Dagger Axiom Review by Tom Janney
Tom Janney
We got lucky this winter and Arizona got a good amount of snow and the Salt River had a great runoff in February due to unseasonably warm weather. Luckily my brother and his girlfriend were flying out for a week and my dad was already down in Tucson, so we had an awesome family trip with my wife Christen rounding out the group. I was looking for a fun boat to take down and luckily 4Corners Riversports had just gotten some Dagger Axiom demos into the shop. The boat is similar to an old school RPM, but has way more edge which makes it a lot more fun to paddle, with tons of down river play options. I took the 8.5 model, which is the medium size in the lineup. The medium will feel playful for most adult paddlers, while the larger 9.0 has more of a river runner / creeker feel to it.
The Axiom is an extremely fun boat just to paddle, its very fast and responsive and makes eddy hopping down rapids a blast. Its longer than most modern playboats, so it was very easy catch some of the fast flat waves on the Salt, and was great to just carve it up for minutes at a time. There are tons of great eddy lines and seams on the Salt and the Axiom made for some great stern squirting. I was also impressed with how well the boat paddled down river. It holds it line amazingly well and is a very stable boat that would be a great first boat for beginners and seasoned paddlers alike. Jim and I both commented on how fun it would be on big water runs like the Grand Canyon. Overall it was a super fun trip and the Axiom was perfectly suited to get the most out of an awesome wilderness river.
