Born in England,
Andy first began kayaking 20 years ago, and began paddling whitewater
about 16 years ago. By the age of 17, he was tackling class V whitewater
in England. At the age of 19 he began traveling and paddling internationally.
To date, he has kayaked throughout Europe, Nepal, Costa Rica, Ecuador,
New Zealand, Fiji, Mexico, Canada, Tibet, and the US (including
Alaska). He has completed 30 first descents (meaning the first to
ever paddle a section of river) in Ecuador, England, Tibet, New
Zealand, and the French Alps. He has competed in freestyle kayaking
and extreme down river racing for roughly 10 years. He was a member
of the British freestyle team in 1997-1998 and the British kayak
surfing champion in 1996.
In recent years, Andy has been pushing his skills by undertaking
several major kayak exploratory expeditions. In the Fall of 2005,
he joined a team of paddlers attempting the triple crown of North
America. Regarded as the Mount Everest of expedition kayaking, this
includes paddling the Alsek, Susitna, and Stikine Rivers. During
this expedition, the team paddled the multi-day Devils canyon of
the Susitna at the highest known flow that it had ever been attempted.
He followed this expedition with another major undertaking in Tibet
in 2006. During that trip, Andy and a group of international paddlers
explored the rivers of Tibet, completing numerous first descents.
One of those was the first descent of the Upper Bhote Kosi, a canyon
that had been explored for the past ten years and never run. The
team also paddled the Rong Bok river, beginning at 5200 meters at
the Everest base camp, making them the only team in the world to
have paddled from both the north and south sides of Everest. One
of the kayaks from their trip is on display in the LiquidLogic museum.
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