expensive but damn purdy. The trail to basecamp is a straight shot into the mountain alongside a glacial creek and red rock walls.

After a few hours of hiking we arrived at Confluencia-- an international array of colored tents and mountaineers preparing for ascent. When I reached into my pack for our permit I realized my dry bag was gone. I felt my stomach drop- it was not only all of my cash and my passport, it was my brother's passport as well. I stashed my pack and ran back to the park entrance, searching the trail until dark. It was a horrible night- the unusually still mountain air amplified the sleepless silence between us. We broke camp early to retrace our steps and again found nothing.

So rather than backpacking the park Tony took a crosscountry bus trip to the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires while I returned to work. It was a three day binge of roadtripping and beer, and then Tony was back in Potre for a full moon rafting trip and all night river party. The next morning he headed back to darkness and cold and Alaska winter.

As for me, I am still passport-free and broke and happy with summer. C'est la vie.

Fajardo to La Parguera: Puerto Rico on the cheap

Aguadilla soul surfers

The same low pressure system that closed the ATL airport hours after our plane hit the skies proceeded to bombard the coast of Puerto Rico with decent/good surf for the first 10 days of our adventure. While we would rather have seen blue skies and calm, green Caribbean waters, it was nice to witness a fever comparable to 6" of rainfall in WNC. The surfers were going nuts. As part of the cultural detoxification process, we soaked in some ocean vibes and acclimatized to 3 weeks of living out of a Suzuki Aero.

First off, Puerto Rico is not third-world, monopoly money cheap. Prices are comparable to mainland US and some things are more expensive. If you're on a scumbag budget there are a couple of key tips for the essentials :

FOOD

- RESTAURANTS: stay out of sit down restaurants- any restaurant with a waitstaff is generally outside the range of a scumbag budget -

- LOOK FOR HEAT LAMPS: road food and street meat is the way to go, though be wary of any crusty looking fried items filled with hotdogs or seafood -



- PANADERIA: if you don't know this word learn it, and eat at them -



- GET A COOLER: eat groceries, buy fruit from vendors on the road, its cheaper, fresher, and local -

- BEER: warm Medalla from the grocery store is usually about half the price of cold beer from a bar, bag ice is about a buck -

- RUM: have your heard of Puerto Rican rum? yeah, they make it there - and its good and cheap


SHELTER

Hotels will drain your moneybelt faster than you can chug ice cold 10 oz. Medallas on an empty stomach. And the island isn't necessarily 'camping friendly.' This is where you need to be creative. Bring a small tent and be prepared to spend at least a few nights sleeping in your car.

I'm not gonna divulge too many secrets here, but lemme just say that when your illegally poaching some beachfront camping, safety is definitely a concern. Keep your wits about you and carry a big knife.




When your too sunburned to surf anymore, head to the center of the island. Most people think Puerto Rico is all about the beaches, but 40% of the island is covered in mountains and rainforest. We sampled Toro Negro with Acampa and, thanks to early Spanish settlers' scurvy concerns, plucked fresh oranges and grapefruit sagging from the litany of citrus trees scattered throughout the Cordillera Central. You can mindsurf the steep flashfood creeks that drop off both sides of the hills, but whitewater kayaking isn't really a practical endeavor here. However, if you skip every other tour on the island, at least sea kayak into the bioluminescent bay at Fajardo. On a dark night you will feel like you have slipped into a bizarre psychedelic trance as clicking crustaceans and laser beam fish leave you feeling a bit unsure as to the true nature of perceptual reality. It's trippy as hell.


Toro Negro


So we dropped into ATL and hit I-75 literally 1 hour before they closed the interstates and proceeded to cancel thousands of flights, shutting down most of the southeast for a few days, again. Sometimes you need to decompress from vacation mode, so being snowed in ATL was a welcomed extension. Now we're back in WNC and working on teamscum 2011. We've got a few tricks up our sleeve this year, so stay tuned for new Tshirt designs, some ridiculously sick custom headwear, as well as a revamped site and Homegrown 7 preparations. 2011 is gonna rock!

hasta el juevo

She just showed up one morning, hungry and skittish outside our doorstep. The fridge was empty, save a few onions and an egg. Nick fried up the egg and thus El Juevo she became. She scumbags the pueblo by day and comes home to howl at vegetable trucks and waning moons by night. So now we have a dog in Argentina.

I met David coming back from town, juggling two kilos of potatoes and three bottles of whiskey on a crowded bus. Nick and I had decided to host a Thanksgiving asada, so I went into Lujan to see what traditional foods I could find. Not so much, no turkey, no yams, not even good ketchup. Anyways I was coming home when I wound up sitting with David. It only took a minute to forgo our broken Spanish for some good ole red white and blue American. David was traveling alone after his failed attempt to rekindle a love story. He showed up on her doorstep unannounced after 5 years of silence. It was a luke warm reception followed shortly by the "I'm just not that into you" conversation. Thus he was wandering about with a backpack of river gear and a plan to head somewhere south. David came to the party and stayed awhile.


Our Thanksgiving celebration was whiskey wild. We served freedom fries and a couple of chickens to celebrate the greatness of America and its rich history of distracting folk with food and games while raping and pillaging their lands. Asadas are built on the communist mentality-- no plates for serving individual portions but rather chicken cooked whole and eaten with fingers. But similar to the pitfalls of the socialist agenda it encourages lazier folk to show up just as the chicken is ready and take more than their share. Argentine style, we ate around midnight and partied till dawn.


The first week of December Nick and I visited Aconcagua (that's Mexican for big 'ole mountain). It is the highest peak in the Americas at 22,834 feet, standing a few hundred feet taller than Denali. We spent the day hiking about the edge of the park with an old timer from Potre named Paco and two Slovenians passing through town. The five of us had lunch on long forgotten train tracks paralleling El Cueva, a busy creek carving through rock beds and land bridges atop natural hot springs. We ended our trekking excursion at Puenta del Inca, a popular display of iron colored rocks and bubbling pools, exemplifying the delicate balance of eroding rock formations and centuries of spring thaws.

Work is slow, money's tight, and so passes December. Feliz Navidad, y'all.

--nickiD

On location 12/1/2010

Seems like we had one good stompin rain in the fall of 2010, some parts of Western North Carolina received as much as 9 inches of rain. It was one of those occasions when everything was running and probably too high. I decided to hike down into the Narrows and see what a high water Green looks like, I knew it was going to be high but i didn't expect to see the notch under water. I'm down here in Key West layin low for the holidays, really diggin the beer drinkin and no shirt part.

Cheers

arlyn-