Pyranha Van Tour 2014 – Sesia River Festival

Pyranha Team Van – On a mission in Italy

The Van arrived at the il Gatto e la Volpe campsite in Campertogno for the Valsesia River festival organized by Simon Westgarth’s Gene17 with support from Palm and Pyranha.

Valsesia is famous for some of the best steep, low volume creeking in the world, the quaint traditional mountain villages, pizza and ice cream. Water levels were low on arrival causing the team to head to the Ayasse in Aosta. The move, prompted by Jamie Wright was certainly the best one. The crew including Jamie, Tom Brown, Scotty Robinson and the team van made the most of the stunning Ayasse valley, paddling both the upper and lower sections. It was certainly an adrenaline pumped few days, not for the faint hearted. This all changed however following a heavy rainstorm bringing the rivers up to huge levels in Valsesia for the first day of the festival. This meant that whilst the classic steep runs were too high, the Sesia, which flows right past the campsite, was great fun. By the afternoon, the levels were beginning to return to normal so people headed up to the Gronda and Sorba slides for some sporty classic park and huck creeking.

Saturday brought us some sunshine to accompany the days racing. The racecourse was brought down stream a little to the sweet rumble site due to the high levels but even this was an exciting racecourse for the teams and individuals. The team race commenced first with teams of three sprinting down the section off the ramp having to hit the Pyranha Mk3 Burn hanging from the bridge. The Individual race was next and also had some very tight racing.

All of team Pyranha qualified, with David Bain taking the second spot in the individual. During breaks in the racing, spectators were challenged to carve the best ‘foamy’ burn 3 with all entrants to be judged by the crowd at the after race party and presentations.

The Sweet rumble was the spectator’s highlight of the festival. Four paddlers lined up on the start ramp for each heat with the first two competitors to touch the Burn hanging in the eddy going through to the next heat.

A crowd gathered along the roadside to watch the carnage below with commentary from Britain’s Matt Cooke and Italy’s Michele Ramazza. Team Pyranha’s Dave Brown was knocked out in the quarter final, whilst Barny Prees was knocked out in semi final. David Bain stole the show, storming through to win the competition. The team then headed for pizza to celebrate David’s 21^st birthday and then onwards to the festival party.

The next day a large crew headed to the picturesque Sermenza River to nurse sore heads from the night before. This was followed by a visit to the best ice cream shop in the area as recommended by Simon. He was right…

All too soon it was time to leave Italy so the lads packed up the van and said goodbye to Dave Brown who was headed home. All that was left was to get on the road to Slovenia but not before Barny and Dave had done another quick blast of the middle and lower Sermenza.

Pyranha Team Van – On a mission J

For more info, results, photros etc… go to http://gene17kayaking.com/kayaking-events/valsesia-river-festival/