Sjoa River Festival 2011

It is already more than 3 weeks since Sjoa river festival has happen, so I think the time to write an article about it has come. I was in Dagali only for ten days when I took my first holidays, luckily Serious Fun hasn't been short of guides so it was all fine. Vojta and me packed his silver "Giovanni" and hit the road in the direction of Otta. We didn't miss a single Statoil petrol station on the way there, as we were enjoying the FREE coffee as much as we could.   

We have arrived to Sjoa on Tuesday evening, got the registration and headed down to the unofficial campsite by the Lagen. Well, as usually, it was packed with those that didn't want to pay for camping - that means with Czech and Slovak kayakers. We set of a nice welcome party but went to bed quite early.

photo by Matej Fabianek

There was a Freestyle jam session hold on the Jolgen wave on Wednesday, I have to admit surfing the wave is way more fun than riding the holes. Even thou I still can't stick a solid there I really enjoy the whole session. The qualification for Ula Extreme race and Sweet Rumble took its place on Thursday. As there only 6 girls competing, it wasn't hard to get through, because everyone made it. It was different in men's category. The cut down the number of them from 80 to 40, and it was more than tough to get through. Luckily all Czechs and Slovakians made it through.

Sweet Rumble at Amot

When we have arrived to Ula I was nervous like a kid on its first day at school. I once walked around that river 2 years ago, when Jakub and Lenka went down. Now I knew I want to paddle it. Still not decided if I'm going to compete in the race I went down with the boys. It felt great, little slides, few drops, just fine. Once we got to the big slide heart was probably beating 150 beats per minute! But it was time to go down. I took a deep breath and went for my first ride down the slide. It went nice and smooth and by the time I got down to the waterfall my Ego was so big we hardly fit both in the boat... I didn't hit a perfect line on the waterfall, landed in the right place but didn't lean forward enough. By that time I didn't know it's gonna be my best line on this drop.  I manage to hit faster lines in the completion and ended up 4th ( Lenka Borovickova, also from Czech, ended up 2nd) . The men's category was won by the Czech paddler Honza Lasko.

Waterfall at the end of the race course, photo by Matej Fabianek

We stayed few more days around Sjoa and paddled also other sections and Lagen. Unfortunately I got tendonitis in my right wrist and couldn't paddle since Saturday, even thou we had a great time, good parties and I can tick two more rivers and one section of my wish list. See you next year at Sjoa River Festival 2012.


Here is movie made by Gene 17: