CUKC Weekend on the Ottawa

This past weekend the Carleton University Kayak Club held its third annual fall trip to the Ottawa River, and well, the weekend was safe to say pretty great. There were about 30 friends (some old, some new) that came out for the weekend to play, kayak, and of course swim the Ottawa River. The weekend started off on Friday when we left the parking lot to head up to the River Run Rafting Centre where upon arrival we were greeted by a group of friendly Americans with the international greeting of “Canadians come skinny dipping!”. After our initial hello’s and hi’s our tents were set up and we were ready to join in the celebrations of Canadian / American / German / Dutch togetherness and we exchanged songs that we all kinda knew around the camp fire, played games such as no-pants-volleyball, and just all together hung out at River Run’s awesome base.

In the morning we set off for the river and had Ben Fraser and Cheryl McGregor along with others, instruct our group of newbies to the ways of the kayak, while those more experienced played at Push Button, Babyface and The Garborator. After our day on the river we all returned to River Run, mowed down on burgers and hot dogs, played with everybody’s favourite puppy Steve, and the nights festivities began. Which were more of the same as night before, singing poorly and loving it, and playing around enjoying life.

On our final day we packed up our campsite and headed back to the river were we had a little more excitement in store for our beginners. We ran McCoy’s and the Lorne (Black’s Chute) as a club, at McCoy’s we had the crew run Satler’s Line where a glorious gong show of boats and swimmers ensued. Some of us went for a different line deciding to punch Phil’s Hole, and as I’m sure the pictures will show it may have turned into a mini Phil’s Rodeo, at least for some of us. After we picked up the pieces we met down at the bottom of McCoy’s and played around at Babyface introducing everyone to river wave surfing, and the party surf. After everyone was all surfed out we headed down to the Lorne (Black’s Chute) to have everyone run through the Garb and pretty much swim the Wi-ki-ki waves.

Thus concluded our weekend on the river and after hanging out for a while at the take-out including a pair of bootie beers we said our goodbye’s to the river and each other and headed back to the city. All in All we had a great weekend introducing people to whitewater and a great new community

Make sure to check out the pictures on Facebook: Album I & Album II and full quality pics are posted on our Gallery to download.

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– Juraj VP Events