This was an awesome week’s worht of paddling and one day in the snow. I was severely out of my depth experience-wise and I struggled, but I met some lovely people and I learned loads.
Some new kit I got from Chickenline for the trip
I was at a EUDEC Council meeting in Amersfoort, Netherlands until the day before this course started and flew to Venice from there without a plan for how I’d cover the last stretch across the border to Slovenia. I was incredibly lucky to sit next to a very friendly and kind guy from Slovenia who was driving that way and gave me a lift. He created split skis, I remember that, this is probably the website, but I’m not entirely sure. Anyway, we listened to 'Girl from Ipanema’ on the drive and I still connect it with trusting my gut feeling despite knowing how everybody would have told me not to take the lift, and feeling really free, and super grateful not to be stranded in a train station.
There is a snow day in the middle of the week, to get a rest day from paddling, but also to prtactice teaching a completely new sport to somebody, and better empathise with the learner.
We did Otona twice on the last day. I was super scared at the beginning, and still quite scared throughout. I don’t think I needed to be skills-wise, it’s probably another case of my experience needing to catch up. There is a cool video of landslide rapid .
I wrote on facebook at the time: ‘Next Generation Training Week was amazing... not leading this one yet, but getting there : D
Thanks everybody involved for making this such a great time!’
Here’s another video about the course by Alexander Sukodholov. It’s super well-made and contains lots of drone-footage, really worth watching!