-
Outdoor Sports Rescue Shaming
The post discusses "rescue shaming" in outdoor sports and highlights several cognitive biases, like the Dunning-Kruger Effect and FACETS heuristics, which impact decision-making and can lead to dangerous situations. Emphasizing education and empathy is encouraged.
-
Sea Gull Lake Trip Report
Last weekend, we camped at the Trail’s End Campground at the end of the Gunflint Trail. It’s near several entry points into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It’s also a great place to camp and photograph. If you’re into photography, check out my photography map for the campground area. It’s a popular campground due to its closeness to popular entry points and its remoteness, so you’ll likely need to reserve a spot if you plan on going. This trip, we stayed at campsite #25 and found that it was a lovely place to stay. #24 would have been slightly better, but we had great neighbors there and in #26…
-
Tripods for Canoeing and Kayaking
The author, a professional photographer who also teaches photography, evaluates three tripods ranging from 1 to 3 pounds. They discuss the pros and cons of each, focusing on factors like weight, stability, and height. The author recommends using Kirk L Brackets for better camera support and shares purchase links for the tripods.
-
Sea Kayaking Grand Marais’ Harbor
Each summer, I enjoy sea kayaking from Grand Marais’ harbor, exploring up to four miles, including Artist's Point and the campground area. Notable sights include the old Coast Guard station and Hjordis schooner. Accessibility features at the harbor such as a kayak launch, walkway, and changing room were influenced by my suggestions.
-
Homer Lake Trip Report
Over the Memorial Day weekend, we took a day trip to Homer Lake. Homer Lake in northern Minnesota is an entry point to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. About half of the lake is in the wilderness and half is outside. The majority of it is outside the wilderness and there’s a short portage into Axe Lake which is just north of Homer. The lake also has offers two campsites. There’s one inside the wilderness and one outside the wilderness. I’ve paddled on Homer a fair number of times and have used it on multiple trips. You can also use it to access the Vern River Loop instead of…
-
Sea Kayaking Safety in Photos
Practitioners of SEA KAYAKING are a bunch of safety-conscious hoopy froods. We sass this because sea kayakers always talk about safety. For example, “You just posted that video of the place I paddle. The video only showed calm water, but it gets crazy there. You should have introduced the video with a 15 minute safety talk about the dangers of paddling there when it gets crazy.” Sea kayakers have conversations that stretch out into 100s of comments about how one advertisement showing calm water might lead someone to buy a recreational kayak and go paddling in 10-foot waves. They debate the merits of self-rescues and then they debate them again. Sea kayakers come up with…
-
Upper Iowa River Canoe Trip Report
The first weekend of May is the annual Northstar Experience canoe trip. Each year Northstar Canoes invites people who own Northstar canoes or Bell canoes to come paddle a river somewhere in the Midwest. This year was on the Upper Iowa River in northeastern Iowa. I attended two days of the event to take photos, connect with friends and make new ones and enjoy paddling with the Northstar community. The Upper Iowa The Upper Iowa is a river that I paddled several times when I was living in Iowa. It’s one of the best midwestern rivers and used to make Canoe and Kayak Magazine’s top 20 river trip lists. It’s…
-
NOC’s Grand Canyon Adventure
The NOC recently sent over a deal that I can offer you. It’s $500 off of their Grand Canyon Adventure. It runs August 28th to September 10th. Here’s their description: This classic rafting and kayaking adventure traverses through the entire length of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, 226 river miles, starting at at Lee’s Ferry and ending at Diamond Creek. Designed for active adults and families with children ages 12+ to paddle exciting rapids amongst magnificent cliffs, explore hidden coves, and camp on pristine sandy beaches as we boat throughout the canyon corridor. Each day will be an adventure filled with paddling, hiking to waterfalls and staying in…
-
2024 PaddlingLight Update
It’s 2024 and PaddlingLight is still kicking away. It’s been 20 years of blogging about paddling on PaddlingLight and before that Nessmuking and before that on a different website. It’s hard to believe, but this is one of the longest lasting blogs about paddling on the internet. I’m almost a grey beard now, so I should get really good at rolling my sea kayak soon. Anyway, I have thoughts… Blogging over Marketing As I’ve expressed before, I think that social media ended up wrecking the golden age of blogging. There used to be a bunch of different paddling blogs bouncing ideas off of each other. Now, it’s just a few…
-
Canoe and Kayak Building Resources
Building resources for wooden canoe and kayak homebuilders.
-
Telling a Good Canoe and Kayak Adventure Story
Years ago, I took time to analyze the story structure of different types of canoe and kayak adventures that were published in various magazines. I wanted to be able to pitch the types of stories that the editors were buying, and I wanted to be able to do it in the formats they were accepting. I ended up identify three different types of stories: Trip Reports, Autobiographical Trip Reports Focusing on a Global Issue, and a Biography. There were more types of stories, but these three were the most interesting to me. I outlined each of the different scenes that were used to tell the story. I’ve used these outlines…
-
Paddle and Portage: a New Website for the Boundary Waters
This is a quick bit of interesting news for Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness lovers. Paddle and Portage is a brand new website devoted to telling stories about the Boundary Waters and Quetico. It launched in January 2024. The website is founded by Joe Friedrichs, formerly of the radio station WTIP and WTIP’s Boundary Waters Podcast. Matthew Baxley is also joining Friedrichs’ new adventure as part of the new Paddle and Portage Podcast. Baxley was Friedrichs’ co-host on WTIP’s podcast. He’s also a talented filmmaker and good host. He interviewed me about my Following the Winchell Expedition trip for a past episode of the Boundary Waters Podcast. WTIP’s Boundary Waters…
-
Sanborn Canoe’s New Minnesota State Flag Paddle
If you haven’t heard, Minnesota recently finished the process of redesigning its state flag. The old flag was of the “state seal on a bedsheet” type. It also redesigned the state seal — and decided on an epic canoe country inspired design. THE BEST STATE SEAL IN THE NATION. You can learn about the redesign at the Minnesota Historical Society’s website. Even though some polls might say that the new state flag looks like “Sky Camouflage,” the new flag looks great when put on merch. I expect this will become a profitable market to be in over the next couple of years. You should expect it to see it on…
-
Bikepacking Gear is Nearly the Same as Canoe Camping Gear
If you’ve followed this blog for awhile, you’ll know that in addition to canoeing and kayaking I love biking and specifically bike touring or bikepacking. You may even remember the April’s Fools joke that I did on this topic. The joke was that this website was going to change to a biking website, but I digress. This year, in leu of a big paddling trip, I did a long bikepacking trip across the proposed Minnesota ORV Border to Border Route. I basically used the same gear for this trip as I would have for canoe camping. I made a video about the gear that I used. There were a lot…
-
Improve Bear Bagging with This Cord Winder
For years I’ve been stuffing my bear bag rope into a stuff sack or throw bag for storage or winding it around my hand and then placing it in in the bag for storage. At the next campsite, it inevitably becomes tangled as I take it out. I’ve discovered a product that prevents the tangly mess of bear bag ropes. It’s the Cord Winder by Hilltop Packs. The best part is that it is only $5. I bought two for reasons explained below. The concept is simple. Take the idea of line winders for kites and apply it to bear bags. That’s exactly what Hilltop Packs did when making the…
Or if you use a RSS Feed Reader subscribe via our RSS Feed.