Over the past few weeks, New River Academy has experienced world renowned whitewater. We’ve also had a chance to go to school in a unique environment, where there are nearly the same number of teachers as there are students. Our daily schedule has finally been figured out, and we’re all falling into a routine, at least as much of a routine as you can get in a traveling high school.

Our typical day starts with a 6:50 wakeup call. From there, two of us go to the kitchen and start cooking up breakfast while the rest of the group does our morning workout. At 7:30am we all gather in the kitchen and partake in our classmates creations, on which we vote at the end of the week. Our first class period starts at 8:00, so we all head off to class. We have four classes until the lunch bell rings at 12:40. At that time the cook crew will have a wonderful lunch prepared for us. After our 45 minute lunch period, we have two more classes. When the school day ends at 3:45, we scramble about the base camp, cleaning the buildings before we go out on the water. Once the cleaning is over, we get a short coaching session from our very own Tino Specht, a professional whitewater paddler. Once the coaching is over, we gear up and bomb it down to the river, and paddle the 500 feet to the play waves of McCoy’s. We get off the water at 6:30, change clothes, and head off down the road to Wilderness Tours, where we eat dinner. Following dinner is study hall, a one hour period of time to finish up any homework, and study for any classes we need to. Our day ends with an hour of free time to unwind and have fun.

The paddling around our home base is phenomenal, with world renowned surf waves in our back yard, literally. When we get on the river after school, we have a 2 minute paddle from the shore where we put in to McCoy’s, a rapid with two amazing surf waves, both ideal for practicing rodeo moves. A 10 minute paddle downstream lands us on Garberator, an exciting rapid with a small drop to run, an incredible surf wave, and a small play hole that is a blast to surf. An alternative route down the river brings us to the Dragons Tongue, a mind boggling drop down a granite slab, which we didn’t get a chance to run because of the water level. Safe to say, this river is one of the best rivers in the world for practicing moves, building confidence in your boating, and, of course, having fun.

Tags: Academic Report, Canada, Kayak School, update

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 9:29 pm and is filed under Academics, Intructional, Kayak School, Kayaking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.