• paddling a kayak
    Articles,  Tent Bound

    Spring Kayaking

    The ice just won’t leave. It’s going. At the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Sawbill Outfitters up the Sawbill Trail from Tofte reports that the ice thickness has dropped from 27 inches to 22 inches from the 2nd of May until the 5th. At that rate, assuming a linear ice melt, the pace of ice melt puts ice out on the 18th of May. That’s when Devil Track Lake, the lake I currently sort of live on, went out last year. We broke a record. I wonder if it’ll happen again. There’s something about this time of year, especially this year with the 1 to 2 feet…

  • comfort paddling tuilik in rough water
    Articles,  News

    Comfort Paddling Tuilik Deal and Win a Hoody

    Just wanted to send out a quick note about Comfort Paddling’s tuilik. Until April 30th, Paulo is running a Win a Hoody Contest if you fill out a questionnaire. After you fill out the questionnaire, you get 12% off the purchase of everything that you buy. That could save you over $100 on the purchase of a tricked out waterproof breathable tuilik and pants! If you’ve never used a tuilik before, I highly recommend that you give one a try. Here’s my review of Comfort Paddling’s tuilik and you should also read my article:  The Tuilik: a Perfect Bit of Kit for Winter Kayaking. Click the picture below to be taken to…

  • Every Scratch Tells A Story review
    Articles

    Jerry Vandiver’s Every Scratch Tells A Story

    Back in 2012, Jerry Vandiver, a Nashville-based singer and songwriter, sent me a copy of  True And Deep – Songs for the Heart of the Paddler. I was instantly hooked by the canoe country inspired songs. Jerry has followed up the first album with another one filled with tunes inspired by the canoe lifestyle and the northwoods. While the last one hit home for me, because much of it was inspired by trips to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) and several entry points to the BWCA are just 20 minutes from my backdoor, this one hits home even more — it has a song about the town I live…

  • Northstar Canoes Magic
    Articles,  News

    Northstar Canoes: Bell is Back in Black-Lite

    Back in the good ole’ days when I used to work retail, we carried Bell Canoes. They were made in Minnesota and were the perfect canoes for traveling the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, which was where our customers were heading. If you don’t know that Boundary Waters, you should. It’s a 1 million acre wilderness area that is only one of two wilderness areas in the U.S. designated specifically for canoes. It’s also America’s most used wilderness area. In the BWCA, you travel from lake to lake using portages that you carry your gear over. Bell Canoes were light, efficient at touring speed and nice and stable. They also…

  • Articles,  News

    Wilderness in America Under Attack (Still)

    One of PaddlingLight’s missions is to increase awareness about wilderness in a way to try and increase wilderness protection. One way that PLight does this is by calling attention to attacks on America’s laws that govern Wilderness Areas and National Parks. These attacks on American wilderness hurt all Americans by making it so there is less space protected for the enjoyment of all Americans instead of just the few. I wrote about the problem of extremists before the 2012 elections and how they want to take away our wilderness. The extremist attack on U.S. National Parks and Wilderness Areas continues in the U.S. House of Representatives as they move to pass…

  • Articles

    Adventurer Savant

    Adventurer Savant? The Savant Syndrome is when a person with mental disabilities, such as autism, shows above normal capacity in some specific area, such as music or math. We could apply this to adventurers with a little tweaking. Adventurer Savant: Someone who completes an expedition despite a serious ineptitude in both the physical and mental skills required to succeed at the sport and an inability to properly judge risk thus putting himself or herself into serious danger.  

  • Amy and Dave Freeman of the Wilderness Classroom paddle past Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys.
    Articles,  News

    The Death of Sea Kayaking?

    Every year about this time, when the Internets are abuzz with northern canoeist and kayakers jonesing for open water, we hear about how sea kayaking is dying as a sport. We hear that the numbers are dropping, only graybeards kayak anymore, symposiums (which according to the arguments tell you how many people sea kayak) are on the decline and with a Sea Kayaker Magazine going under, it’s only a matter of time before the world of sea kayaking proverbably evaporates and we all lose our favorite pastimes. We hear this: Every. Single. Year. Except that it’s not true. Sea kayaking is growing and has been for years. But. But. But.…

  • Articles,  News

    Looking For Kayak Action This Winter? Tune in to these great video casts

    If you haven’t been following Sea Kayak Podcasts.com, you should. Sea Kayak Podcasts is the brainchild of Simon Willis, the man who made the excellent Sea Kayak with Gordon Brown videos, and it features short videos on a variety of subjects. The most recent include videos about repairing your kayak and interviews with kayak adventurers. Not only can you watch the videos on the website, but you can also download the videos right to your computer to watch them. I’m keeping this post short so you can head over to check out all the great videos that you’ve been missing.

  • Kayak camping on Lake Superior at Paradise Beach. Cook County, Minnesota.
    Articles,  News

    Best of PaddlingLight in 2013

    I’m wrapping up the year at PaddlingLight and like I did last year, I’m looking back to see if there were any themes (In 2012, I got philosophical). This year, I didn’t really have a theme. I attempted and got close to my goal of a blog post a week, but summer was difficult. I was guiding trips, running my guiding business and teaching lessons about six days a week on average and that didn’t leave time for anything else, plus I wrote a lot of articles for magazines this year, which put Plight on the backburner. Mainly, my thought process in 2013 was pretty disjointed when it came to…

  • winter kayaking
    Articles

    Getting Icy: The Last Winter Kayak of the Year

    Got out for the last paddle of 2013 the other day. It has been a cold winter so far in the northwoods, and in the winter I prefer to paddle on warmer days, but with December coming to an end my streak of paddling once a month every month on Lake Superior for the last 5+ years looked threatened, so I just needed to get on the water. I met up with Dave Schorn, a guide who works for another sea kayaking company in the area, to get a last-minute December paddle in. The air temp was in the upper teens, water in the mid-30s and the waves and wind were…

  • Cold Water SUP fail
    Articles

    Cold Water SUP and a Paddlesport Marketing Fail

    Yesterday, Tower Paddle Boards, a manufacturer direct SUP company, posted a tweet about cold water paddling. It said, “Scared to paddle when it’s cold out? Don’t be. Here’s how it’s done.” The tweet included a picture of a guy in a jacket and blue jeans paddling on a SUP with a cup of coffee resting on the board. In a later tweet the company said that the tweet was meant in good humor. But, even though it probably wasn’t meant to do so, it promoted unsafe practices when dealing with cold water. I’ve written about cold water paddling safety and winter kayaking before, so I thought I’d address this issue…

  • homemade e
    Articles

    Homemade Esbit Stove and Windscreen

    Just two months ago after a miserable, rainy trip on which we only brought a Solo Stove wood burning stove and had a terrible time trying to cook on it, I vowed off experimenting with stoves, and I vowed to keep my backcountry kitchen simple by just using a MSR Pocket Rocket from now on. My memory of how terrible the experience was must have been short, because I’ve decided to give esbit a go again. For this experiment, I decided to use the smaller pan and lid from my Snow Peak Ti Multi Compact Cookset, a homemade esbit burner based on Brian Green’s design and an experimental conical windscreen…

  • Articles

    Rough Water Kayaking in Norway

    It’s that time of year where I don’t get out paddling very much. Devil Track Lake, which I live on, just froze over completely and while the big lake is open, I just ain’t all that motivated to go paddling on it. I’m in that mode where I’ll get out once a month on Lake Superior to try and continue my record of paddling once a month, every month, on the big lake, but I’ll grit my teeth when I do it. Here’s an image from this month’s paddle: I do need to get out paddling in the next couple of days though, because I bought a Nikon AW1, which…

  • Northwater Under Deck Bag
    Articles,  Equipment

    Where to keep your kayak pump?

    I consider a kayak bilge pump an essential kayaking accessory for all levels of kayakers. I know that there’s a movement out there that says that you don’t need one, but I’m not in that camp. At some point, if you leave swimming distance of the shore, you’ll need to pump out a kayak, either your boat or one of your paddling partners. The key about a pump is that in order for it to be useful, it needs to be accessible when you need it. And, that means that it really needs to be close to the cockpit. There are a couple of ideas about where exactly to store it,…

  • An example of fences and handrails on a chart of the Apostles
    Articles,  Technique

    Navigation: Leave Your Compass at Home and Use Handrails and Fences

    Although it’s best to always have a compass with you, if you have a detailed chart or map, you don’t always need to use it when you’re navigating. If you use handrails, fences (also call catches) and checkpoints during the day, you needn’t check your compass often. Handrails and fences are techniques and features that do exactly what they sounds like they do; you follow a handrail and a fence keeps you in. A checkpoint is just like a checkpoint on a road or race. It’s a known point on the chart. A handrail is a feature or landmark that leads towards your destination and one that you can follow or…

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