Alpenglow Is the premier paddle sports shop serving Boise, and all of Idaho with the best sales, service, and demos of rafts, kayaks, technical clothing and footwear.
Chuck's new Villain was the showcase piece of the Jackson Kayak booth at the Outddor Retailer show at the Salt Palace convention Center last week! Jackson built the boat to show off the new graphic possibilities for 2011. When it was built, EJ and the staff thought it was so cool, that they put it on a stand in the middle of their booth.
When I saw it there, I was psyched! It also has the Alpenglow Logo on the bottom of it. I know that I'm not a good enough boater to show off, but it's good to know that anyone will be able to order the boat of their dreams next year. I'm going paddling on the South fork or Canyon to break it in tomorrow. When you come in, check it out.
On another note, the new Hero Prototype looked really good. Making changes similar to the Funs' and Stars', it is shorter but faster, it will surface on drops quicker, be even easier to roll and be more comfortable.
Jackson Kayak is a great company to partner with. They are still family owned, have great employees, they are putting a ton of time and effort in to R & D, which is really paying off, and most importantly, are striving to make the sport of kayaking better by putting the customer first.
Mike gave a great review of the large Villain loaded on a multi-day South Fork Salmon trip in Idaho. Check it out. Paddles great with or without extra gear!
Villain Review by Mike Moser
I was able to take the Villain down the SF Salmon for a multi-day trip this last weekend. In my original plans, I was always going to take the Super Hero, my current creek boat. Chuck Cremer called me up and told me that he got the large version in and I should come by and take a look. I stopped byAlpenglow on my way home from work the next day and got very excited about how it looked. I was anxious to try it out on the water, so I called him up and asked if I could take it out that weekend for my multi-day. He was kind enough to say yes.
First let me say that this boat has a ton of room in the back for all my gear. Usually I like to pack my weight all around me and I was actually able to fit a couple more dry bags right behind my seat than I usually can. My float/dry bags that I put into the stern of the boat fit in really easy without any hard pushing. There was plenty of room up front too, but you have to either unscrew the foot pegs or put small enough items in around them. Someone told me that Jackson had put a different type of foot pegs in the Mega Rocker which enables you to flip them up to put items in. I wish they had those in this boat. As much as I wish they had those, it still wasn’t too bad.
When first starting out with this boat, I felt a bit shaky. I was used to the flat hull like the Super Hero has and not a semi-displacement. I was also concerned a bit about how long the nose was. Once I started paddling it down some of the first rapids, the shakiness and the concern for the long nose quickly disappeared. The tracking on this boat is amazing, I would point it where I wanted it to go and it would go there without much need to paddle. It crossed lines with authority and gave me confidence that I had wished that the Super Hero had given me.
This boat was super fast at making moves. There were multiple times where I was above a huge hole and easily made the move around it at the last minute. When I did have to run them, the boat was able to fly through them without much effort. I found that it somewhat auto-boofed across the holes when I wasn’t trying.
On the paddle out on the Main Salmon, I was able to catch quite a few big, green waves. The thing caught waves that I thought for sure that I was going to miss. It was so fast that I found it accelerating down the waves. The boat handles well too. It was easy to surf it from edge to edge and stay on a good wave for a long time.
The other thing I liked about this boat was the secondary stability. I found that I could put it almost completely on its side and not have to brace at all. That helped me too when I was shaky in the beginning, because I didn’t know how to use the boat in then and it helped to keep me upright. Speaking of upright, I didn’t roll the whole trip, so I finally gave it a try down on the Main Salmon. It rolled like my old Huka, which rolls extremely easy.
Overall, this boat impressed me. I am still going to give it another demo on the Upper and Middle of the North Fork Payette to see how it handles up there, but I think it will do better than I could ever expect. I am extremely stoked about this boat and look forward to paddling it again soon.
Read this review that was sent in by Steve. After demoing, he promptly bought the Pure...
'Chuck,
Here are my thoughts on the Prijon Pure:
It's nice to see finally Prijon has a modern style creek boat, the Pure. What a thing of beauty, a boat with modern creeking lines, Prijon’s HPT blow-molded plastic, and no pillars for lots of storage on self-support trips!
I got to paddle a Prijon Pure creek boat the other day (3/26) on the NF of the Payette. We ran the Lower 5 miles plus the 3 Jaws rapids (is that a Lower 6.5?) at low water, around ~350 CFS. That’s probably a pretty good test for low water Idaho creeking. The Pure is quick and forgiving with edges that let you slide over rocks and don’t trip you up. It’s easy to boof and made of bomber plastic. Prijon’s plastic also seems to slide over rocks more easily than others, I don’t know why this is but that’s just how it feels. Also cool is the outfitting; the thigh braces are improved over past Prijons I’ve paddled and the foot brace system is solid and works well (in 4 years of paddling a Prijon Hercules with the same style foot brace system I haven’t have any issues with it) – the outfitting is simple and solid. The foot brace is easily removed allowing you to store gear in the bow as well.
If you compare the Pure with other modern creek boats I think you’ll see it has a lot to offer and you get great plastic (don’t take my word for it, do some research) and lots of storage space.
