T’ville Triple Crown Re-cap- Haley Mills

IR Team Member Haley Mills has started the New England season off with a bang- Already getting after it in the slalom boat, and getting some good play in!

Here is what she’s been up to:

Last weekend was the T-Ville Triple Crown Event, which takes place on the Farmington River in Tariffville Gorge, CT. It challenges paddlers in three whitewater disciplines – wild water racing, slalom, and freestyle (for more info, click here).  This event was really hard, to be honest.  We started the days at 8 am-getting ready for the downriver sprint which took about 4-5min depending on how fast you can paddle and how fast the boat is.  Most of the boats that were used for the first event were wildwater boats, I personally used a fast slalom boat, since I didn’t have much experience in a wildwater boat.  Then on to slalom which is not really my cup of tea, but I love it- I just need more practice. With a long hard course of 23 gates and 2 timed runs. Multiple boats had been broken throughout the course in the first day, so everyone was sharing boats and cheering each other on, it was pretty cool!  Then finally the final stage of the competition, my favorite, freestyle.  By the time that event came around, everyones energy was pretty much toast, but we rallied on to put on a great show with 2 rides to simi-finals and 3 rides during finals, the best of the 3 was your ride.   I got 2nd in the freestyle, which is one of the point series comps, so far I am the second placed female on the US!!!!  Then on Sunday we did all the events over to get the Triple crown champ -over all I placed 4th- not bad!

Somewhere in between road trips, we managed to catch Scudders Wave at a primo level for a little play- ranging from 17,000 on up to my favorite 23,000 cfs on the Delaware River in NJ.  We spent 4 days there, and had a really good time.  Enjoy the photos!

Haley Mills