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25.04.2004 Athens Slalom World Cup
The olympic canoe-kayak slalom course, is finally operational
During the last four days, world cup slalom was held in the almost completed olympic facilities, in one of the best slalom courses available.
Winner of men's K1 was Lefevre from France, Walsh from GBR (+3.09sec) and Oblinger from Austria (+4.72sec)
The safety of the world class paddlers, was guaranteed by the presence in the safeguard post of a greek rivers pioneer. Who? Click to find out
Here are some photos of the day
More photos will be posted in our olympic page as well as on the photo gallery of our community site Kayak in Greece
24.04.2004 Back in Erymanthos
It's spring time. The rivers of Greece welcome their paddling visitors. Along with groups from Germany, Austria and Czech republic, TEAMadara - one of the very few paddling people in Greece, found themselves at the familiar waters of Peloponessos.
Our early start from Athens, was once more, just an excuse to waste more time along the way!
Pavlos modified his M3's seat, more than a few times at the put in, while Konidis was trying to explain to George, our shuttle and support manager (shuttle banny in the executive language) how a prusic knot works (very useful!!). We finally managed to put in "only" two hours from our arrival!!
The highlight of the run, except of the dead sheep, in the second rapid, who's nice smell was following us all along the first gorge, was naturally, the last rapid of the final gorge. After a few silly excuses about wounded shoulders, etc, I was left alone, to save the team's reputation and run the big ramp.
To lighten my boat, I left a drybag with emergancy clothing and all the heavy extraction machinery out. Unfortunately, the person, assigned to bring the stuff with him, while PORTAGING the rapid, was too embarashed and too busy thinking a good excuse, for not running, that forgot everything.
A few minutes later, while I was admiring the remarkable change of my G-Ride's drive, I realised that it was because it was somehow LIGHTER!!
Result: One hour of walking, scrambling, swimming and jungle-like penetrating, to get back to our point of loss!
More in our trip report...soon
P.S. Fortunately, most of the people, contacted by George, when he woke up in that grassy field, at the take out, a couple of hours after our expected time of arrival, knew that it was too early to worry... for us
A few more photos of the day
17.04.2004 Invasion in Alfios.
TEAMadara hit the river, in a spring come back, with the surprising force of 10 paddlers - two of them new comers.
Neni Lambropoulou and the New comers
13.04.04 A new web space for Kayak in Greece
A greek speaking community page, based in yahoo.groups, named "kayakingreece" can be access in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kayakingreece
Everybody can join, post messages, upload photos and set RVs in the calendar.
21.03.04. Evinos slalom course.
The new artificial slalom course, in Evinos river, is ready and will be available for the team races this weekend. Here is a photo of the course without water, that D.Konstantinidis took on
24.03.2004 Back to school!
Back to school for two members of our team! Konidis and myself, looking at the way, Pavlos run class IV rapids lately, felt the need to freshen up our safety skills (if there ever were any!)
So we managed to take a couple of days off, to attend a Metavasi school's "upgraded" safety course. The "teacher" spent the whole day trying to make us understand, the difference between a 6:1 and a 9:1 howling system, just to realise the next day, that we 'd rather walk out the gorge, than setting a proper z-drag, to recover a pinned boat in the "extreme" time of 15 minutes.
At least, we 've learned how to solve pinning problems, using the minimum of equipment... Very useful!
21th of March 2004. Fidakia!
After the public announcement of TV (Team Vagellistra), as a sub TEAMadara group and as such a team needs to be tested in action, Spyros, Mary and Alfredos, chose Fidakia river, to be the drop zone, this Sunday.
With fresh info from Haris Loukopoulos, having run the river the morning before, that the present flow situation is LOW and that our familiar Metavasi kayak school, would also run the river, everything just seemed great. In such a flow, it could not be harder than class III, there is back up, sunshine, Alex runs shuttle, Nikos will shoot some photos, we 'll skip the second part, ...what more?!
I'm sure that, TV boaters's running the first gorge, in the middle of Metavasi school's run, had nothing to do with students' disorientation and a few wounded victims...More photos and report to follow...
13-16.03.2004 A great trip to Karpenissi.
Sunny weather forecast, after a few days of snow, could only mean more water+sunshine=great opportunity to take a few days off to go paddling!br> Krikelopotamos and Karpenissiotis river offered us some good times and Velouhi ski resort gave us the perfect alternative to spend some time skiing, before heading back down to Mornos area, where with our friend Dimitris Thomopoulos, tackled the powerful upper Mornos.
Trip reports are to be posted soon...but here are a few photos for a start.
17.03.2004 Bad News! The beautiful Inahos gorge, with its radical whitewater, is history! The hydroelectric work is now operational. As you can see in the distant photo, water is coming out of the power station building. As the dam is constructed in the first part of the gorge, there isn't much left to paddle any more...
10.03.2004 A new page: River Data List. A useful page, where you can browse every river information available in this site.
07.03.2004 SMS weather forecast
National Observatory of Athens, offers a useful service. A mobile phone (SMS) 24h weather forecast, for many cities and destinations. Each destination is represented by its first four letters, that you should attach to your SMS. Visit NOA's website, for more details and to browse the list of 4-letter words.
07.03.2004 Dam works at Aliakmon river in progress!
Works for the construction of a very big dam, at the end of the second section of Aliakmon river, at St. Ilarionas monastery, have already begun.
The river is diverted through a concrete tunnel, downstream of the dam building site, at the end of the famous "red gorge" of Aliakmon. The whitewater section, a few kms upstream, with its five class IV-V rapids, will not be affected, until the end of the project, scheduled to be ready in 5 years, when they will all eventually drown.
On site scouting, for a possible take out, before the end of the gorge, is mandatory. Stopping before the diversion tunnel, is not that easy, due to steep slopes and earthworks in project.
That was the end of one favourite play spot, the take out hole
Technical data of the project
- for Archive News 1 - June-October 2003 go here
- for Archive news 2 - November-December 2003 go there
- for Archive news 3 - January February 2004 go there
- For Archive News 4: March - April 2004 go there
- For Archive News 5: May 2004 go there
- For fresh news, go there
- for Global news, go there
Archive News 4 (March -April 2004)
