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Dreaming About Belcher Islands Kayaking
Today, I was going to write an essay about my view on rough water sea kayaking and whether or not this specific subset of sea kayaking really fits in with my view of what sea kayaking is and whether or not the continued emphasis on rough water paddling is good for the sport, but I got sidetracked, probably for the better, by the Google maps on GeoGarage while trying to identify several lights that I saw last night from across Lake Superior. What I saw on Google maps that blew my mind was the Belcher Islands in Hudson Bay, and the cool thing: the islands have a history of kayaking that goesโฆ
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Twin Lakes Canoe Route Trip Report
Just 25 miles from Grand Marais, Minnesota, the Twin Lakes Canoe Route [pdf] offers canoeists a five lake adventure that unlike the nearby Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness doesnโt cost a dime and doesnโt require a permit. The US Forest Service describes the the Twin Lakes Canoe Route as a quiet, wilderness-like lake experience featuring five water accessed campsites, four portages and plenty of fishing. While weโve day tripped on the lakes before, we never camped, so with only one night to spare, we decided to give it a go. The Twin Lakes Canoe Route Put-In The put-in for the Twin Lakes Canoe Route is 16.5 miles up the Gunflint Trailโฆ
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Save the Boundary Waters From Cell Towers Letter Writing Campaign
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) is one of only two federally designation canoe wilderness areas in the United States of America. Itโs also Americaโs most used federally designated wilderness area, an area that Americans set aside to protect and preserve under two separate pieces of bipartisan federal legislation. It consists over 1,000 lakes connected by portage trails within a million acres of roadless wilderness. It also has primitive campsites that allow canoeists the possibility of paddling for a month without seeing anything man-made intruding. Aldo Leopold argued that outdoor recreation is valuable directly proportional to the experienceโs intensity, and โto the degree to which it differs from and contrasts with workaday life.โ And itโs this reason thatโฆ
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The Moose Rack Review: The Ultimate Kayak Rack?
Earlier this year The Moose Rack (Headland Industries) sent me a rack to try out and review. While I usually like to use a product for 30 days before I review it, I found that with this rack, I got the basic of it in a few minutes, so this is my The Moose Rack review. The Moose Rack makes the following claims about the Hull-PRO Kayak Storage rack: Fits Many Unique Hull Shapes, Stores Your Boat On Edge Where It Is Strongest, 304 Stainless Steel J-Hook Cradles, Anodized Billet T6 Aluminum Brackets, Durable Nitrile Foam Protection Pads, 300 lb Capacity, 180 Degree Swivel Design, Locks Into Place When In Use, Fast Installation With Only Hand Tools, Made rightโฆ
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Quick Review: How to get to THE NORTH POLE โฆand other iconic adventures
Tim Moss, an adventurer who has traveled around the world using 80 different types of transportation and who has supported over 100 expedition worldwide, has come out with a new book, How to Get to the North Pole: . . . and Other Iconic Adventures (Kindle Edition). The book centers around seven adventures: crossing a desert, getting to the north pole, rowing an ocean, cycling around the world, sailing the seven seas, getting to the south pole and climbing an unclimbed mountain. To help him write the book, he consulted over 50 explorers. After a brief introduction covering gear and funding, Tim details the seven adventures using a common formatโฆ
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Two Pictures: Tettegouche State Park and Pigeon Bay Kayaking Trips
This summer, I started a new kayak guiding company and am one of the few Grand Marais kayaking companies. One of the reasons that I started this company was because I love paddling and wanted to share it with more people and many of the locations that I guide werenโt being guided anymore since a friend of mine sold his business several years ago. In Grand Marais, no one was guiding the Fall River Trip. No one was guiding the full Tettegouche State Park trip, although two places do half the trip, and no one was doing Pigeon River. Additionally, no guides in the area were running multi-day trips alongโฆ
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The Petzl Zipka Plus vs. the Princeton Tec EOS Headlamps
When I first got into adventure sports, my headlamp was a flashlight combined with a Velcro strap, and the Petzl Zoom headlamp was the headlamp that I lusted over. When I could afford a headlamp, I went out and bought a Zoom and it served me well until Princeton Tec started to introduce lighter and smaller headlights. I was working retail at the time and got a box of samples to try out. That trial box turned me into the corporationโs headlamp geek. I was hooked until a few years later when Petzl introduced its first LED headlamp, which got something like 40 hours of battery life. I got one at theโฆ
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Photo: Have a Good Caption?
I took this of Andrea Knepper at the Great Lakes Sea Kayak Symposium. Clearly sheโs having fun, but whatโs she doing? Do you have a good caption for this photo?
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Three Waves from Safety
Today, I had the most exciting rescue of the year. In the morning, I left the harbor with someone who had kayaked before. We went out on the lake into about 1.5 feet of chop and swung around a point into a protected bay where we paddled around for an hour or so. During our time paddling, the wind picked up slightly to about 10 knots with gusts to 15 knots. On our way back, we had a choice to make. We could either portage from the bay back into the harbor which would avoid the rough water or we could paddle back around the point and into the choppyโฆ
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Great Lakes Sea Kayaking Symposium Trip Report
I just got back to Grand Marais, Minnesota after spending a four-day weekend in Grand Marais, Michigan at the Great Lakes Sea Kayak Symposium, an event organized by Down Wind Sports and Kelly Blades. The symposium gathers together some of the best instructors in the Midwest, combines them with some of the best instructors from Canada and even abroad, then it throws in a ton of sea kayaking students and mixes it up. It makes for a fun four days of adventure. Grand Marais, Michigan is a small town of just a couple of hundred of people, a high school graduating class consisting of seven students, a brew pub andโฆ
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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 moreโฆ
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The Best Shoes for Kayaking: Two Great Wetshoes You Should Own
Over the 15 years that Iโve kayaked, Iโve used a bunch of different shoes and Iโve had my favorites, but I havenโt found a shoe that I loved enough to buy it twice until now. And, now I have two shoes that I consider the best shoes for kayaking. Iโve purchased one twice and the other one, after it wears out, Iโll purchase again. NRS Comm-3 Kayaking Wetshoe NRSโs Comm-3 Wetshoe is designed for outfitters and guided kayaking trips. Itโs made from 3-mm neoprene with titanium, which means that itโs durable. I bought my first one out of a used commercial shoe fleet, guided in it for a year and woreโฆ
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While the rewards may be great, you might not like the consequences
At one of the entrances of Yellowstone National Park, they collect the innocent and naive questions that some of the visitors ask when they come to the park, such as โWhen do the rangers pen up the bison for the eveningโ or โWhen do they turn off Old Faithful?โ They also collect stories of some of the dangerous things that tourists do there. Years ago a friend of mine related to me an incident that she witnessed as a park employee. A park visitor placed his toddler on the back of a bison, walked off, took and picture and luckily retrieved the kid without incident. When my friend confronted theโฆ
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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 joinedโฆ
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What Kind of Kayak Cockpit Should I Buy or Build?
I recently found this question in PaddlingLightโs inbox (BTW, I answer all questions that I receive. Sometimes they spark article ideas): I am considering the Siskiwit SOF build. My son & I are about to skin a Sea Tour 17 Explorer, but I havenโt formed the cockpit yet. Can you enlighten me on the different cockpit shapes? I see round, oval and egg shaped with โarm restsโ(?) at the narrow end. So, what kind of kayak cockpit should you buy or build? Short Answer: I personally like the egg shaped with the โarm restsโ cockpit, which is called a keyhole cockpit. The โarm restsโ are knee or thigh braces (depending onโฆ
