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BWCA: Insider Tips
Three tips that will make your next couple of trips to the BWCAW easier on the wallet and then mind.
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Lost and Found: What to do when you find something in the Woods
When you find an expensive item in the wilderness, you may be tempted to claim salvage rights, but to learn what you really should do, read this article.
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How to Use a Padded Food Pack
Padded Food Packs are being used more often in canoe trips. They provide a couple advantages over traditional unpadded packs and olive barrels. They provide protection like an olive barrel, but conform easier to a canoe like a traditional Duluth Pack. They also take up less space than an olive barrel, which allows you to squeeze in that extra pack. There is no right way or wrong way to use a padded food pack, but there things you can do to take advantage of the padding, the extra insulation that the padding gives, and the shape to help you carry fresh food into the wilderness comfortably. Making it Waterproof There…
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How to Solo a Tandem Canoe
One of those perfect morning dawns, the dew is fresh, there is a nip in the air and the mist rising off of the mirrored surface of the water calls you out. After cooking oatmeal over a small fire you wait for your paddling partner to wake up so you can go paddling. Unfortunately, she is a constant over sleeper and a bear to force out of her slumber. The only way onto the water is if you get into your 18-foot tripping canoe and paddle it solo. Solo canoe paddling is a rewarding experience that opens you to more time on the water when you can’t get a paddling…
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Icom M72 VHF Radio Cheatsheet
The Icom M72 VHF radio or M73 is a great compact handheld with a good form factor. It transmits at slightly greater power than most handhelds, is extremely loud, offers IPX8 submersible protection, and uses a shorter antenna that’s as efficient as a standard sized antenna. It also includes every feature a kayaker or canoeist might want. For years, I’ve been using an Icom M72 VHF radio and love it, so I’ve created a handy cheat-sheet to carry around with me that shows button commands to get into the more complex features. The cheat-sheet also includes a handy cheat-sheet covering the basics of good radio talk and a step by…
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Things I Broke in 2007
Gear breaks and wears out and most of the time it happens in the worst moments. In 2007, I only managed to break a few items. Here they are: Current Designs Phantom FX Composite, Fiberglass straight-shaft, compression molded fiberglass blade with a Lever-lock adjustable ferrel: It’s a mouth full to say and it broke right at the put-in. The Lever-lock adjustable ferrel broke putting the paddle together. Thank goodness for spare paddles, because we had to use a spare for the rest of the four day trip. The North Face Paramount Convertible Pant: I finally ripped out the butt seam in these 7 or 8 year old pants. I’ve worn…
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Get Bent: Using a Bent Shaft Canoe Paddle
A couple of years ago, I paddled down the Turkey River in Iowa with two friends for two days. They were in a tandem canoe, and I paddled my solo. The first day of the trip, we enjoyed small riffles, quick turns, and swift water, but they out paced me, so, while they took numerous breaks from paddling, I worked hard to make gains on them. Without these small gains, I would have been left far behind. We paddled all day, and well into the night, finally pulling out around midnight when we noticed lightening and heard thunder. During the night, a strong storm blew in. My friends battened down…
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Down the Mississippi
In August 2004, two friends started a trip down the Mississippi River. They planned on paddling 560 miles in 15 days, and one of them - me - made it. The other quit early. In this personal essay, I explore the meaning of friendship and how expeditions can ruin them.
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Some New Year’s Resolutions
Every year it seems that people are making their newest New Year’s resolutions within a day or two after the big year ending celebration of December 31st. And, of course, it seems that if someone has made a New Year’s resolution, then they want you to share yours, and every year, when asked, I say I don’t have any, because I often wait for a while to see if I want to make any. It turns January into a month of reflection on the last year, and lets it sink in. I often ask myself the question: What did I accomplish? What did I want to do and didn’t? And…
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Getting By: Learning Life’s Little Lessons
At the holidays, I find myself, like most Americans back home with my family, and usually just after we finish our holiday ham and while still leaning back with full stomachs, the subject of my life comes up. Often this leads to the discussion of my job or lack of job as they see it – a full-time adventurer. (They read Slacker) On a recent trip, I sat and listened to the normal chatter of, “I don’t know why you ever quit your last job. It was so good. You made good money there,” until I couldn’t’t take it anymore. “I’ll tell you why,” I said. “Because I’ve learned everything…
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Multi-Tool Envy
Its that time of year again when the Mississippi thaws and sends giant chunks of ice spinning down to New Orleans or to their eventually return to fluid. Its also that time of year again when we paddlers tend to venture out to the retail outlets and send large chunks of change to the bottom lines of cash hunger business owners. This year, Ive found myself longing for an unusual long list of items, and expect my top line to become intimately involved with my bottom line. On a recent visit to a local retailer to help check items off of the list, I found myself gawking over the wide…
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Where the Road Ends
Life is not separate from death. It only looks that way. -Blackfoot proverb Yesterday, I took my new West Greenland skin-on-frame kayak to the flooded Hawkeye Wildlife Management Area in the middle of Iowa – little did the Inuit know that their type of watercraft would be used so far from Artic waters. This WMA is made up of pools and wetland created by the back up of water behind the Coralville Reservoir and usually is only a couple of feet deep, but with the flood water the WMA had gained six to ten feet of water. It has become a real sized lake with real sized water. Just the…
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The Lomo and Canoes
One hand holding the 4 pounds of my fully auto focus frame advancing Nikon SLR camera with attached 35-70 mm lens and the other using a paddle thrust into the mud of the rivers bottom to hold the canoe steady, I eased myself into position to shoot a bow in the center of the frame shot that I love. The morning light glowed. I snapped. Snapped again, and once again. I put the camera into a dry bag and pulled the paddle out of the mud. I love photography, but sometimes wish for an easier method of capturing those great moments in time. In this age of mega-pixels, digital, 5…
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A Thousand Words For One Image
“Lastingly successful art triggers audience responses that are ready to happen in the culture as a whole. Regardless of how perfectly a photographer’s work rends a subject, it is bound to fail unless it strikes that chord that elicits a common emotional and visual response.” From Galen Rowell’s Inner Game of Outdoor Photography, Galen Rowell, 2001 The sunrise broke over the distant mountains. It broke across hilltops that swam in a deep white fog on a fall morning in the Smoky Mountains. The morning was cold and I stood with my small hand-me-down 35mm camera and shot a few pictures while shivering and try to hold my camera steady. Next…
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Lake Superior Waves
Waves are soothing for a wary soul. It’s much better to go lightweight and simple, than it is to become wary.
