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Canoecopia 2019 Trip Report
Last weekend, I attended Canoecopia in Madison, Wisconsin. It’s the world’s largest paddlesports expo. I gave a couple of presentations. One on paddling the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande River and the other on Photographing Seascapes. When I wasn’t giving presentations, I was in the Northstar Canoe booth helping out as a Northstar sponsored paddler. I did manage to walk part of the show, but not the entire show. When you know so many people in the industry, it is hard to make it from one side of the show to the other and up and down all the isles quickly. I wish I had gotten to spend a…
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Totally Lame GoPro: Setting a Kayaker on Fire
Someone posted the below video to my social media feeds today and made the comment, “There are thousands of good reasons and good ways to paddle, this is not one of them.” The title for the video was, GoPro: The Kayak Fire Fall with Rafa Ortiz. With a clickbaity title like that, how could I not click on the link and see what GoPro was doing now? My first thought when I started the video was, I wonder if they found a natural phenomenon like Yosemite’s Firefall. When the setting sun hits Horsetail Falls exactly right in the month of February, it lights up like a burning stream of fire.…
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Minnesota Border Route Challenges
The Border Route is a well-established 260-mile classic canoe route from International Falls to Lake Superior, following the international boundary between Minnesota and Ontario. The western half consists mainly of large open lakes, including Rainy, Kabetogama, and Namakan Lakes in Voyageur’s National Park and Lac LaCroix, Crooked, and Basswood Lakes in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA). The eastern half consists of numerous pristine wilderness lakes and streams, connected by frequent short portages and brimming with history from the fur trade era. Most paddlers complete the route from west to east, hoping for tailwinds and a light-weight food pack by the end when they reach the historic 8.5-mile Grand Portage…
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Combat Wipe Review
In the backcountry, you get dirty by the end of a long day of paddling and sweating in your drysuit or under your life vest. Before clawing your way into a sleeping bag, it’s nice to feel clean. While we are around water when paddling, sometimes the water is too cold to swim in or too salty or dirty. In cases like that, I like to take a sponge bath or use a wet wipe. I recently had an opportunity to review Combat Wipes, a type of wet wipes designed for the outdoors. Combat Wipes are a 100% bio-degradable wet wipes. They measure approximately 7 by 8 inches. The samples…
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Paddling 2019 Calendar
This year, I decided to offer a Paddling 2019 Calendar consisting of images that I’ve made throughout the years. The images are from the Lake Superior and Boundary Waters region with one exception from the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande River. You can get the calendar here: Paddling 2019 Calendar If you order before midnight on 11/25, you get 25% off. So, act fast. Buy early and buy often. These make great gifts for you canoe and kayak loving friends. Save 25% on orders of calendars Use Code: BLACKFRIDAY25 Cannot be combined with other offers Does not apply to ebooks or services Ends November 25th at 11:59 PM …
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Is Wilderness Lost? and 2018 Endorsements
Every time I’m going to write something about wilderness protection, it seems like I always have to remind readers that one of the missions of PaddlingLight is “we believe growing paddlesport participation advances wilderness protection. Part of our mission is promoting the protection and preservation of our federal, state and local lands.” I have to do it even though that mission statement appears on every page of the website, because for some reason writing about wilderness protection triggers a certain subset of paddlers who are against wilderness protection and I have to put up with name calling and disrespectful comments. I’m leaving comments on despite knowing better. I wonder how…
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How to pick a Northstar Solo Canoe
So here’s a challenge – when Northstar already makes a bunch of really great solo canoes, and then keeps adding new ones, how do you pick a Northstar Solo canoe that is perfect for you? Two things are key – figuring out your “paddling profile” and understanding what characteristics makes a particular Northstar a good match for that profile. Back in 2008, PaddlingLight published How to pick a Bell Solo canoe. I really liked the Q&A format devised to help paddlers build their paddling profile and the scorecard that mapped the answers to a recommended Bell Canoe. What’s the connection between Bell and Northstar? Ted Bell sold Bell Canoes in…
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Bikepacking in Canoe Country
Bikepacking in Canoe Country can be just as fun as paddling in the Boundary Waters. Besides paddling, my other recreational love is biking and I love touring by bike. This year, I’ve gotten a few paddling trips in (canoeing the lower canyons of the Rio Grande, overnight on Lake Superior and an upcoming BWCA trip), but I hadn’t gotten a bike tour in. I decided to bike in my backyard and bikepack on the gravel roads of Cook County, one of the counties that contains the Boundary Waters. There’s something like 2,000 miles of roads in Cook County and much of that is gravel. I ended up riding a short…
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Best Backpacking Sleeping Pad for Paddling
In my S24O: Kayaking Kit List article, I wrote about my future needs, “As I’ve gotten older I don’t mind sacrificing a bit of weight for a more plush sleeping pad. So, I brought a bigger pad than I have in the past. While not a huge deal inside the kayak, it is bigger than I’d like. I’d like to get a smaller sleeping pad that offers big comfort. If you have a suggestion, please, let me know in the comments.” I received a few emails and I messaged some buddies of mine to see what they suggested as the best backpacking sleeping pad for paddling. From Max Watzke: You asked…
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S24O: Kayaking Kit List
I recently started doing more S24Os (sub-24 hour overnight), because it seems like with everything I’ve taken on over the last year I’m not getting out of personal paddling trips anymore. I recently visited the Fall River campsite on the Lake Superior Water Trail. The MN DNR is planning on building a bridge in front of the Fall River waterfall and next to the campsite ruining the privacy that the you get at the campsite, so I wanted to go there one last time before the DNR ruins it. If you want to take action, visit They Want to Put a Bridge in Front of the Fall River Waterfall for…
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Inexpensive and Lightweight Sleeping System
This interesting inexpensive and lightweight sleeping system comes from Reg Lake. He is using inexpensive, quilted throws from Costco. When Costco has them in stock, they run about $20. The entire system, which includes an old-school Therm-a-rest Prolite Sleeping Pad, a ground tarp and one Costco throw weighs 3 pounds and 9 ounces. Instead of packing everything separately, Reg rolls the entire kit up (see below) and packs it away in a dry bag. To make the system more useful, Reg added snaps across the bottom of the quilted throws and then an additional snap near his shin. This forms a pocket for his feet and helps him stay warmer.…
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SOF Siskiwit Bay Builder’s Log
Peter Lord writes: I have almost completed the frame of my, shortened to 16’ (x 0.94 in length, frame spacings adjusted) to decrease the displacement slightly to suit my weight of 162 lb (73 kg). It will be for day trips and weekend touring on the Swedish lakes and in the archipelagoes. It is a hybrid of “fuselage frames” and ribs, as I did not want a frame at station #4 getting in the way of my legs, and I wanted to try making ribs. I used all six ply frames of 5mm Baltic birch I already had, 3-ply glassed on both sides with 3oz cloth) to make the frame…
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GSI Outdoors Infinity Backpackers Mug Review
The GSI Outdoors Infinity Backpackers Mug is a mug. It holds drinks and you drink out of it. What more can you say about a mug? It works. Buy it. Seriously though. We’ve had GSI Outdoors Infinity Backpackers Mug for several years in several variations. They have evolved over time. My first one was plastic with just a thin foam sleeve around it. It worked great of hot chocolate and other warm adult drinks. It was light enough at about 3 ounces that you didn’t feel bad about bringing it along on a trip. The next version, which we bought for my wife was basically the same with a foam…
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Lake Nipigon Kayaking Trip Report
Dates: Sept. 12 – Oct. 2, 2017 by Hannah Fanney & Rodney Claiborne Reason for Travel Lake Nipigon is a large lake directly above Lake Superior. We were familiar with the lake’s location, but information on it was difficult to obtain. It looked to us like a less developed Superior with smaller seas and more protection available from the myriad of islands and peninsulas. Our goal was to spend time exploring an area we were not familiar with while testing out the carrying capacity of food and equipment in our boats. We chose the fall season due to our seasonal employment schedule and to enjoy rougher seas, cooler temperatures, and…
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How to Take a $H!T in the BWCAW
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) is America’s most used wilderness area. Each year an estimated 250,000 visitors paddle its pristine lakes and over 1,200 miles of canoe routes and camp at one of over 2,000 designated campsites. This many people using the million acres puts a strain on the land. To help alleviate that strain, here’s a tutorial on how to take a sh** in the Boundary Waters. While in other wilderness areas if you need to take a crap you dig a hole and bury your poop (as outlined in the book How to Shit in the Woods), it isn’t like that in the BWCAW. In the…
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