River School

Happy New Year! The greatest season of the year is upon us! On Monday January 4^th 6:00pm we will have our Cheat Training registration live! In 2020 Covid forced us to make changes to the program  and some of those changes have carried over into 2021. Our goal with these changes is that we will stay Covid compliant given the regulations we had to adhere to last spring. Please read thoroughly so that you understand fully what we will be doing this year.

When it is cold and snow is blowing up your eyelids in the Cheat Canyon please follow this outline.

Guide to Perpetual stoke:

1. Be Stoked
2. Be Stoked because you are stoked in an endless feedback cycle.
3. Realize that you control how much stoke you derive from any external input, so get really stoked in the future.
4. Get stoked knowing you’ll be stoked in the future.
5. In a situation where it is hard to be stoked, realize that even if you’re just a little bit stoked it merits being more stoked incrementally until you are at full stoke.

We will be offering Cheat regular Monday, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, each night will have a limit of 20 participants. Cheat Lite and Cheat Elite will be Thursdays. When you sign up you will register for those specific weekdays and we ask that you stick to that day so that we can keep numbers at 15 or 20. For March, we will be staggering the start times for Saturday trainings so that we can also keep large group numbers down. We will send out a sign-up system for this at the end of January so that you can reserve your start time. This will also give us some flexibility to change locations to other great local training grounds such as the GW Canal/ Seneca Breaks, Shenandoah, and others.

The biggest change this year will be to the April Saturday and Sunday (for Cheat Lite) sessions. We will now be holding local sessions on Saturdays (and Sundays for Cheat Lite) in April as well as Cheat Trips. We don’t want anyone to not sign up due being comfortable traveling out of state. We also don’t want to force our germs on the small town of Albright in large numbers. Registration for Cheat Trips will be on the same registration system. We still believe that the best way to get ready for the race is to go to the Cheat every weekend, but we also understand that making that trip every weekend in April is hard and for some who have done this a number of years unnecessary. Training is also 2 weeks longer this year due to the way that the date for the Cheat Race is. So, we will have one more weekend at the Cheat or a different section for cheat lite.

Also, starting this year, we are going to have a separate sign up for all the trips associated with the trainings that we run. We have found that instructors and students sometimes feel pressure to take someone down a run that they worked so hard to get to even though they might not be ready because they paid for the training and the trip was included in the price. Now, once you qualify for the river that you are training for you will be able to register for that trip and if you are not ready for the trip then you still got the workouts and skills, but didn’t spend money for something you didn’t receive. Prices for the trips will be extremely pro-rated for those that are doing the trainings. This extra charge for the trip also help us cover the extra costs that go with running these trips.

For Cheat Elite this year sign up for a weeknight of regular cheat training and then email us at riverschool@calleva.org to apply to get into Cheat Elite. We will let you know if you got in, there will be 15 spots in this class.

Cheat Lite is always a very popular program and there will be 15 spots open for sign ups then you will go to a wait list. This year we have decided in order to be fair we will be asking folks to not sign up for Cheat lite and Cheat Regular, if you would like extra training then you can sign up for two Cheat Regular weeknights. Also, if we believe that you have out grown lite then we will encourage you to step it up and move onto Cheat Regular. Lite is meant to be a program where new people come into learn attaining fundementals, paddling efficiently, and effectively. If the long boat is the issue then let us know we can help you out.

Credit from 2020: When you sign up for your program enter you name lower case and no spaces and the amount you have in credit will automatically come off. If for some reason this doesn’t work for you, then sign up anyways, so you don’t lose your spot, and email us afterwards with the problem.

Cocktail party 2020 style: When you receive your email of confirmation of your registration you will receive a link to a Zoom call. I am hoping that we can all get a call to celebrate those getting in. A zoom call with this many people can get a little wild, but let’s give it a shot!

Thank you all for support Calleva in the past year, it has been a hard year and we appreciate all of you!

-Everyone at Calleva’s River School

It would go down as an epic trip in Valles.

How can one begin the day by disappearing behind an 80 ft. high curtain of falling water, and then a little later drop over an unsee-able ledge, hoping only that you choose the right spot to land on the water disappearing below?

The next day you get to scout a rapid with a hole called NEMO, and if you miss boofing off the edge of that hole you get forcibly back-endered and shoved momentarily underwater. And then you get to fly high off ILLUMINOSO, a 24 ft. falls, landing into the boiling, churning chaos of water if you miss your aim even by just a little bit.

Another day, you spend your entire time on the totally untrammelled GALLINAS river, with nothing around but mountains and no end to curves and drops until a misty cloud warns you to take out before the 300 ft. TAMUL Falls, where the river dumps into the difficult and committing SANTA MARIA. 

Combine the MICOS, EL SALTO and GALLINAS rivers with the OJO FRIO, a technical, low volume run located in a ravine, deep between sweet smelling sugar cane fields, and you will be hooked with the beauty and style of the rivers of Ciudad Valles in northern Mexico.

For some, rivers full with ledge boofs and waterfalls are all they could want in a paddling trip. For others, the idea of a trip down the infamous SANTA MARIA, a river that almost ended Steveo’s kayaking career before it started, was too good to pass up. Tom took a select crew through the canyon of the SANTA MARIA, stopping often to scout and portage during the 15 mile run. Those who paddled the SANTA MARIA arrived to Tamul falls just before dark, and were happy to have their boats carried up 300 feet of stairs by the more rested faction of the group, who had been on the GALLINAS again.

Our group was all well experienced and self-sufficient. We the leaders had only to point out the best lines, and show the best way to get air-born when it was needed. Every evening we stayed at Aldea Huasteca, an eco-hostel located at the takeout of the Micos, with as much delicious Mexican food to eat as you could consume. Most of us slept in a single big cabin, except for a few who braved local stories of seeing Jaguars drink from the river to hang a hammock outside. 

It was not easy seeing the week come to an end. Our group was a collection of friends and outdoor enthusiasts from the western United States and Canada, and it was a blast getting to know them all.

For now all there is to do is wait for the next trip to Valles….

~ Tom McEwan – Calleva’s Liquid Adventures

Find Out More About Our Mexico Trips

I arrived to Aventurec late Friday night with a crew of hard charging boys from D.C. and Texas. We were ready to send some of the best whitewater in the Americas. Saturday started off with the 12^th Alseseca Race. The race was full of good lines, competitive spirits, and ended with a beautiful ceremony in the Centro of Tlapacoyan, my Mexico home. When I went to bed Saturday night I was not expecting to participate in what would be called Sendy Sunday. 

The day started out taking the Markoff family down my favorite section of river known as the Big Banana. I have been wanting to get these crew there since I had first ran it, and was stoked it was finally happening. 

It starts off with a 20-minute carry down a steep “road” and through a cow field with some big bulls. The cow field leads to the first rapid which happens to be a 50-foot waterfall named Silencio (The Silence). It’s a pretty big way to start the day. I explained how to run this beast, what not to do, and the hazards it presents. Two days before Sendy Sunday, a guy broke his back at the very same waterfall, so we were mindful of safety as we were looking at it. There is also a cave on the right side of the landing that you don’t want to go into. (Trust me. I’ve explored it.) 

After explaining everything that can go wrong, I looked at the group and said, “But the feeling at the bottom is sooo good! It’s true that it’s an amazing feeling, but it will always be here so don’t rush it if you’re not confident in your line.” 

In the end, four of us ran Silencio and two jumped off the cliff. We ran the rest of the river together, including a few giant waterfalls (20+ feet), a 30-foot double drop, and lots of class 4 stuff in between. 

After we got off that section and celebrated the Calleva crew that had just rallied down the Roadside section, we went to look at another drop called Side Chick.

I had gone to scout it once, and felt like it wasn’t for me, but today I wanted to take a second look. I hopped in the van and rode with them to Side Chick, where five of us got geared up. As we walked another 20 minutes through a banana and coffee plantation, we could hear the thundering of the drop. A few of us hadn’t committed to run it, but we wanted our boats there just in case. We took some time to scout, going through the risks.

First, water bouncing off the left wall at the entrance, and most of the water was hitting the right wall about half way down. None of us were actually able to see the bottom of the waterfall, but we estimated that it was about 35-40 feet (it was actually 55-65). We also didn’t know how to get out of the canyon after we ran the drop, so I scouted that and thought I saw a way out.
None of us had run it before so we didn’t know exactly how awesome the reward at the bottom was going to be. Bobby ran it first, awesome line, helmet got blown off, but I saw how stoked he was at the bottom and knew that there was gold down there. I went next. Beautiful line, soft hit, landed upright, and exploded with stoke. I mean it was such an amazing feeling to fall off a cliff, hit the water at the bottom, and see my buddy there cheering as loud as I was. Johnny and Adam were next, and the more people we had at the bottom the more stoke there was. The celebrating continued even though the way out of the canyon was actually a 20-foot climb out on slippery rocks in the rain, that required us to be belayed.

In life there are times when you have to look at something and decide for yourself, asking what is the line, what are the hazards, what are the rewards, and am I willing to accept the risks because the reward is greater. On Sendy Sunday there were a lot of us that looked at these two drops, talked what could go wrong, and talked on how we would feel at the bottom. Not all of us accepted that the reward was greater than the risk. And in the end, that’s fine.

I have just as much respect – sometimes even more – for those of us that decide not to run a rapid than for those that do. It’s for different reasons too. Maybe your head wasn’t in the right place, or you don’t have the skills, or you just aren’t into that type of rapid. At Calleva we try to encourage our students to take a good hard look and decide for themselves if they are ready for what they are about to take on. It is a very empowering question to ask yourself, and whatever the answer is, it’s your answer, your decision. 

~ Steveo – Director of Calleva’s Liquid Adventures

Learn More About Our Mexico Kayaking Trips