With only a few days left of 2015, and news that Hurley was on 3 gates, Jake and I headed down to go kayaking. However, as we were standing on the bank warming up, the lock keeper arrived and changed the gate configuration.
By the time we were in the eddy, it was on 4 gates.
Initially we were both a bit disappointed, especially as last week it had dropped off 3 only an hour after arriving. Chances of practising wave moves were now very limited as all that remained was a weir wide hole. The queue quickly subsided to just handful of paddlers, and we made the decision just to make the most of what we had.
Although our expectations had been fairly low (mainly as we had expected 3 gates), it actually turned out to be so much fun and really quite useful. It may have been pretty trashy, but the first gate remained much the same, only becoming more powerful and a bit stickier. So this meant, I could largely still practise most the things I had been working on in there.
We also spent some time surfing the middle two gates, which were much more powerful and harder to set up in, but if you got it right you could go really big.
Individual plans for the day had pretty much been scrapped due to the gate changes, but this meant we ended up experimenting with lots of links and combos: back stab to lunar, blunt to phonics, blunt to McNasty etc.
Mini clips coming soon
Full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/b30LkHvsGOY
Initially we were both a bit disappointed, especially as last week it had dropped off 3 only an hour after arriving. Chances of practising wave moves were now very limited as all that remained was a weir wide hole. The queue quickly subsided to just handful of paddlers, and we made the decision just to make the most of what we had.
Although our expectations had been fairly low (mainly as we had expected 3 gates), it actually turned out to be so much fun and really quite useful. It may have been pretty trashy, but the first gate remained much the same, only becoming more powerful and a bit stickier. So this meant, I could largely still practise most the things I had been working on in there.
We also spent some time surfing the middle two gates, which were much more powerful and harder to set up in, but if you got it right you could go really big.
Individual plans for the day had pretty much been scrapped due to the gate changes, but this meant we ended up experimenting with lots of links and combos: back stab to lunar, blunt to phonics, blunt to McNasty etc.
Mini clips coming soon
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