(Trumpets play fanfare)

Well its been along time in coming but here it is finally the new and improved (we hope) rainchasers. As should be obvious on the face of it we have given the site a revamp in terms of layout and design. All content menus are now accessed from the top menu bar giving us a bit more screen real estate to display other items. Under the hood there is a new server which we hope will alleviate the extremely slow load times that the previous server dragged us down to.

New features include a new photo gallery and video gallery . We are very excited with the new video component as it is now possible for any registered member to add a video that they have seen on one of the major video sharing sites such as youtube, myspace google video etc.. In all we can display videos from over 35 of these sites as well as being able to display users videos uploaded to our own server, you can rate them and even comment on them. Speaking of comments users now have the ability to comment on any of the articles and blogs by simply clicking the add comment link at the bottom of each article, don't agree with one of Neds rants ? well now you can say so and let everyone know your opinion.

The whatsup? menu should be your first port of call to find out what's going on with regards to river levels, tides and surf, river releases as well as links to the weather, this page now shows a seven day forecast for the Tees barrage as well.

The blogs sections have proven really popular this year, as has been mentioned before the focus of rainchasers will always be to keep it a community based site so if you would like to get involved with a blog of your own or just adding the occasional news article let us know.

We have spent a lot of time testing the new site but would love your feedback and also to know if any bugs appear.

Enjoy :-)

Today's theme is accessible, multiday mid grade classics. Im tired, and I just want cruisy after a heavy session at the weekend so cant face hucking waterfalls today. That has turned out top be harder than finding decent links to the scary stuff though

The grand canyon has got to go on the list. The whitewater is not the best but everyone seems to rave about it for some reason. It must be the steaks! here is lava falls, one of the two harder rapids sneak or portagable so counts in the 'mid grade' category as most of it is flat. One day ....

Sticking in the states the Middle Fork Salmon is reputed to be better kayaking trips than the grand, with 96 miles of crystal clear, warm class 3/4 water that flows all the way.

Nepal as well has loads of mid grade runs. Here is some nice retro action of someone winding up for about 100 meters in a 4m glass boat to hit and surf a big hole on the Sun kosi. Of course he could have gone round it, but then he would have faded into the oblivion of history. Fancy this line down one of the other big ones - harkapur?

All of the above are accessible by credit card if you fancy a change from the Alps this summer!

Been trawling the web found another race. Liquidlife is based on the Tummel at pitlochry just off the A9 in Scotland, I went a few years ago a very fun race check here if you fancy it. It is on May bank holiday the 24th I think!

For further events check out the playak calender seems to have most events on it.