PaddlingLight.com

Over the last five months, I’ve been testing the FLEXTAIL Zero Power Bank. FLEXTAIL sent a sample for review. When looking for a modern power bank for canoeing, kayaking, and all the other outdoor sports I do, I have a few criteria. I want a bank that squeezes the most power out of the battery, has fast charging when needed, has cold resistance, USB-C, pass through charging, water resistance and weighs very little. Some of those criteria conflict with each other. Fast charging, for example, reduces usable battery capacity. Newer power banks like the FLEXTAIL Zero Power Bank offer lower-power efficiency modes that trade charging speed for longer runtime and…

When XTRATUF sent me the Hightides to review, I figured I’d like them. I didn’t expect they’d become the shoe I grab first before walking out the door. What are the XTRATUF Hightides The Hightides are an injection-molded, ankle-high shoe made with an EVA foam called BioLite. If you haven’t seen these before, think of a similar material to what Crocs use. They have a textured footbed to help prevent your foot from sliding around when wet and have slip-resistant outsoles. The Hightides come in full sizes from 7 to 14, and they come in three colors. I tested the Deep Storm color. One size 12 boot weighed 9.2 oz…

During a recent vote in Congress, Republicans removed protections from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the most used wilderness area in the country with over 1,175 lakes and interconnected waterways spread across 1.1 million acres in northern Minnesota. It’s a top North American destination for canoeing. On April 16, 2026, Republicans sold out the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), one of my favorite places in the world, as a gift to a foreign mining company, and as Senator Martin Heinrich, one of the Senators who fought to keep the protections, said on the Senate floor, “to pad the pockets of the President’s buddy from Chile.” The extracted minerals…

The life jacket was in the canoe, but the paddler wasn’t wearing it. After capsizing during what should have been a casual outing, he drowned — one of dozens of paddlesports deaths recorded in the latest U.S. Coast Guard Boating Accident Report Database. The database shows that roughly 80% of fatal incidents share that same detail: the paddler wasn’t wearing a vest. Wear Your Life Vest Last year’s Life Jacket Wear Rate Observation Study using data from 1999 to 2024, showed that 80% of youth wore life vests while paddling, but only 56% of adults were wearing vests. The gap between youth and adults shows up in the fatality data,…

Paddlers often worry about magnetic anomalies throwing off their compass in the Boundary Waters. The truth? It almost never happens, and the things most likely to mess up your compass are already in your pack. What Is Magnetic Deviation? When localized magnetic forces influence your compass, they cause what’s called magnetic deviation. These forces pull the needle away from its correct bearing and create an inaccurate reading, i.e. deviate from the reading. What Causes Compass Deviation in the Boundary Waters? Most cases of magnetic deviation come from your own gear. Anything with metal or a magnetic component, especially when kept close to your compass, can throw off the needle. Where…

There’s a kind of joy in using something that you made yourself. On a quiet morning in a remote campsite, when the lake is still and covered with fog, and the stove hisses to life, reaching for a spoon you carved from a birch limb feels more satisfying than reaching for titanium or plastic. While it’s a small thing and a simple tool, it carries the memory of your hands, your time, and the attention it took to bring it into being. The photo above shows a collection of four camping spoons. From left to right: Light My Fire Spork, a birch spoon I carved myself, a standard kitchen spoon,…

A first paddle in the Alpacka Raft Caribou reveals how this lightweight packraft performs on Lake Superior and why it is making me see new potential in places that I've gone before.

I’ve spent a lot of time sea kayaking on the Great Lakes, including a 45-day sea kayaking trip from Port Huron, MI on Lake Huron to Grand Marais, MN. In all of that paddling, I’d never once imagined the Great Lakes as islands within a sea. But that’s exactly the perspective that cartographer Stephen Kennedy created with his The Great Islands map. To produce the effect, the Great Lakes bathymetry was inverted, and by inverting it the depths become mountains. The familiar geography of the region is transformed into a completely new world. Michigan becomes the Michigan Sea. Minnesota becomes the Minnesota Maelstrom. Ontario becomes the Great Ontario Ocean. Other…

To kick off the year, I landed on a plan for a new trip. I’m going to try and combine two of my favorite activities into one adventure with a sport called bikerafting. Bikerafting combines bikepacking or touring with paddling using a lightweight and portable raft. While I haven’t finalized the entire route, it’s looking about 900 miles (if I can squeeze the trip into a slot in my schedule). It could shortened to about 400 miles total if I can’t make it work with my schedule. The goal is to ride gravel and bike paths from my house in northeastern Minnesota to Wisconsin, paddle two rivers (plus a short…