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For …umm… reasons, the Exped Mini Pump wins The Annual Camping Tallywhacker Award. “What is the Mini Pump?” you ask. Will it pump you up? The mini pump is a 1.9-ounce (on my scale) pump designed to inflate Exped’s excellent line of sleeping pads. The pump has also been hard to find in the US over the last couple of years. It’s finally coming back in stock at stores. For several years, I’ve been using an Exped sleeping pad. The new version is the Exped Ultra3. It’s by far my favorite of all the pads that I’ve tested. As a side sleeper, the long air tunnels feel extremely comfortable and…

Canoeing and kayaking are the most elegant forms of human-powered travel beyond walking and swimming. To travel on water without a craft, unless competitively skilled, requires one to flail arms and legs in the water to move forward at a speed easily matched by even an unskilled paddler (even when under load). To use a canoe or kayak requires no mechanical parts. Body English and human power provides all the motion and maneuvering power. Other human powered watercraft include the raft or the glorified raft known as a paddleboard. Tying together boards into a mainly flat rectangle lacks the design choices to be considered elegant. Elegant defined as a solution…

With the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness canoeing season (and canoeing season elsewhere) kicking in, I thought it would be a good time to write about ways for someone in the wilderness to communicate with someone outside the wilderness. Basically, it comes down to a Satellite Messenger vs Satellite Phone. This seems like a pertinent topic this year considering all the paddling accident reports, including this near death experience in the Boundary Waters. As I see it, you have few options to communicate in the wilderness. Of the options that you have, you have satellite phones, satellite messengers, VHF or other radios and cell phones. I’ll cover them as I…

I’ve long admired Martin Step’s canoe builds. His cedar strip canoe builds are works of art. Years ago, he posted pictures of a solo canoe yoke that seemed impossibly beautiful and functional. Martin recently released plans for his Agawa Bay Solo Canoe Yoke. If you’re looking for a unique yoke plan, it’s worth checking out. The plans show you how to build a contoured yoke and then build the attachment system. The attachment system requires some modification to a solo canoe’s wooden gunwale, but after that’s complete it should be easy to detach and attach the yoke to the gunwales. If you don’t want to build the yoke, you can…

You’ve seen Marcelo Rossi’s work on this website before. He most recently wrote about The Sparrow: a modern Greenland-style kayak with an ancient spirit, and in the past, he built a Siskiwit SOF, and back in 2015 he built a baidarka. He returns with photos of a skin-on-frame kayak lamp that he made as a birthday gift for his best friend. Marcelo worked from scaled plans and built the model using scaled wood building materials and glued the parts together. Before skinning the boat, he added an internal light source. He also carved a scaled Greenland-style paddle. After he put on the skin, he mounted it upright on a wooden base. It…

Usually I’m writing a review or a how to or something like that, but instead I’m writing about the state of things right now. With the pandemic supply issues still affecting the outdoor industry, you’re going to want to get your purchases done early this year. All the new gear is starting to hit the stores right now, and if you want to get a specific product you should buy now. I’ve needed a new life jacket for a couple of years and when I went looking last year for the vest that I wanted, it was sold out. I figured that it would come back in stock at some…

I’m presenting my Following the Winchell Expedition trip live online at virtual Canoecopia on Sunday, March 13 at 10:30am CDT. This is a presentation about the trip I took last year where I followed a canoe route in northern Minnesota from 1879. I’ll talk about how I figured out the route and tell a few stories and pictures from the trip. You can get a ticket here: https://whova.com/portal/registration/canoe_202203 This is the presentation description: In 1879, Minnesota State Geologist Newton Horace Winchell surveyed the Arrowhead region of Minnesota. Once on the north shore of Lake Superior, he left Grand Marais to travel inland through what is now the Boundary Waters Canoe…

This is a guest post by Dave Arruda. At some point early in the pandemic (probably day 2 of lockdown) I took a look at my PRUSA MK3s+ 3D printer that was growing dust on my desk and said to myself “yup, I’m going to 3D print a kayak!” That started the adventure that has led me to a 3D printed kayak. It’s a version of the Siskiwit Bay SOF. The journey started with a lot of computer aided design (CAD) work (and by a lot, I mean A LOT). I chose to use OnShape, a cloud-based CAD software, as my platform and set to drawing the stations, stems, seat,…

After I posted my idea for my dream lightweight portage pack, Steve commented about a lightweight portage pack that he had designed and made himself. In the comment section, he wrote: Along similar lines & similar frustrations, I made my own portage pack and used it on three trips last year. One thing I did differently was to rely on straps for a running vest and substantial hip-belt pockets. This way I could access about 8 pockets for small items with the pack sitting behind me in the solo canoe. My size was a bit bigger than yours, and there are some things I’d do differently…but it was really functional.…

Guest post by Marcelo Rossi. He writes about a kayak he designed and built. I have always liked the Greenland kayak. It has something magical, its lines, its bow, its low profile — like an ancient and mysterious marine creature. After building several skin-on-frame kayaks and baidarkas, I’ve had the goal of making a Greenland-style kayak but with my own concepts and for the conditions of the rivers that I paddle. I have tried various software available on the web, but I needed to know how I do it and what the design parameters mean on screen and then in the water. Finally, I decided on Stitch -N- Glue. This…

Today the US Department of Interior announced that after analyzing the Twin Metals permits, a proposed sulfide mine on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, they found that the permits had been illegally issued by the Trump administration. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota is America’s most-visited wilderness area. It offers paddlers 1,200 miles of canoe routes and 2,000 designated campsites. It has a million-acres of lakes and forests. The proposed sulfide mine would have been built within the watershed of the Boundary Waters and any pollution from the project would have flowed into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Sulfide mines create sulfuric…

For the most part, my needs for a portage pack are met with Cooke Custom Sewing hybrid portage packs. We have an Explorer, a Ruck and two Pioneers. But, there’s a missing pack that I haven’t been able to find on the market. That’s a lightweight, smallish portage pack for light and fast solo trips utilizing single portages. A trip like my Following the Winchell Expedition trip. I’ve tried all kinds of different packs for this style of trip, and so far my favorite is the Explorer, but it’s just a bit too big. I’ve also tried using a lightweight hiking backpack, but those don’t work because they end up…