Monday, August 25

Last chance to ride!

This is an update to everyone to let you know to come to Basecamp and ride while you still can. We all know the summer is coming to a close (which sucks), but its the truth. So why not get as many slider lake sessions as possible. It only makes sense. You can even go out behind our Nautiques for a boat set if you would like to. And for all of you planning to compete in our slider contest, its a perfect opportunity to get in some practice time, to get ahead of the competition. So for those of you that still want to shred, now is the perfect time! so contact us and set up a time to come and ride!

Monday, August 18

Slide Her till She Freezes Over!


So the time is upon us where we start to announce our year end contest here at Basecamp. It is a slider contest where teams of three, minimum 1 wakeskater. It is taking place on Saturday August 30th (not the 31st like the poster says). The winning team will take home a sweet cash prize! There will also be a best dressed team award for another prize. Since it is a costume event, the winning team will have to go all out. It is panning out to be an action packed day, especially with the Duke -a- Palooza at the end of the day. It is going to be the biggest party known to basecamp, since it will be the last. The party is a 19+ event, but the slider contest is all ages. So hopefully you guys come out looking your best in your costumes, ready to shred!

Thursday, August 14

Sattelyte Week Update

So we are slowly coming to the end of our Sattelyte week here at basecamp, it has been awesome. A little example is in the photo above, it shows Austin Farr killing it. Overall the week has been sweet, the campers are super cool, and have been ripping up the water. The weather has been consistently warm, and sunny; a few cloudy days. Some of the Sattelyte team even showed up for a day to teach and show off a little. Nic Harlos was shredding the wallride. getting all the way up to the top and spinning off. So it was a pretty successful week and its not even done! So thanks goes out to Sattelyte wakeskates for the support, and everything. 

Monday, August 11

Billabong Sisterhood Session # 2 was a hit!



Hey there just wanted to let everybody know that the second Billabong sisterhood session was successful and the participants killed it. It was a significantly smaller group than the last sisterhood session, but still just as fun. Also this past weekend a group of Boathouse sales associates stayed in the Roxy cabin. They were the contest winners; the prize went to the person with the highest sales. They were all girls, ranging in age, that came from all over the GTA and surrounding areas. The weather was not the best on saturday, but we stayed in and watched movies. It turned out to be a great time and weekend overall. So thanks to everyone that came out. Hopefully we see you again soon.

Thursday, August 7

Drew Kennedy Champion of the World (aka the province of Ontario)


So basically the story is Drew Kennedy one of our beloved instructors here at Basecamp is the current champion for Ontario wakeboarding. The Ontario Provincials took place in Bala last weekend. Drew killed it with a huge run even capping it off with a 7 at the end of the run. He had just recently landed his first 7 a couple weeks ago, and decided to throw one into his run. It was the perfect place to land his second 7. He was stoked, we were stoked, everybody was stoked! For coming in first he took home a new Gator rope, a Phase 5 wakesurf, and 250 bucks. So pretty much Drew is the man and will be back next year to defend his title as the best in the world... sorry i meant Ontario. Still good!

Wednesday, August 6

Billabong Sisterhood Session # 2 this weekend



The First weekend was epic, and everybody had the time of their lives. The second can only be better or equally as good which is still good. I am of course talking about the Billabong sisterhood sessions! All girls weekend full of wakeboarding, wakesurfing, activities, and FUN! Why be stuck in the city or your hometown when you could be tearing up the water with some of the best girl coaches out there. Some of the girls from last session loved it so much they had to sign up again. Its the perfect thing to do before there is no time left in the summer. Not that anyone wants to hear that the summer is coming to a close. But its the truth and people need to come to Basecamp before its too late. Its well worth it trust me. So contact us as soon as possible because the session starts on the 9th and it is filling up.

Tuesday, July 29

Wakestock weekend and Nike 6.0 team killing the wallride





So it was a long journey all the way down to toronto island to attend Wakestock. The riding was awesome, the weather was awesome (for the most part), and finally the parties were awesome. Basecamp had a booth set up; even though it was in the back corner. There was an incident involving a huge strom, a lighting bolt and two people in our tent. They are both fine, just a little shaken up. If you look at the photo of the tree, you will see what effect the lightning had on the tree and you may notice how close the basecamp tent was to it. Just a thought for all of you... water, metal and lightning dont mix.
After the hectic weekend, we retreated back to basecamp where we were to meet with the Nike 6.0 team so shred the wallride and everything else in the the slider lake. The team killed it on wakeskate and wakeboard, new tricks were getting thrown down every other hit. The photos and story will be around so keep checking back here to find out where you can read about the trip.

Wednesday, July 16

Disaster DIY at Basecamp!



So this is the first post in a while considering we crashed the internet here at basecamp. Its bound to happen when there are around 9 computers using the internet at the same time. So what can you do? But currently we are in the middle of Roxy week. There are 18 girls here already tearing up the water. And alos to add to the excitement the crew from HGTV's Disaster DIY is here ready to renovate the staff porch. From ugly to ultra-Luxurious. It will be completed in about a week; and should be amazing when completed. It is going to be alot of work. But its worth it. Also its funny looking at adam and scott in tons of make-up. 

Monday, July 7

Week 2- Nike 6.0 Killing it kid of the week



So last week, also known as week 2 here at Basecamp, we had an awesome week. The campers were awesome and everyone had a great time. We had 7 campers, all of them were tons of fun to hang out and ride with. Hopefully all of them are able to come back next summer, i know one of them is coming back for another week later in the summer. Probably a good idea, because you can never have to much Basecamp. The Nike 6.0 "killing it kid of the week" goes out to Pierce Colley, he was super close to getting toeside frontrolls, with only trying it for a week. Pretty impressive. So for that he got a brand new pair of Nike 6.0 shoes. So congrats goes out to him and everyone else that killed it this week.

Friday, July 4

Filming for SBC trick tips



So these amazing photos that you see of people/dragons dancing come from the latest filming session for the SBC wakeboard trick tips brought to you by Basecamp. What you see here is the instructors of Base camp giving it their all for the camera. The intro is is simply amazing, and can be seen on www.sbcwakeboard.com shortly. We will be doing a new trick every week, for the rest of the summer basically. Also the second week of camp is coming to an end today. It has been a great week, water quite choppy at times, but everyone had tons of fun anyways. They were a great bunch of kids and we hope they had a great time here at Basecamp. So everyone check out www.sbcwakeboard.com for the trick tips and hopefully everyone can make it up to Basecamp this summer!

Monday, June 30

Week 1- Nike 6.0 killing kid of the week


So this past week was the first week of the summer, and the start of Basecamp. We had 13 campers, and they all had an awesome time. There were lots of  bails, and many new tricks learned. By the end of the week everyone was healthy and loving life. These campers were also the first to hit our brand new Nike 6.0 wallride. It was finished on Wednesday, so the campers had two days to perfect their skills, to be ready for the best trick contest. The prize was a brand new pair of Nike 6.0 shoes. The shoes were won by Jordan Long (bottom photo) by doing a switch 270 on, backlip the top, and 270 out. The Nike 6.0 killing it kid of the week goes out to Chris Sinkic (top photo), he was killing it all week long, stomping brand new tricks everywhere. So for that he received a pair of Nike 6.0 shoes. The photos and names will soon be updated on the Basecamp website. So go check that out soon. So congrats goes out to those guys. If you try hard enough maybe one day you can also become the Nike 6.0 killing it kid of the week!

Thursday, June 26

Nike 6.0 wallride Installed




So it took about a week to complete but she is finally installed into our slider lake. The new Nike 6.0 wallride is ready to be shredded by the best, and also those just starting to hit sliders. Nike has yet to brand it out with their logos and designs. Soon enough they will send their artists up here, and will begin to make it look amazing. You may have noticed the windows in the side of it... they are there because soon we will add some brand new Nike shoes in there, all lit up and have a very epic nighttime photoshoot. There is so much potential for this obstacle. The photos above may not be the best quality because the session was so late in the day. But it shows the magnitude of the wallride and how awesome it is! 
So to hit this amazing new addition of the slider park, you must come to the best wakeboard facility around... Basecamp! 

Tuesday, June 24

Wallride Almost Finished!




We have been steadily working on this wallride for a solid week, and now we are so close to finish we can taste victory. At 32 feet in length and 12 feet high, it is a massive structure, that will be ready to ride in few more hours of work. All that needs to be done is screw the plastic top sheet to the plywood. As we speak Mr. Scott Duke is in Toronto picking up the plastic. Hopefully he can fit all of it into the not so big ford ranger, so we don't have to make two trips. Once we receive this shipment, we should be on our way to finishing the wallride. Then the only thing that needs to be done is let the Nike 6.0 artists go wild. They are going to brand it out in their own creative style. Well that was just a little update on our progress so far with the wallride. It will hopefully be ready to ride sometime this week. Should be tons of fun!

Friday, June 20

Camp starting to come together.




So with only a few days left before the first campers arrive, we are desperately running around trying to fix everything possible. Everything that we set out to do is almost done. Just a few things left to do; such as building the new Nike 6.0 wallride, and completing the bike trail, getting the trampolines together and fixing our hot tub. Slowly but surely these things will be completed. The Nike wallride is in the process of being constructed, the base has been laid out; we just need to make the top part, should be done in the next week. The wallride will be 32 feet long, 10 feet high, and an angle of about 45 degrees. It will have clear plexiglass on the top, and Nike is going to come up to the camp and create a giant mural on it; it should look amazing! The 2.5 km long bike trail is coming together, we had a long, swampy day yesterday of cutting out a new path from the slider lake to the trail on main land. It was horrible, but soon when it is all finished it will be epic. The other projects will also be finished soon. Our other staff members are starting to arrive, as exams are finishing. The summer is unofficially beginning! Its very exciting.

Tuesday, June 17

Show at Harbourfront Center





So this past weekend, Basecamp put on a wakeboard show in downtown Toronto, part of the Luminatio festival. It was held right on Lake Ontario at the Harbourfront center. The theme of this years festival was water; so there were many things going on in the festival. Several bands, games, activities, and of course a wakeboard show. We arrived there saturday morning, ready to tear it up. None of us expecting the amount of chop we would later deal with. We brought down our own Basecamp kicker, which had tiny wheels drilled onto the bottom of it, not the best idea to have such tiny wheels. So eventually one of them broke off, and we had to stick a skateboard under it just to get it moving. So we eventually got that into lake Ontario.
The sun was shinning and we could not have asked for a better day, just ask scott about how burnt his neck was, and he'll tell you. Even though the riders could barely stay up let alone throw down some hammers, a few tricks were landed. That day you really needed to pack a second pair of knees. But in the end the crowd was stoked, and everyone was having a blast. That is until sunday, overall pretty bad day. We once again arrived at the Harbourfront center ready. The sun was shinning brightly for the second day in a row, we were all getting ready and set up to ride. Then we started setting up the kicker in the water when we realized there was a huge storm cloud rolling in. As soon as we get one anchor in to the water, the rain starts pouring! So we decided to pack it in for the day, and not go on with the show. We had to get the boat and kicker out of the water to get ready to go home, so me (Connor) and Jon were the ones in the boat traveling at a speed of 5 mph in death waters; with waves coming from every which way at a height of around 5 feet, just covering the front of the boat. Then we got to the boat launch at Ontario Place, only to be denied access to the launch. So then we proceed to drive the boat all the way to park lawn boat launch which for you who don't know is about 10 km going at a steady pace of 9 km/h, so overall the entire journey took around an hour and a bit. Once we got to the boat launch, the worse news continued to roll in. It turns out you cant turn to tightly around corners while pulling a trailer; scott found this out the hard way. This lead to a bent axel on a brand new trailer. But its not all bad news, when we got to the boat launch we had a pizza party picnic! (PPP). But then we returned to reality and realized we could not tow a $100,000 boat on a trailer with a bent axle. We ended up leaving the boat downtown Toronto, driving the broken trailer up to Basecamp, grabbing a new trailer, and driving back down to Toronto, getting the boat and driving back up to Basecamp. This was also all this driving back and forth started at around 8 pm. Scott was the one that did all of the driving so fell bad for him, not any of the other basecamp workers, who sat around back at camp, checking facebook, eating snacks and eventually going to their cozy, warm beds. 

Overall it was great exposure for the camp, and we all had fun (on saturday).

Friday, June 13

Basecamp's annual Pig Roast!


So yesterday was a Glorious day for Basecamp and the workers of the pride marine group. It was the annual Basecamp pig roast. It started off with Scott going down to Orillia at 9am to pick up the pig from Shaw's. He then drove back to the camp, ready to chow down on some delicious pig... but it takes about 6 hours for the pig to fully cook, so he was quite disappointed. So from 11am to around 430pm the staff of Basecamp slowly cleaned up the property getting ready for the guests. As the pig was cooking, all of the staff from the marina would wonder over just to check things out, make sure everything is going good. This is probably because the smell of the pig was traveling through the air; it was hard not to come over and investigate. Several hours later, guest started to arrive and the thought of eating pig grew ever closer. Finally she was done cooking and we all got ready to dig in. The filming of the Pig Roast video, made by our filmer Adam Weir slowed things down a bit, but the video is worth the wait. It will soon be up in our video section. It portrays the epic preparation for the Roast and has a hint of a love story hidden in there...look out for it! Also a very good wakeboard/ wakeskate show put on by many people. It was a great watch. But in the end the pig was amazing and everyone had a blast. Thanks goes out to scott for everything, and everyone that showed up. Glad you guys could make it out!

See you next year!!

Tuesday, June 10

Jon Stasz's epic weekend


So there is a man named Jon Stasz, who is a loyal Basecamp employee. He is a very nice, funny guy, who is not very good at taking pictures. There are multiple photos of him that will make you cry they are soo funny; one day they will be released to the public. Well lets begin on the story of Jon's weekend. So Jon arrived back to camp on friday with his girlfriend Dayna, the weekend was full of potential. Even though Dayna was only here for two days they still made the most of it by taking in the sun and swimming in our refreshing lake. The weather could not have been better, 30 degrees and sunny! But then it all went downhill. It started friday night where Dayna found a tick trying to get into her arm, which is not to pretty. We do not know where it came from but we suspected Jon's bed. luckily when she got back to her hometown, she contacted a doctor who explained to her that the ticks up by the camp do not carry harmful diseases like some; so that was a relief. But before the news came that she would be fine, Jon found a weird bite on his leg which he thought was also a tick bite, which frightened him a little bit. To add to the tick bites, saturday while Jon was towing people through the slider park, a suspected horsefly just happened to strike Jon right above his eyelash... don't know how but it did. He was slightly injured but would recover... at least he hoped he would recover. But then it started to swell and swell, and swell to the point where he would wake up on sunday and he could not even open his eye at all. It was swelled shut! Of course this was hilarious to all of us besides Jon. But deep down we all felt his pain and hoped he would get better. He then iced it all day and the swelling went down a significant amount. To add to these traumatic events the mosquitos seemed to be attracted to him and by the end of the weekend it seemed like he had around 100 bites. It was soo bad he had to keep a stick of after-bite attached to his waist. So this was the weekend of Jon, or at least the worse parts of it, I'm sure there were happier times, but that is not interesting for a blog. So everyone please.. a little respect for the man in the photo above. For he is slowly recovering slowly from the mass amounts of bug bites, back at his home in Orillia. 

Wednesday, June 4

Roxy Renovations Revitalize Basecamp!





A couple of days ago the local delivery man stopped by 1901 Peninsula Road and dropped a large load off at Basecamp.  To the dismay of many of the staff, it was not the seasonal delivery of sponsored gear, but instead numerous boxes of Roxy product to be used in the revamping of the Roxy cabin.  While this is arguably the nicest of the three cabins on the Basecamp property, there is always room for improvement.  Fortunately, the nice folks at Roxy were courteous enough to supply us with the necessary ammunition to reach this greater level of comfort.  On Monday night Scotty picked up Sarah from Roxy, who had just arrived in TO from BC, and they proceeded to hit up Ikea to pick out the rest of the items to spiff up the cabin.  Tuesday morning we all got to work, clearing out two of the rooms and the bathroom.  After a couple of coats of bright, vibrant, "summery"-coloured paint and some surface level renos in the bathroom, work for the day was complete.  This morning the team got to work re-assembling the rooms and once that was complete, un-packaging of all the Roxy/Ikea items began.  After a few hours, everything had found its new home throughout the cabin and the overhaul was officially complete.  Check out the before/after photos and note the changes for yourself - they are quite drastic if I may say.  Keep your eyes open for a video recapping all the work/changes coming soon to the blog/youtube.  There might even be an appearance or two from special guests whose identities cannot yet be released.  Exciting stuff!!!  Thanks again to Sarah and everyone from Roxy for supplying us with accessories to take the Roxy cabin from pretty sweet to exceptionally awesome.  It really looks way better than before, and it couldn't have been done without their assistance! 

Sunday, June 1

Bean Bag loft now open for business!



The games room was getting to be a little cramped, so the only way to expand was straight up. Built in one day, the new bean bag loft is the new ultimate hang out spot. It may have been long tiring work to build it, but lets be serious... it's a bean bag loft. It is two tiered and suspended about 9 feet above the ground. You have a perfect view of the mini ramp, and the projection screen. Rock band on top of the bean bag loft perhaps?? It comfortably fits 6, but we do not have enough people to test its true capacity. Made to fit the contours of your body, and a bean bag just for that little extra comfort, it is truly amazing! 

Saturday, May 31

Hot tub now installed!


Today was a big day at Basecamp.  1 year ago today, Dan MF Huges found a discarded hot tub at the end of his road.  We acquired this hot tub after speaking with the owner and she said to us; "my husband is completely incompetent with these kind of things... i am sure you boys can get it running. " And run it will!!!  Today after literally a year of saving up extra cash in our coin jar we amassed enough funds to pay for the electrical wiring and fuse box to power this bad boy up.  Thanks to my cousin Clayton Duke for providing the knowledge and electrical skills to run the wiring and splice the juice from our staff cabin.  At 2:00 today the hot tub, after a year of slumber fired up and became active.  We now officially have a working tub for warming up after early morning and late evening sets.  So pumped on this.  With a little bit more labour this week we will have the deck put in and the long sauga of the no hot tub dilemma will come to a conclusion.  Hotttt Tubbbb.  Holla!

Wednesday, May 28

Base Camp Has Begun

Here we go!  Set up is in full swing here at Base Camp.  The slider lake is coming together and the games room's half pipe is in full swing.  We still have some projects that were working on like a loft area in the games room thats going to be filled with bean bag chairs, finishing up the mountain bike trail, as well as filming Trick Tips that are going to be posted on sbcwakeboard.com, thebasecamp.ca, as well as You Tube under the user name thebasecamp.  The boats are in the water but the cold nights haven't been helping the water temperature at all so the riding has been slim.  We did however get a chance to hit the slider lake and test out some of the rails, it was sweet!  This summer is the 3rd summer for base camp and its going to be the best one yet.  If you like to ride or have always wanted to try wakeboarding out Base Camp is the place you want to be.  Check out one of our camps or just come down for a lesson.  Were riding the top boats with the best instructors.  Give us a ring or check out the website and come by and check us out, you will not regret it!