Texolo with the Crew

We drove a few hours over the almost 10,000 foot pass to Xalapa V.C. and met up with LJ and Todd who had been hanging out for a few waiting to hop on the Suburban train. Charlie caught a taxi from Vera Cruz the city and got to our hostel at midnight, the scene was set for a huckfest. 9 kayakers putting on the Texolo is kind of a scary thought but everyone was solid and I had the lines imprinted in my head from the year before. I lead and we mad bombed through tons of fun class IV rapids with sick scenery, because everyone know it's all about the scenery, Then we arrived at the box canyon and a huge horizon line.

Brooks Baldwin Running the mandatory 40-50 foot falls half way through the run.

Lj on the same drop giving the water his paddle.

After everyone bombed off the waterfall blind we regrouped with one broken paddle by Todd, got the breakdown out, and continued down stream. The next part of the canyon contains most of the steep rapids of the run. There is a sick set of boofs and a rock duck, a portage around a nasty hole, and then Jorge's rapid. We all portaged the rapid knowing what kind of cave is below the walls and to show our respect for a good friend we lost almost a year ago. There is now a memorial at the rapid with his name. Once we made it around that drop. The perfect drop came next.

This is a shot of me from last year on the perfect drop. I love it!!

This year was the same incredible for most, but if you miss your boof you plug the hell out of it and go deep. Brooks plugged and lost his paddle swimming against the wall at the bottom. Ian plugged and broke his paddle. Ok now a little boggie to the big drop.

Tyler scouting the beast from the top. I can't show any of the picture of him running it yet because magazines are interested in buying them from my brother. So they will come later.

Tyler Bradt had been talking about this waterfall since the last time he did this run over two years ago. We all arrived to the beast and scouted for awhile. It didn't take long before most of us were out and Tyler was fired up on running it. The waterfall is arouind 90 to 100 feet in hight with a truly tricky, misleading enterance. T-Bradt did a rough measerment with his 87 foot throw bag that didn't touch the pool and was not level with the lip. Huge but no one know the exact hight. We all got the video set up and saftey ready for him as he waited calmey.

Once we were all in place he came, greased the enterance and flew off the lip. I mean came mocking off a 100 footer. Kept it in control, tucked 20 feet from the pool and stomped it. His deck imploded and he lost his paddle but he rolled up high on life. It was the single burlyest, biggest, and sickest thing I have evr seen run. After some celebration we had to do the hike out of the canyon. 2km up a massive hill out of the canyon.

It hurt but everyone made it and we ate taco's at the top. Ahhh!!! got to love Mexico. The crew split Raffa, Rush, and Brooks headed to Mexico city for a TV mission and we hung out in Xico a beautiful city in the mountains ready for the next creek. Later E.G.