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Looking For Kayak Action This Winter? Tune in to these great video casts
If you haven’t been following Sea Kayak Podcasts.com, you should. Sea Kayak Podcasts is the brainchild of Simon Willis, the man who made the excellent Sea Kayak with Gordon Brown videos, and it features short videos on a variety of subjects. The most recent include videos about repairing your kayak and interviews with kayak adventurers. Not only can you watch the videos on the website, but you can also download the videos right to your computer to watch them. I’m keeping this post short so you can head over to check out all the great videos that you’ve been missing.
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Best of PaddlingLight in 2013
I’m wrapping up the year at PaddlingLight and like I did last year, I’m looking back to see if there were any themes (In 2012, I got philosophical). This year, I didn’t really have a theme. I attempted and got close to my goal of a blog post a week, but summer was difficult. I was guiding trips, running my guiding business and teaching lessons about six days a week on average and that didn’t leave time for anything else, plus I wrote a lot of articles for magazines this year, which put Plight on the backburner. Mainly, my thought process in 2013 was pretty disjointed when it came to…
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National Hammock Day Giveaway
Did you know that there’s a national hammock day? I didn’t either, but, whether or not this is a made up holdiay, it’s one that I’d like to celebrate. You can easily celebrate it by kicking back on July 22nd in a hammock. If the bugs in northern Minnesota aren’t too bad that day, I’m going to. To help you celebrate Grand Trunk Goods is giving away $3000 in prizes — that’s a lot of hammocks. To win you need to upload a photo of your Grand Trunk gear or a photo of where you want to go with your Grand Trunk gear and then you get your friends to…
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Kayak Deck Slates
Over the past few years, I’ve run into many kayakers who see my sticker deck slates and ask where they can buy them. Unfortunately, they were only made in England and were was hard to get them and then they stopped making them. Over the last few years, I’ve toyed with getting some manufactured and offering them for sale on PaddlingLight. I even went so far as to have a graphic designer draw slates up, but then sat on it. This year, I took the plunge and had it done. I did an initial run of 100 slates to see how well they sell. Before I put the offer up…
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Canoe & Kayak Magazine People’s Choice Award
I need some help to try and win a Canoe & Kayak People’s Choice Photo Contest. Please visit Canoe & Kayak People’s Choice Photo Contest. And then click “Vote” on my photo. Thanks! Here’s the image again. A sea kayak on Two Island Lake in Cook County, Minnesota. The clouds reflect in the calm water at sunset.
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Press Release: Attempt to Circumnavigate the World Suspended
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Unattempt to Circumnavigate the World by Kayak Suspended Grand Marais, Minnesota (April 1, 2013) — Today expedition paddler Bryan Hansel indefinately suspended his attempt to attempt a never before attempted kayaking route in the pursuit of becoming the first person in the world to circumnavigate the world by kayak. He was attempting the solo expedition to bring attention to the slowest growing religion in the world, The Church of the Latter-Day Dude. The expedition was set to start on the Great Lakes, travel to England via Greenland and Iceland. Then journey to the Mediterranean Sea to the Suez Channel and around India, with a short jaunt below…
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The Roadless Coast Kayaking Trip Documentary is Now Free
Today, the award-winning film Ikkatsu: The Roadless Coast available for viewing to the public. This is about a kayaking trip that documented the Japanese Tsunami debris along the Washington coast. Here’s the blurb from the movie: In March of 2011 Japan suffered a devastating earthquake followed by a series of equally devastating tsunamis. As the waters receded, an estimated 1.5 million tons of debris was washed back into the Pacific – all of which was destined to land on distant shores. In the summer of 2012 three professional kayakers, supported by a staff of mainstream scientists started an unprecedented journey; paddle the roadless coast of Washington to survey the debris on some…
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Solo Stove: a Lightweight Cooking Solution
I’d like to announce a new advertiser on PaddlingLight.com. Today, we added Solo Stove, a wood-burning backpacking stove that can also be used with alcohol burners as a backup. The Solo Stove boils a quart of water in about eight to ten minutes using sticks, twigs, pine cones or other burnable items. It weighs 9 ounces and fits inside a 4.5 inch by 4.7 inch pot. Both the pot and stove weigh just over a pound when taken together. This is only an ounce heavier than a PocketRocket stove setup (without the fuel) and it comes close to a popcan stove setup if you include the fuel for the popcan. On longer trips,…
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Winter Canoe Paintings
Each winter photographers and painters from around the Midwest gather at the YMCA canoe camp Menogyn for the Grand Marais Art Colony’s Winter Arts Festival. This year, the art’s festival ran from January 25th to February 1st. During the week, plein air painters, Neil Sherman, Matt Kania and Tom McGregor painted canoes racked for the winter at the camp. The contrast between the white snow and blues, reds and greens of the canoes popped off the wall during the show that runs all of February at the Grand Marais art colony. (Featured painting by Tom McGregor.) I caught up with each of the painters and asked them a few questions: PaddlingLight: Canoes,…
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PaddlingLight needs your help!!! Big time.
I need your help to stop a proposed law in the state that I live that directly affects whether or not I can continue to publish and write on PaddlingLight as it directly impacts PaddlingLight’s primary income source. The law is called an Affiliate Nexus Tax and it’s an attempt to force out-of-state retailers to collect state sales tax. The sad part of this is that Minnesota might sacrifice 4,500 jobs and $300 million in income over a law that has already been struck down as unconstitutional in a circuit court in Illinois. More info below. What you can do is write the folks listed at the bottom of the article. If you don’t live…
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Build Your Own Greenland-style Skin-on-Frame Kayak Course
This winter, you should visit Grand Marais, Minnesota, one of the best paddling towns in the U.S., and learn how to build a skin-on-frame sea kayak. In late March, North House Folk School is offering a 12-day course on how to build your own skin-on-frame kayak. At the end of the course, you’ll have a kayak that you build with your own hands and is ready to take home. I’ve built a skin-on-frame kayak before and it was a rewarding project, and I ended up with a fun kayak that I used for a number of years. The hardest part of the project for me was trying to learn everything…
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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…
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The North American Odyssey Expedition
On May 9th, Dave and Amy Freeman, the leaders of the Wilderness Classroom Organization, kayaked away from Grand Portage, Minnesota on Lake Superior for the fifth leg of their North American Odyssey Expedition. The North American Odyssey is a 12,000-mile expedition across North America. It started on Earth Day in 2010 in Seattle. A team of four kayaked from Seattle to Skagway, Alaska via the Inside Passage. After finishing the paddle, half the team journeyed home with the kayaks, and Dave and Amy continued by backpacking over the mountains following the Klondike Gold Rush. Once over the mountains, they canoed north to the Arctic Ocean. After the snow set in, two more adventurers joined…
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Kayaking to the Sea: Sault Ste. Marie to Quebec City
Last weekend, Tim Gallaway, a PaddlingLight contributor, left on a 850 to 900 mile long trip from Sault Ste. Marie to Quebec City via kayak. I asked him to share a little information about his trip to PaddlingLight’s readers. The goods are below, but first this is how you can follow Tim’s journey: Soo to the Sea Facebook page Tim Gallaway’s Twitter Kayaking to the Sea Webpage Kayaking to the Sea I’ve had to repeat this bit so many times it has more or less become a script. It’s quite interesting really. I’ve come to recognize what questions are about to be asked and if the person asking me the…
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Summer and Instruction Speaking Schedule
This spring and summer I’ve been invited to speak and teach at a number of events. The first event happens this upcoming weekend in Minneapolis at Midwest Mountaineering. I’m presenting two different slide shows and am sharing a booth with the Wilderness Classroom Organization, a non-profit that you should help support. If you’re in the Twin Cities this weekend come see me speak at these presentations: Outdoor Adventure Expo (Twin Cities) Canoe & Kayak Expedition Photography Fri, April 27, 7:30pm Hanson Hall, Room 104 Elevator pitch: Whether on a long distance paddling expedition or a shorter trip to a nearby area such as the BWCA, chances are that you’re going to…
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