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Howl of the Wolf
Usually, I keep PaddlingLight free of controversial issues, but occasionally when something occurs that affects an integral part of the wilderness exploration experience, such as When They Want to Take Away Wilderness (read it before you vote this year), I feel like I need to write something to send out to all the readers and visitors of PaddlingLight (over 600 via email and rss and over 20,000 unique visitors a month). Now, Minnesota’s canoe country and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, one of the premier canoeing destinations in the world, faces a threat to the wilderness experience. Today, Minnesota begins a 3,600-hunter, wolf hunt with the goal of killing 400 wolves a year. Once the DNR got…
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North Water Hydration Holster Review
When I’m out on a long distance trip, I like to hydrate by using a hydration pack, but for day trips and calm water, I prefer a water bottle. Keeping that water bottle handy without having to pop a sprayskirt is a challenge. While the deck bungees works well for some things, they don’t have enough holding power to keep a water bottle on deck. And I tend to stay away from storing anything more than spare paddles and a map on the deck, because it annoys me to have anything large up there. That’s why I like to use the North Water Hydration Holster. The North Water Deck Mounted…
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Ah, Matey, Drop the Kayak Sea Anchor (Drogue), We Be Waiting Out the Storm
The above illustration comes from E.Y. Arima’s Inuit Kayaks in Canada: A Review of Historical Records and Construction, Based Mainly on the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s Collection. It shows a group of kayaks rafted together, under sail, dragging behind them an inflated seal skin, which supported geese carcasses being used as a kayak sea anchor (in this case, a drogue as it’s dragging behind). The kayak sea anchor was used to allow the kayak party to sleep a night at sea as they crossed from thew mainland to the Belcher Islands. Modern kayak sea anchors or kayak drogues are a bit less sophisticated that a seal skin and geese; they’re…
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The Joy of Canoe
The ripples slap against the sea green hull of my canoe and the light wind rumbles in my ears as I paddle towards the clam, leeside of Devil Track Lake. Kneeling in the center of the canoe, leaning the boat to make it easy to reach the water, I take strokes only on one side of the hull. A bow draw blended with a forward blended with a “J” keeps the canoe going straight despite the wind. When my attention wanders, the wind changes my course and I have to pull harder on the draw and push harder on the pry until the canoe reclaims the correct direction. Whether I…
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Dreaming About Belcher Islands Kayaking
Today, I was going to write an essay about my view on rough water sea kayaking and whether or not this specific subset of sea kayaking really fits in with my view of what sea kayaking is and whether or not the continued emphasis on rough water paddling is good for the sport, but I got sidetracked, probably for the better, by the Google maps on GeoGarage while trying to identify several lights that I saw last night from across Lake Superior. What I saw on Google maps that blew my mind was the Belcher Islands in Hudson Bay, and the cool thing: the islands have a history of kayaking that goes…
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Twin Lakes Canoe Route Trip Report
Just 25 miles from Grand Marais, Minnesota, the Twin Lakes Canoe Route [pdf] offers canoeists a five lake adventure that unlike the nearby Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness doesn’t cost a dime and doesn’t require a permit. The US Forest Service describes the the Twin Lakes Canoe Route as a quiet, wilderness-like lake experience featuring five water accessed campsites, four portages and plenty of fishing. While we’ve day tripped on the lakes before, we never camped, so with only one night to spare, we decided to give it a go. The Twin Lakes Canoe Route Put-In The put-in for the Twin Lakes Canoe Route is 16.5 miles up the Gunflint Trail…
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Save the Boundary Waters From Cell Towers Letter Writing Campaign
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) is one of only two federally designation canoe wilderness areas in the United States of America. It’s also America’s most used federally designated wilderness area, an area that Americans set aside to protect and preserve under two separate pieces of bipartisan federal legislation. It consists over 1,000 lakes connected by portage trails within a million acres of roadless wilderness. It also has primitive campsites that allow canoeists the possibility of paddling for a month without seeing anything man-made intruding. Aldo Leopold argued that outdoor recreation is valuable directly proportional to the experience’s intensity, and “to the degree to which it differs from and contrasts with workaday life.” And it’s this reason that…
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The Moose Rack Review: The Ultimate Kayak Rack?
Earlier this year The Moose Rack (Headland Industries) sent me a rack to try out and review. While I usually like to use a product for 30 days before I review it, I found that with this rack, I got the basic of it in a few minutes, so this is my The Moose Rack review. The Moose Rack makes the following claims about the Hull-PRO Kayak Storage rack: Fits Many Unique Hull Shapes, Stores Your Boat On Edge Where It Is Strongest, 304 Stainless Steel J-Hook Cradles, Anodized Billet T6 Aluminum Brackets, Durable Nitrile Foam Protection Pads, 300 lb Capacity, 180 Degree Swivel Design, Locks Into Place When In Use, Fast Installation With Only Hand Tools, Made right…
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Quick Review: How to get to THE NORTH POLE …and other iconic adventures
Tim Moss, an adventurer who has traveled around the world using 80 different types of transportation and who has supported over 100 expedition worldwide, has come out with a new book, How to Get to the North Pole: . . . and Other Iconic Adventures (Kindle Edition). The book centers around seven adventures: crossing a desert, getting to the north pole, rowing an ocean, cycling around the world, sailing the seven seas, getting to the south pole and climbing an unclimbed mountain. To help him write the book, he consulted over 50 explorers. After a brief introduction covering gear and funding, Tim details the seven adventures using a common format…
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Two Pictures: Tettegouche State Park and Pigeon Bay Kayaking Trips
This summer, I started a new kayak guiding company and am one of the few Grand Marais kayaking companies. One of the reasons that I started this company was because I love paddling and wanted to share it with more people and many of the locations that I guide weren’t being guided anymore since a friend of mine sold his business several years ago. In Grand Marais, no one was guiding the Fall River Trip. No one was guiding the full Tettegouche State Park trip, although two places do half the trip, and no one was doing Pigeon River. Additionally, no guides in the area were running multi-day trips along…
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The Petzl Zipka Plus vs. the Princeton Tec EOS Headlamps
When I first got into adventure sports, my headlamp was a flashlight combined with a Velcro strap, and the Petzl Zoom headlamp was the headlamp that I lusted over. When I could afford a headlamp, I went out and bought a Zoom and it served me well until Princeton Tec started to introduce lighter and smaller headlights. I was working retail at the time and got a box of samples to try out. That trial box turned me into the corporation’s headlamp geek. I was hooked until a few years later when Petzl introduced its first LED headlamp, which got something like 40 hours of battery life. I got one at the…
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Photo: Have a Good Caption?
I took this of Andrea Knepper at the Great Lakes Sea Kayak Symposium. Clearly she’s having fun, but what’s she doing? Do you have a good caption for this photo?
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Three Waves from Safety
Today, I had the most exciting rescue of the year. In the morning, I left the harbor with someone who had kayaked before. We went out on the lake into about 1.5 feet of chop and swung around a point into a protected bay where we paddled around for an hour or so. During our time paddling, the wind picked up slightly to about 10 knots with gusts to 15 knots. On our way back, we had a choice to make. We could either portage from the bay back into the harbor which would avoid the rough water or we could paddle back around the point and into the choppy…
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Great Lakes Sea Kayaking Symposium Trip Report
I just got back to Grand Marais, Minnesota after spending a four-day weekend in Grand Marais, Michigan at the Great Lakes Sea Kayak Symposium, an event organized by Down Wind Sports and Kelly Blades. The symposium gathers together some of the best instructors in the Midwest, combines them with some of the best instructors from Canada and even abroad, then it throws in a ton of sea kayaking students and mixes it up. It makes for a fun four days of adventure. Grand Marais, Michigan is a small town of just a couple of hundred of people, a high school graduating class consisting of seven students, a brew pub and…
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Kayaking and Canoeing Participation Rates
The Outdoor Foundation recently published the Outdoor Recreation Participation Topline Report 2012 in which it publishes the participation rates in outdoor recreation from 2011. I find these numbers of interest to paddlers, and these numbers are something that we can directly affect be introducing people to the sports of kayaking and canoeing. The report starts out with some good news: In 2011, outdoor recreation among americans reached the highest participation level in the last five years. Nearly 50 percent of all americans ages six and older, or 141.1 million individuals, participated in at least one outdoor activity in 2011, making 11.6 billion outings. In fact, last year, americans enjoyed 1.5 billion more…
