Robert Payne

American + Whitewater: What is there not to love? I am proud to say that I have been a member of American Whitewater (AW) for almost 15 years. Even when I was in college, waiting tables and taking student loans, I found a way to mail my membership check. I don’t share this to convey [...]

Spring in Lake Tahoe is one of my favorite seasons. Snow still blankets the mountains of the Sierras, and the lower elevation rivers rise as the days grow longer and warmer. It is this time of year that I find myself having to make the difficult decision of skiing vs kayaking. As I prepare for [...]

Despite all of my comings and goings, one particular pastime I am quite fond of are the slow Sunday mornings where I sit about the house and catch up on magazines and my favorite bloggers. It is inevitably and ironically fueled by an excessive amount of coffee, and an equally heart-wrenching amount of high-cholesterol food – yummm yummm [...]

This is some footage from this past summer that I had sitting around, and being the type of person that does not like to waste anything, I decided to slap together a quick video. The main point to it is - the video is of a friend of mine, Brad Brewer, who I met in college at Clemson [...]

5 swims and fun had by all. At least no one vomited from exhaustion like the guy who just beat me by a few seconds the last time I raced. While I didn’t get a chance to shoot video this time around, you can check out some Cherry Creek action from this video I put together [...]

For the week of July 4th I found myself at the bottom of a river canyon with no cell phone reception, no Internet connection, and nothing to do but kayak and kick it with a dozen friends who were all there to do two things - paddle Cherry Creek and forget what we do on a [...]

Until today, it had been quite a while since I made the journey down to Coloma to paddle the South Fork of the American. When I first moved to Lake Tahoe almost 10 years ago I used to go there all the time. But gas prices kept rising and my motivation kept waning. Plus, the [...]

Yesterday, I found myself dropping-in to South Silver Creek with some friends from Reno, Nevada. Here is a little video I put together of what we found downstream.

Situated at the base of the Sierra Buttes and in close proximity to Sierra City, California, the Wild Plum section of the North Fork of the Yuba is a wonderfully consistent class IV run. Roughly eleven miles in length, this section can actually be combined with Moss and Rosasco Canyons to make it even longer. However, I suspect [...]