Markus Leppaenen Rides The Slave River

SAN DIEGO, California - Every so often a picture winds up in front of us that leaves the Supconnect team scratching their heads, itching to know more. That's what happened with the image above, submitted by Markus Leppaenen.  

River surfing is on the rise. We recent published a story about Alex Mauer's upcoming World Record attempt, which shows the potential waiting to be tapped. When we say Markus's shot on our social stream, we immediately contacted him and asked where, when and how it was taken.   

Words by Markus Leppaenen

"We, that is my girflriend and me were on a one year trip around North-America for kayaking and climbing. And during that time we stayed 2 month with friends at the Slave River. During that stay I had my first tries on a SUP - just a few days before this picture was taken. The Slave River has a Rapid called the Playground, an easy Class 2 whitewater. We had so much fun there, we decided to take the Stand Up Paddle board to a more difficult rapid, the 'Molly`s Nipple-Rapid', a Class 4. If you hit the right spot in the rapid, it's amazing, but there are class V consequences if you miss - you end in a massive hole."

"The right line has a small tongue through the big hole. The tongue is around 3 meters high and really steep at the end and at most times also breaks. This break at the top took my board and I went quite deep for a few seconds, but the swim was actually better than expected."

Markus also recently contributed towards a very cool Supconnect article on paddling the Grand Canyon, a trip he took in connection with his NPO, Time4Charity.com.

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