The North American Triple Crown of Kayaking

Back in 2023, I proposed a Triple Crown of Paddling that included the Inside Passage, the Mississippi River, and Lake Superior among other classic North American trips. Later, I was asked to write an article about it specific to sea kayaking for Paddling Magazine, and I was asked to select three routes to propose. I went with a salt water trip, a river trip, and a Great Lakes trip. I thought those choices represented the diversity of paddling routes in North America. That article appeared in issue 74 and is now online here. Today, I decided to make a map showing the routes. I present it to you now.

I originally had a yellow parchment paper look with a green background, but after a little online feedback, I changed it to the above.

To make the map, I used QGIS and a base map and town data from Natural Earth, which I styled to the color pallet that I use for most of my maps. I decided it would be fun to have towns that were spaced along the route shown. I used slightly reworded descriptions of each route that I wrote for Paddling Magazine. I also wrote up a new overall description based on the gist of the two articles. For the compass, I used a National Park Service style compass, although I wish I had used something simpler and may change it in the future. For the scale, I wanted to go up to 1,000 miles, which I think is a significant trip length. I smoothed the Lake Superior route, but I didn’t do it for the other two. That’s something that I think I would do to the other two routes if I were making it again.

The hardest part of the making the map was moving around the route titles and descriptions until they sort of balanced each other out. After finished, I decided to switch the colors of the routes. Originally, the Mississippi was purple. It’s the Big Muddy, so it really needed to be brown.

I had previously completed a different map while first learning QGIS about my personal trips on the Great Lakes, so I knew the style I was going for. I think I’ve gotten much better now, and it took a lot less time to make the new map than it did this older one. My last post also included one of my maps.

In the end, I like how this new one turned out. I’ve been working on a Boundary Waters map without any color, and I may add in some of this color. You can see the state of my current Boundary Waters map in my Frost River trip report that I posted in the fall.

While I was researching the routes for Paddling Magazine, I realized that Dave Freeman, a friend of mine, had actually completed all three of these routes. He used a canoe on the Mississippi, and sea kayaks on the other two. So, at least one person as completed the North American Triple Crown of Kayaking.

I don’t know if paddlers will start to adopt the idea that completing these three routes would be a worthy goal, but I do think it would be fun to have a triple crown of paddling. I enjoy watching backpackers and bikepackers tackle their triple crowns. It’s a big achievement for them when they do.