PaddlingLight.com

When apps show us a nonstop stream of adventure, such as sea kayaks in the surf, pristine wilderness canoeing, or winter whitewater, it can feel like that's the norm. It isn't. We define our own norm, and we don't have to be influenced by the paddling clips that the algorithm shows us.

In early November 2025, several people were f’ing around on a breakwater during a gales warning on Lake Superior, and they were about to find out. Waves ranged from 10 to 12 feet, and they were breaking over the breakwater. A large enough wave hit and washed one of the group into Lake Superior. The video below shows the wave and the woman getting washed into the big lake. Water temps were around 50°F, which is very cold. Luckily, she survived. While I’ve written about cold water before, this was a good reminder to write about it again. Cold water immersion is an issue that paddlers need to understand. In…

On Sunday, September 21, Darren Bush, owner of Rutabaga Paddlesports in Madison, Wisconsin, announced the closure of his store effective at the end of 2025, but Canoecopia will continue.

On June 23, 2025, the USDA announced plans to dismantle the 2001 Roadless Rule, stripping protections from 58.5 million acres of National Forest roadless areas and opening them to road building and logging. For nearly a quarter of a century, the Roadless Rule has protected these ecologically diverse areas from development and extraction, and over 75% of American support the Roadless Rule, but the current administration wants to rescind it to open up these areas to the lumber barons. Because I live on Superior National Forest in northern Minnesota and use the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and surrounding lakes often, I wanted to see what potential impact this could…

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been punting on a decision about the canoe and kayak plans. I haven’t been able to decide whether or not to remove them from my website. I’ve made the decision. The sales of these plans is leaving PaddlingLight. What I haven’t decided is, do I continue to sell them at all? There are various reasons that I’m doing this, but the primary one is that I don’t want to have to handle all the payments, orders, problems, etc. of running an online store anymore. I’m just not interested in doing it, and the revenue has dropped significantly in the last couple of years.…

A kayaker falsely claimed a Lake Superior speed record due to lack of easy access to existing records. Despite his correction, inaccurate news persisted. Reliable tracking of such achievements remains difficult due to limited record-keeping in the paddling community.

Dan Cooke, a beloved member of the Minnesota paddling community and creator of quality canoeing gear at Cooke Custom Sewing, passed away last night. His death is deeply mourned by friends and community members.

The post discusses "rescue shaming" in outdoor sports and highlights several cognitive biases, like the Dunning-Kruger Effect and FACETS heuristics, which impact decision-making and can lead to dangerous situations. Emphasizing education and empathy is encouraged.

Practitioners of SEA KAYAKING are a bunch of safety-conscious hoopy froods.  We sass this because sea kayakers always talk about safety. For example, “You just posted that video of the place I paddle. The video only showed calm water, but it gets crazy there. You should have introduced the video with a 15 minute safety talk about the dangers of paddling there when it gets crazy.” Sea kayakers have conversations that stretch out into 100s of comments about how one advertisement showing calm water might lead someone to buy a recreational kayak and go paddling in 10-foot waves. They debate the merits of self-rescues and then they debate them again. Sea kayakers come up with…

The NOC recently sent over a deal that I can offer you. It’s $500 off of their Grand Canyon Adventure. It runs August 28th to September 10th. Here’s their description: This classic rafting and kayaking adventure traverses through the entire length of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, 226 river miles, starting at at Lee’s Ferry and ending at Diamond Creek. Designed for active adults and families with children ages 12+ to paddle exciting rapids amongst magnificent cliffs, explore hidden coves, and camp on pristine sandy beaches as we boat throughout the canyon corridor. Each day will be an adventure filled with paddling, hiking to waterfalls and staying in…

It’s 2024 and PaddlingLight is still kicking away. It’s been 20 years of blogging about paddling on PaddlingLight and before that Nessmuking and before that on a different website. It’s hard to believe, but this is one of the longest lasting blogs about paddling on the internet. I’m almost a grey beard now, so I should get really good at rolling my sea kayak soon. Anyway, I have thoughts… Blogging over Marketing As I’ve expressed before, I think that social media ended up wrecking the golden age of blogging. There used to be a bunch of different paddling blogs bouncing ideas off of each other. Now, it’s just a few…

Years ago, I took time to analyze the story structure of different types of canoe and kayak adventures that were published in various magazines. I wanted to be able to pitch the types of stories that the editors were buying, and I wanted to be able to do it in the formats they were accepting. I ended up identify three different types of stories: Trip Reports, Autobiographical Trip Reports Focusing on a Global Issue, and a Biography. There were more types of stories, but these three were the most interesting to me. I outlined each of the different scenes that were used to tell the story. I’ve used these outlines…

Looking back at the spring and summer and early fall of 2021, leaves me wanting for more paddling. While I did do a few trips, including a big one, the Boundary Waters and surrounding areas were closed for much of the summer. Wildfires in the BWCAW closed the wilderness while I had time off and had planned on doing a lot of canoe camping with my kid. We’re hoping to get one more paddling trip in, but it’s looking like snow might come. Here’s a quick recap of my paddling in 2021. The year started off with a trip I’m calling Following Winchell. In 1879, Minnesota State Geologist Newton Horace…