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Review: The Battle of NRS Cockpit Covers
A kayak cockpit cover keeps the gunk out of your cockpit when travel down the road and helps save gas money — I lose about 1 mpg when traveling without cockpit covers. It can also keep gear inside of your boat. For example, I strap by paddle float and pump into the cockpit, but a cockpit cover can ensure that they stay in the cockpit and that the wind doesn’t rip them out. When you’re storing your kayak (especially if you store it outside), a cockpit cover will keep debris and mice from getting into the boat — if you leave something for mice to eat in your under deck…
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Kelty TrailLogic TN2 Tent Review
I really wanted a Sierra Designs Lightning tent and had ordered one last fall only to find out that they were out of stock, so I decided to wait until spring to buy the new version when it came out. When I saw the new SD lineup, I was pretty shocked. The Lightning was gone and something that looks like it fell off the deepend replaced it. I know that Kelty is a downline of SD, so I decided to see if the old tent somehow filtered downline into Kelty. It sort of did in the form of the Kelty TrailLogic TN2 tent. I ordered one and this is my…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Initial Big Agnes Wind Lip Review: a Sleeping Bag with Pinneco Core® Insulation
This spring (if spring ever comes to the polar vortex), I’ll be testing out Big Agnes’ Wind Lip sleeping bag on kayaking and canoe trips, but I had a chance to test it out over the last week while in the Badlands National Park. I was out there photographing the park and scouting locations for a potential photography workshop that I’d run in December (if you’re interested, email me). I used to be a geek about sleeping bags and sleeping bag insulation when I worked as a buyer/line leader for a major sporting good retailer, but since then I’m fallen out of the loop. The Big Agnes Wind Lip sleeping bag…
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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.
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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.…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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Orange Mud Transition Towel and Seat Wrap Review
One of the awkward parts of paddling happens after you finish kayaking and need to change out of a wetsuit or wet swim trunks. If you’re like me, you usually forget bringing a towel, but if you have one, the worst is when you have it wrapped around your waist, your wetsuit is around your ankles and then the towel lets go. It’s a quick naked shuffle to the car door and you hear lots of jeering from your friends. This is where Orange Mud’s Transition Towel and Seat Wrap comes into play. Orange Mud’s Transition Towel and Seat Wrap is a towel with a built-in belt clip and a…
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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…
