Green River, WY Buena Vista, Co and the Teva Mountain Games

My year started off with a bang! I did a personal first decent on the West Branch of the Feather River (class 5 -) followed shortly by my 2nd descent of Deer Creek (class 4+ kayak self support overnighter) in California before I started the freestyle kayak tour. My first stop was Green River , WY. for the phenomenal freestyle competition. As usual, they provided an awesome breakfast for the competitors, followed by pizza delivered for lunch, then an awesome bbq dinner for awards. I was 2nd in jr. women’s, which isn’t bad considering I had a 103 degree temperature the night before the competition and received an awesome hand made mug and check!

Next stop was one of my favorite places to be, Buena Vista, CO. Although the water was low, the community came out in force and made it lots of fun! I helped Claire O’Hara and Stephen Wright with a play boating clinic and encouraged lots of people to try out the new boats, the Zen and the Fun runner. Both boats were very popular on low flow Numbers and in the play park. Try them, you’ll like them! I competed in C1 freestyle for my first time ever and had a blast! Right after, I competed in jr. women’s and placed 3rd behind JK team member Lauren Buress and Rowan Stuart, followed by my Colorado local friend Anna Scherer. It was a lot of fun and I look forward to competing against them the rest of the season. Sadly, after BV, my mom and I put my dad on a plane back to Carson City, NV. because he had to work, so my mom and I were on our own for Teva.

Unfortunately, we had to wait a few days for the Teva officials to OK alterations for the hole in Vail, Co. so we can compete in freestyle on Friday due to low water. Teva Mountain Games were thankfully a “go” after a lot of hard work by many of the athletes, especially Stephen and Clay Wright (not related!) A lot of plywood and ropes were used to make the LOW water feature work, and work it did!
The pro women went first, and I was the 4th person to go in the first heat. It was exciting because I was with my friends Elaine Campbell and Adriene Levknecht, and the TEVA team athletes, Martina Wegman (from NED) and Anne Hubner (from GER), it was awesome meeting them! It was a very challenging low water hole but I managed cartwheels, spins and loops and placed 7th overall out of the 2 heats of pro women!

One of the really cool things that happened during TEVA was a woman that I had met last year during a charity down river creek race (Creek at the Peak), Chris Kassar, was taking an adventure film class during the Teva Mountain Games and asked me if she could do her film project on me! She interviewed my mom and I and filmed me while I was boating-I am super excited to see how this works for her.

Saturday was the semi finals for Men and then the finals for both men and women. it was great to see a lot of team JK members make it to the finals including World Champion Claire O’Hara and my favorite Kiwi Courtney Kerin for women and, Stephen Wright, Dane Jackson, Eric Jackson and Greg Parker for men. The finals were run and our winners were Clair O’Hara, Haley Mills, Courtney Kerin, Adrien Levknecht, and Elaine Campbell, while the men were Stephen Wright, Dane Jackson, Dustin Urban, Eric Jackson, and Greg Parker.

After Teva I went back to Buena Vista, CO. for some more awesome rides at hole 1 and the best pizza in Colorado at the Eddyline Brewery-gluten free and loving life!

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Green River, WY Buena Vista, Co and the Teva Mountain Games