Big Air Kayak Sledding With Jackson Kayaks

Whitewater kayakers who live in Colorado, or most of the West for that matter, don’t have many opportunities to get in their boats in the winter. For the most part, we focus 100% of our time on winter sports, like snowboarding, ice hockey and snowmobiling.

However, for the longest time, Dally and I have had our sights set on a epic kayak sledding sesh, but we needed good snow. This past month of December, the snow has been nothing short of great and Dally and I took the opportunity to load up our JK Rockstars and send them down the mountain… I mean frozen water is better than no water, right?

So, the night before we charged up all the cameras, loaded the truck, grabbed the siblings and by early morning we were heading up the mountains. Once we got to the snowy mountains it took awhile to find a good spot to sled. We were originally looking for a steep and long hill to reach high speeds but couldn’t find any good spot for it, so we decided to change it up and do something no one has ever done before…

We found a hill with the perfect length and major steepness for jumps! We spent the greater half of the morning building a giant kicker so we could launch ourselves into the air and throw every freestyle kayaking trick possible.

Test run number 1, I sat at the top knowing the landing was gonna hurt, but I did not let it stop me. I pushed myself off the start ramp and started heading straight for the jump, it was scary…I’m not gonna lie. As I went off the lip I realized it was a lot bigger than we thought. The jump literally launched me 12’ and I must have been at least 6’ in the air! The landing was not too as bad as I anticipated, so Dally took a run for himself. After a few test runs we decide we wanted to go even bigger, so we cleaned up the lead-in to allow us more speed and made the jump bigger.

With more speed and a bigger jump that was launching us 18’ out and 10’ up it was time to throw some tricks. We started off with a few grabs and 360’s. Then we really stepped it up with some Airscrews, Panams, and even trying Loops and Mcnastys. We landed 70% of the tricks we tried…but the other 30% hurt so bad. However, we kept at it going for a better success rate.

The landing started to ice up but It was addicting, we had so much adrenaline we could not stop until I went too big. I threw the biggest airscrew of my life. I landed a little on my edge and took a massive impact, smashing my ribs on the rim of my cockpit, knocking the wind out of me. I couldn’t breath for at least 30 seconds. It hurt so bad I thought I might have broken a rib, so we packed up and headed back home after completing one of our biggest goals!! It was such an amazing day!! Can’t wait for another opportunity to practice freestyle moves in the snow!

-Kenny Kellogg