Rope! Throwbag technique is another skill every boater should practice. Photo: Kalob Grady
Safety first. It’s the golden rule of kayaking. There are hundreds of articles written about the importance of risk management on the river and safety basics are well known and respected by most kayakers. Make yourself so invaluable, everyone will want to paddle with you.
Here are 5 safety kayaking skills to take you to the next level
1 Talk it out
Good communication is so straightforward to play it safe in whitewater it often gets overlooked. This is your key to success on the river. Take just a minute to get your team together and get on the same page at the put-in. If you’re above a big rapid or challenging line, make sure the group has the correct beta.
Set safety for a rapid with high swim potential, establish beforehand who is going to get a swimmer, paddle and kayak, or who is going to throw the first rope. Don’t only do this for gnarly runs, make a habit of communicating on your backyard runs too. The quick conversation to create an action plan for when SHTF will save your ass one day.
2 Overreact every time
Waiting until your fellow paddler is pinned or swimming to react increases the risk of making bad decisions under stress and making a bad situation worse. Be dramatic—make plans for a worst-than-best-case-scenario before it occurs.
My favorite example of overreaction comes from my background teaching children. As soon as a student flips over, I dash towards them, bridging the distance between us. Every single time. Practice the skill even when your friend with a bombproof roll flips over on your warm, deep water backyard run to dial in the habit for those cold, shallow rivers with increased consequences.
Best case scenario, you get a quick sprint and your friend rolls up. If not, you’re there in time to hand of god the kayaker and save a swim. In the worst case, you are much closer to helping with rescue and eliminating unnecessary moments in the water.
3 Hand of God
The ability to roll up a friend, without the kayaker playing a role in his or her own rescue, will earn you endless rounds at the bar aprés paddle and keep your paddling partner dry, warm and in high spirits. The effectiveness of the hand of god in comparison to a T-rescue is like comparing small batch Canadian maple syrup to the maple-flavored high-fructose corn syrup sold on the same shelf. It’s not even in the same league.
A hand of god allows you to come in fast and ensures capsized kayakers go from upside down to right-side-up in moments, without even knowing what is going on. In the unlikely scenario, your paddling bud can’t pull their skirt or aid in a T-rescue, a hand of god will reunite them with a breath of fresh air.
4 Boat-over-boat rescue
Pushing and pulling an 80-gallon kayak full of water is low on the list of things I look forward to doing. However, the skill to be able to empty a friend’s kayak mid-river is as invaluable as it gets. Even dumping just half or three-quarters of the water out of the cockpit makes a huge difference in the effort it takes to get the kayak to shore.
This skill can evolve into getting your friends back into their kayaks right then and there in the middle of the river if they possess the balance. On rivers like the Ottawa or the White Nile, you can save your friends a long swim to shore and carry on your merry way downstream.
5 Go quadruple blade
We’ve all been stranded on shore after a swim, way downstream of where a helpful mate tossed our paddle onto the river bank. Save your friend the walk by practising paddling with two paddles at the same time. Being able to paddle with four blades means you don’t have to fiddle with a tether to pull a paddle behind and you’re less likely to lose such a valuable piece of gear to the river gods.
Rope! Throwbag technique is another skill every boater should practice. Feature Photo: Kalob Grady
Harold Jessup, at age 91, with TWO of the thousands
of whitewater paddlers who got their start at his
campground beside the Madawaska River. | Photo: Ian Merringer
Every weekend during the last 40-odd paddling seasons, vehicles topped with canoes and kayaks have turned right at a non-descript sign and rolled down a gravel lane and into a campground beside the Madawaska River.
Soon after, Harold Jessup would coast up in his red Jetta sedan and lift himself out to gently extract the modest $10 nightly camping fee, no reservations necessary.
He never kept you talking too long himself. Like many men of his generation and geography, Jessup said more with his eyes than his words. But he had a way of maintaining easy eye contact, which tended to make his guests offer up more than his fair share of small talk.
Harold Jessup’s Paddling Legacy
Harold Jessup died this past fall after 93 years living in Palmer Rapids, a small town split by the Madawaska River east of Ontario’s Algonquin Park.
Since the mid-1970s he ran Jessup’s Campground, a decidedly undeveloped but comfortable stretch of forested riverbank located, to many people’s great fortune, beside a compact collection of challenging but welcoming whitewater.
Thousands of people came every spring and summer. For many it was their introduction to the sport, so much so that longtime Whitewater Ontario mainstay Gary George credits it with having profound importance for the growth of whitewater paddling in Canada’s most populous province.
“His influence was somewhat inadvertent, I suppose, but when he opened his campground it exponentially affected the sport,” says George. “Half the Ontario-based community learned to roll there.”
“You have the ripple effect, the butterfly wing thing. It absolutely affected the trajectory of the sport in the province in a way that will never be fully understood.”
Beyond the easy manner of the proprietor, the campground offered a rare combination of easy access, reliable water levels, diverse rapids and the beauty of a riverside left mostly in its natural state.
Because Jessup kept it unaffiliated with any commercial enterprise, it’s been the go-to stop for instructional groups of all kinds.
Black Feather Wilderness Adventure Company owner Wendy Grater says since the mid-1970s they’ve taught close to 2,000 paddlers at Jessup’s. She credits geography with how influential it’s been as a launching pad.
She notes the main drop has a lively class-III chute, but also big eddies and two lower-volume alternate channels. The washout is into a large, calm pool, so the consequences of a capsize are low. Just beyond the pool is a long, class two rapid hooking around a point of land, effectively making the portage half as long as the rapid.
“Within 500 meters there was so much opportunity,” says Grater. “Where else would you go?”
Grater says over the years Jessup would visit their campsite and from time to time would look out over the water and say, “Someday I’m going to try that.”
There’s no indication he ever did run the rapid that took his name, but he became part of the paddling community all the same. Of the dozens of remembrances posted to the obituary tribute wall of the funeral home website, all but one was from those who described themselves as paddlers.
His daughter, Verna Jessup-Mantifel, says Jessup looked forward to the campsite opening every year. “Come May 24th weekend, his step quickened.”
Jessup-Mantifel confirms the campsite will be open as usual for the 2019 season.
“After reading all the tributes to my dad, I’m well aware that we have big shoes to fill.”
And so, the gate beside the nondescript sign will continue to swing open, leading to a rapid with reliable flow and rocks in just the right spots.
“Even at low levels, it’s still useful and functional in some way,” says George. “It’s always there. It’s never not there.”
For decades, the same could be said for the welcoming farmer with the kind eyes. A paddling champion, whether he knew it or not.
Harold Jessup, at age 91, with TWO of the thousands of whitewater paddlers who got their start at his campground beside the Madawaska River. Text and Feature Photo: Ian Merringer
Carmen Kuntz has been a part of Balkan Rivers Tour since 2017.
Photo by Katja Jemecs
A paddle can be a powerful tool. It can get me into remote canyons and out of sticky spots on the river. And it can get me heard. Banging my paddle against my boat, I’m part of a mass of people flowing through the main streets of Podgorica, Montenegro.
We are just a few hundred meters from the Moraca River, which flows unobstructed from the grey, karst mountains of Montenegro through the capital city and into Lake Skadar.
How Kayakers Defend The Free-Flowing Balkan Rivers
We kayakers look like fish out of water, but it’s not the first or last time we will hit the pavement during the month-long Balkan Rivers Tour.
The BRD hopes to shift the perception of dams, directing the conversation towards suitable energy alternatives.
Locals mix with kayakers from eight countries as we simultaneously celebrate the local rivers and draw awareness to the threats they face. Our bright boats draw attention and banners in the four local Balkan languages—Albanian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian— convey our message.
The Balkans are home to some of the last free-flowing rivers in Europe, and more than 2,700 hydroelectric projects are planned for the coming years.
Everyone here wants the rivers treasured, enjoyed, respected and protected. Disheartened by the talk but lack of action from large river conservation NGOs, Slovenian kayaker and biologist Rok Rozman dreamed up the Balkan Rivers Tour three years ago, imaging a way to showcase what was at stake (see www.paddlingmag.com/0011).
With a crew of friends, he toured the Balkans by paddle for a month, kayaking as many rivers as possible, meeting locals fighting to keep their local rivers dam-free and photographing the beauty threatened. In the years since the annual Balkan River Tour has evolved into the largest direct-action river conservation movement in Europe.
The Balkan River Defence was created by like-minded paddlers
The Balkan River Defence (BRD) grew from the tour, consisting of a few like-minded paddlers who now work year-round to connect a network of people, from local villagers to national conservation organizations.
“BRD is effective because of its ability to gather large groups of people, travel light and get to where action is needed on the ground,” says Ben Webb, a kayaker and river conservationist from Australia who manages the Maranon Waterkeeper in Peru. As the founder of a grassroots organization working in collaboration with locals in another part of the world, Webb brought a new perspective to the tour. “Grassroots activism works because it gives people a voice and the platform to express what they need.”
The BRD hopes to shift the perception of dams, directing the conversation towards suitable energy alternatives.
They also hope to inspire more engagement with the outdoor sports industry and the people who live and play closest to wild rivers to get involved. The people who spend time in its remote gorges and deep canyons should be the rivers’ staunchest defenders.
Carrying boats through town, portaging around dams and paddling the resulting flatwater is the norm on each Balkan Rivers Tour. Social media shows keyboard warriors the best side of the Balkans, but the tour isn’t all whitewater and sunshine. Long days in the car traveling on dirt roads to get to rural villages and remote rivers are followed by late nights preparing press releases and editing content. When I crawl into bed after spending a day with villagers in Albania or Bosnia who are putting everything they have into fighting to preserve their local river, I imagine what it would be like if every person living beside a river stood up for it.
Paddle. Veslo. Vosis. Лопатка. Весло.
Depending on where you are in the Balkans, the word changes—it’s meaning doesn’t. Lately, my paddle has seen far fewer days on the river, but the Defend Wilderness sticker on the blade is a reminder why. Anyone can start a movement like Balkan Rivers Tour. Whether with a paddle, fishing rod, paintbrush or pen—it’s just a matter of finding your medium and making some noise.
Carmen Kuntz has been a part of Balkan Rivers Tour since 2017. Feature Photo: Katja Jemecs
Caught between a rock and a hard place. | Photos: Luke Laurin
I write this after just returning from probably my last river trip of the 2018 season. Five days on Algonquin Park’s classic Petawawa River, in oar rigs with my second-year, guide-training diploma students.
Late fall means daytime temperatures just above freezing, early nightfall, and rain-fed high water on this undammed river. Drysuits, cold hands and feet, a down coat in camp and early bedtimes are the rules.
Some might call it miserable, but every year I look forward to it.
How Log Drivers Contributed To River Running
The section of the river we run, Lake Traverse to McManus Lake, has a couple of significant drops, all runnable with oars, and dozens of smaller ledges and continuous rapids.
Perfect eastern multi-day rafting. There is one kicker though: Crooked Chute. As the crux rapid, Crooked Chute has an accelerator entry, a 100-degree right-hand elbow, and two holes flanked by pinning rocks. Technical class III at the lowest levels, beefy IV in mid-range to scary V at higher levels. It does not take much water to change the tone of this rapid.
Late fall rain means we saw higher water this year. A solid class V. There was a line to be found, but it was tight, fast, carried big consequences, and we were two days from the nearest road. Not a place for institutional raft trips like a college training program. We were walking.
Sounds terrible, right? Portaging four loaded oar rigs, coolers, boxes and piles of drybags with winter gear. But it is hands-down the easiest portage in all of expedition rafting. Thank you, anonymous river men from a 180 years ago.
For those unfamiliar with eastern Canadian rivers, here’s a history lesson.
These rivers were the historical thoroughfares across the land. From the earliest Indigenous travelers to European explorers, then fur traders and finally loggers, rivers were industrial highways. Goods were paddled in and fur and logs floated out.
For the Petawawa, starting in about 1840, giant white pine trees standing 200 feet tall were felled and floated the 180 kilometers downstream to the Ottawa River, eventually making their way to Montreal and loaded on ships to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
This was all accomplished by the hands of intrepid log drivers, river men who rode the logs downstream or shepherded them in wooden pointer boats.This is a romantic and brutal era in Canadian history, pre-dating life jackets and, for most of these farm boys, the ability to swim.
On their way upstream in the fall—the log drivers would spend the winter in bush camps cutting trees—the log drivers would ‘clean’ the river.
Which means, they removed the inhibiting rocks. By hand.
Stacked alongside the biggest rapids—Poplar Falls, Devil’s Cellar—are rows 300 feet long, six feet high of rocks removed from the rapids. Thousands of them and none smaller than 50 pounds. Flowing class II was once bouldery class III. What is now class IV would have been unrunnable.
Make no mistake, any raft guide goes to great lengths to avoid portaging. But if one has to do it, it does not get better than this.
This brings us back to Crooked Chute.
Too tight and treacherous to run huge logs down, the river men blasted and hacked a perfect 12-foot wide, flat-bottomed, downhill-sloped shortcut channel to skip the crux. Metal rails easily moved logs and wooden boats past the gnar. This was somewhere around 1845. When the river drive era ended in 1912, the channel, and the river itself was abandoned. It was not until whitewater paddlers showed up some 50 years later the work of these river men was put back to use, this time to portage canoes, and now my trip’s four oar rigs.
Make no mistake, any raft guide goes to great lengths to avoid portaging. But if one has to do it, it does not get better than this. Some technical lining and lowering get the boats to the channel entrance— blowing this at the lip of a class V rapid is not an option. Lifting and hauling the rafts into and along the portage is hard work but takes all of 20 minutes. The steep rock walls on either side show the hours and hours of labor to cut the channel and stack the rocks to either side.
It is an unbelievable human accomplishment, hidden deep in the wilderness, seen by very few modern travellers.
The work is anonymous, not commemorated and completely humbling. Only twice have I had to portage rafts here due to high water. Each time our group landed in camp, changed into our down and fleece, ate a gourmet commercial-camp-kitchen dinner, and marvelled at the work of those who worked this river before us. It was not lost on any of us today thanks to the anonymous river men from a 180 years ago, we have it so good.
Caught between a rock and a hard place. Feature Photos: Luke Laurin Author: Jeff Jackson
“The trouble is, you think you have time.” —Jack Kornfield
Photo: Andrew Strain
Sitting on a beach on the Oregon Coast, I’m looking at a headland formed 15 million years ago by magma flowing down the ancestral Columbia River. The coastal Siltez would have sat on the same beach and looked at the same headland for millennia.
The rivers I run were carved by water over the course of eons. Looking at old grainy black and white photos from the early 1900s, I can tell exactly where those photographers stood. In a world seemingly transitory, nature is an anchor. Nature endures.
But, Nature’s permanence is an absolute myth
Mountains rise and fall. Rivers carve new channels. Usually, the change is just too slow for us to take notice. Not always of course—Crystal Rapid on the Grand Canyon was famously formed in a single day in 1966. In my closest aquatic playground—the Columbia River Gorge—I recognize specific basalt cliffs from Carleton Watkins’ 1867 images, but I also know the whole gorge was carved suddenly in a series of floods during the last ice age.
If I tilt my head to the north a few degrees, I can see Mt. St. Helens. When I woke up one morning in grade five, it was 9,677 feet tall. Then it blew its top and by evening it was more than 1,000 feet shorter.
Transience and permanence have been on my mind a lot lately.
Last summer a friend and paddling mentor passed away. He taught me to paddle whitewater, I taught him to paddle on the sea. He surfed river waves in an open canoe with an ease, earning himself the nickname, the Big Smooth.
For all his grace on the river, he was jittery far from shore in the uncertain slosh of swell. The first time I took him out in a force 3 wind, he literally kissed the ground when we landed.
Beyond paddling skill, Carl displayed traits I wish were as enduring as the basalt headlands of the Oregon coast—love of nature, kindness, thoughtfulness, humor, and virtue without needing credit.
After he died, a friend found a set of his old musings about rivers. Humor and love of nature flowed through his writing. So did the power of rivers to endure. His descriptions of runs on the Sandy River from the 1980s matched what he’d shown me decades later, even after a major dam was removed and the channel had shifted twice during floods.
Rivers move and mountains, like people, grow and fall.
On a hike long ago, a friend contended if we perceived time differently, we’d think of mountains and rivers as living beings. They are born and die, move and change.
They just do it slowly enough it doesn’t register in our mayfly lives. I’m not sure whether or not I buy it, or where exactly the boundary between living and nonliving things lies. I’ll leave this to biologists and philosophers. What I do know is water has another power, whether it’s alive or not: The ability to heal.
I’m not the only one to think so.
In Greek mythology, Thetis dipped her son Achilles, who was supposed to die young, in the River Styx for protection. Baptisms do the same. Ishmael, embarking on the Pequod, went to sea whenever he felt “a damp, drizzly November in his soul.”
As I write these words, autumn rains bringing the whitewater season have appeared in the forecast. It will be strange and sad to dip a paddle into the Washougal, Wilson or North Santiam without Carl. But water heals and endures, even if not forever.
The great lakes of Africa—Lakes Victoria, Malawi and Tanganyika—are located in East Africa in the vicinity of the Great Rift Valleys. The lakes hold 27 percent of the world’s freshwater. Photo: Ross Exler
At 32, Ross Exler is a true explorer. He’s ridden a dirt bike 12, 500 miles around east and southern Africa, paddled a packraft 600 miles in Ecuador and putt-putted a motorized canoe into the heart of the Amazon. His most recent expedition was a 1,560-mile trip through the African Great Lakes system by kayak and bicycle.
Why Did Ross Exler Kayak Africa’s Great Lakes?
The expedition was aimed at understanding the balance between humans and the environment and shining a light on the environmental threats facing this beautiful but imperiled region.
Why Africa’s Great Lake region?
I first became aware of the African Great Lakes while studying biology at the University of Colorado. I worked in a lab examining fish from Lake Tanganyika and learned these lakes are remarkably important for biodiversity.
By some estimates, Lake Malawi holds the largest number of fish species of any lake in the world. The shores of Lake Tanganyika also include the Mahale Mountains and Gombe Stream, both known for their populations of chimpanzees. This region is globally significant for biodiversity, with 25 percent of the world’s unfrozen freshwater.
What fueled your kayak expedition?
I’ve always been drawn to wild places. On a map, it looked like a natural objective to link these lakes. I thought it would be a wild experience to really be immersed in this region. Unfortunately, the lakes are under threat due to overfishing, invasive species, impacts from climate change, pollution from deforestation and other human activities.
I care a great deal about conservation and I really wanted to use this trip for more than my own personal ambition. I teamed up with the Nature Conservancy to bring attention to the value of the lakes and the threats to their survival.
Where did your journey begin?
My crossing started on southern Lake Malawi. I paddled to the north end of the lake, bicycled to Lake Tanganyika, then paddled up to near the border of Burundi, bicycled to Lake Victoria, paddled north into Uganda and finished in Entebbe. Along the way, I experienced different stages of lake degradation. It was obvious without intervention and working with local people and the government to protect these lakes, there will be an ecological disaster unfolding in the coming years.
The Nature Conservancy’s efforts introduce fisheries education and management, healthcare and women’s health services and education, agricultural training, and other efforts to increase the quality of life and to better understand how human activities impact the resources the local people depend on for survival. Without buy-in from local communities, the effort to conserve this incredible region will likely be unsuccessful.
Where did you stow the bike while paddling?
The bike came on the boat. The kayak was custom made by Long Haul Folding Kayaks in Colorado. They built me a tandem kayak and I stowed my bike in the second berth while paddling. It’s a pretty sweet design. I used a Montague folding bicycle with a Burley folding trailer to haul the kayak while I was riding.
When were you scared?
Early on in the trip, I heard water moving behind me, and it sounded abnormal. I turned and there was a crocodile looking right at me about 12 feet from my boat. He was big. His head was almost five feet long. As soon as I locked eyes with his reptilian glare, he went under.
The water was turbid, so I had no idea where he was. I didn’t know if he was going to pop up and pull me out of the boat. I turned and paddled as hard as I could. I set my own personal speed record of 8.17 miles per hour. With my load and the inflatable kayak, that’s like lifting a car off a friend. Pure adrenaline.
Find all the latest boats and gear in the Paddling Buyers Guide.
The great lakes of Africa—Lakes Victoria, Malawi and Tanganyika—are located in East Africa in the vicinity of the Great Rift Valleys. The lakes hold 27 percent of the world’s freshwater. Feature Photo: Ross Exler
If you’ve ever casually mentioned at the office party you’re a whitewater kayaker (“Yeah man, you told me you were a rafter last year!”), you know everyone outside our world paints us a monochromatic shade of crazy. Amongst ourselves, though, we divide into cliques and clans according to our river running choice of craft.
After all, whitewater is full of strange people with inexplicable passions, and folks who love to talk shit about them. Around campfires and on long shuttle drives, we pass the hours asking ourselves what in the hell these Keepers of the Lame were thinking, even if we’re quick with a smile—and ready with a throwbag—when they float by in their cringy crafts. We roll our eyes, like older siblings when our little brother shows up again after being left in the tree house without a ladder, but we can’t deny they’re part of the family—and this just makes them all the more embarrassing.
Here Are The 7 Most Embarrassing Whitewater Crafts
1. The Skijak
Whitewater boating is the best. And skiing is pretty great too. So why not combine them? The answer to this question is “still sitting outside of Pete’s shed,” according to my old friend, Eugene. Inside Pete’s shed is where Eugene keeps a truly impressive collection of obsolete boats and paddling curiosities. To be leftoutside of Pete’s shed suggests an off-the-charts level of lameness, an automatic 11 on the lame-o-meter.
You’re going to drown with a groin pull. | Photo: John Russell
“They’re kind of an accident waiting to happen,” Eugene explains of the twin plastic hulls attaching to the user’s feet with… wait, how?
“The binding is this metal claw best described as a bear trap,” Eug explains.“It has miniature sprayskirts for each foot.”Propulsion is by means of a 10-foot double-bladed paddle.
The Skijak was the life’s work of the late Austrian engineer Harald Strohmeier, who built his first wooden-framed wassergleitschuhs (water gliding shoes) in the 1930s as a lederhosen-clad teen.
It looked like a double-ACL tweak waiting to happen
He later made a sectional aluminum version, and finally, the plastic Skijak gaining a small following in his native land in the 1980s. All that was left was to conquer the North American market. Eugene, the former editor of both Paddler and Telemark Skiermagazines, remembers the company’s rep driving all the way down from Canada to demo the device.
“He leaned back, crossed his legs and actually rolled the thing. It looked like a double-ACL tweak waiting to happen.
“They didn’t make it to the top of my quiver list,” Eug adds drily. “They’re not even good planters because the openings on top are too small.”
2. Hydro bronc
“After I went down one particular whitewater rafting ride, I started to look at some of the dangers inherent in flipping a raft and getting trapped,” Hydro Bronc inventor Rod Blair told a credulous TV reporter about his strange and unequivocally lame contraption, a brightly colored mash-up of a raft and a hamster wheel.
That sound you hear…It’s the hamsters mocking you | Photo: Rapid Staff
One ride! That may sound like hubris, but what Blair lacked in whitewater knowledge he made up for in inventing experience.
Hydro Broncing was even included in the book 50 Water Adventures To Do Before You Die
His many creations include soccer balls for horses and a 10-foot snow globe depicting the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Note these are all inflatable inventions, so it’s not as if Blair was just making it up as he went along.
He wasn’t bad at the hype game either. In the decade or so after its 1998 debut, the Hydro Bronc was featured on a bunch of television programs, from local newscasts toThe Late Show with David Letterman and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, which sent the Playboy Extreme Team on a Bronc-mounted escape-from-Alcatraz mission. Hydro Broncing was even included in the book 50 Water Adventures To Do Before You Die. Our advice: Make sure you do the other 49 first.
3. Creature Craft
The Creature Craft may be the most capable whitewater inflatable ever conceived, so it’s fair to ask what it’s doing on this list.
Let’s try to unpack the question.
Safety over style. Sort of. | Photo: MountainBarry Photo
First, let’s just concede whitewater boaters can be a judgmental lot. Haters are gonna hate, and for all of the Creature Craft’s redeeming qualities—its self-righting design, potential as a swift water rescue platform, uncanny ability to muddle blindly through massive whitewater—there is plenty to hate.
For starters, it looks more like a floating bounce house than a proper rapid running craft. The ungainly roll cage usually keeps the Creature Craft from rolling over completely, though a big enough lateral—or, as we saw this fall at Gauley Fest, spiteful boaters leap- ing onto it from Pillow Rock—will knock it onto its side. The pilot is strapped in with a thick Velcro seatbelt and can use an oar to right the craft, or more often just wait there getting thrashed until the river does it for him.
After Gauley Fest this fall, one hater went online to vent about “how unfortunate it is we share the river with Creature Crafts. In just one lap, three paddlers in our group were either hit with an oar or run over.”
The Creature Craft takes care of boaters who can’t take care of themselves
The implication is that Creature Crafters have no business on the Gauley’s entry-level class V, let alone a high-water test piece like Tumwater Canyon of the Wenatchee, site of a Creature Craft carnage reel that will have you hiding under your desk for five minutes and 11 seconds.
It features a bright yellow Creature Craft getting window shaded a half-dozen times, and another floating through the crux rapid completely upside down with its owner hanging by his seatbelt until the boat lumbers into a new hole and gets flipped upright. As noted above, the roll cage usually prevents the Creature Craft from flipping, but not always.
The video, like dozens of others in the Creature Craft genre, is full of questionable lines, involuntary surfs and inexplicable hoots of triumph. This is where the hate comes from. The Creature Craft takes care of boaters who can’t take care of themselves. And that’s lame.
4. Wavesport transformer
Playboats come in two primary forms, stubby and slicey. The two split near the base of the whitewater family tree, so any boat fitting comfortably in either branch—in fact, slipping effortlessly between the two—would be an evolutionary marvel, like some sort of hermaphroditic platypus adapted to survive in two distinctly different ecosystems, but able to thrive in neither.
Four sizes of wrong don’t make it right. Most often the transformer was paddled without its tips. | Photo: Rapid Staff
Meet the Wavesport Transformer, a bouncy spud boat sold with bolt-on bumpers and vestigial wings designed to give it distinctly slicey characteristics.
Wavesport made this evolutionary leap in 2003, the same year Dagger released its shape-shifting future Hall of Lamer, the FX. Where the Dagger boys toyed with volume, Transformer designer Eric Jackson used removable tips to alter the boat’s length and performance characteristics. The bumpers were inch-thick plastic pucks; the wings came in five-and eight-inch varieties. They could be mixed and matched.
it was about as easy to roll as a 40-foot shipping container
The Transformer turns up in online lists of “the worst boats of all time,” but it’s not fair or accurate to say the boat was universally loathed. Some paddlers loved it. The design had a two-year production run. At its core, the Transformer—there were four sizes, officially tagged T1, T2, T3 and T4—was a stubby air-seeking playboat, perhaps a little wider and boxier than the norm but capable of truly impressive bounce at a time when elevation was free-style’s new frontier.
“The Transformer is worth buying just for the bounce,” Rapid magazine opined at the time. “[It’s] wonderfully retentive, cartwheels smoothly, hops like water on a hot skillet, and loops like a drunken circus clown.”
What’s not to love about this kayak? Well, it was about as easy to roll as a 40-foot shipping container, and those tips never fully delivered on the hype. “If it works, the Transformer is without a doubt the biggest step toward offering one boat to do it all,” our reviewer wrote.
The problem is the wings didn’t work, at least not as well as a generation of boaters raised on Saturday morning Transformers cartoons would have hoped. What was left is the boat’s notoriety, which explains how a pretty average playboat keeps turning up on everyone’s 10-worst lists.
5. Dagger FX
Dagger was pretty high on its shape-shifting playboat when it debuted back in 2003 with a pair of black plastic doodads screwed onto the bow and stern. The Dagger catalog declared the FX’s volume-changing Hood Scoops, a revolutionary new technology “guaran-freakin’-teed to change the face of freestyle paddling!” Time has shown this assessment to be mistaken. And by time, we’re talking weeks.
Gone and soon forgotten. | Photo: Rapid Archives
This kayak was lame from the start.
The big trick in 2003 was the loop, and boaters were ready to buy any spuddy playboat that looked like it could pop out of a wave-hole and rotate on its axis. By all accounts, the FX could loop like nobody’s business, but unfortunately, that’s all it did well.
Remember this was freestyle’s golden age. Companies were throwing good money after bad ideas in a freestyle arms race making about as much economic sense as those giant stone faces on Easter Island. Paddlers played along. Bros were selling plasma and buying two or three new playboats a year. But they didn’t buy the FX.
[ Paddling Buyer’s Guide: View all Dagger kayak’s ]
On Playak.com, you can still find the boat’s specs and catalog hype, above a little box noting “there are no user reviews.” Right. Because there were no users. On Mountainbuzz.com, an astute boater gave a 17-word review saying it all.
“It’s like a miniature five-foot- seven version of one of the cars on the log ride at Disneyland.”
Ouch. Is there anything to redeem this consensus Hall of Lamer? Well, yes. Models came with sick molded-in flame graphics.
6. Necky Crux
Let’s start with a disclaimer. I had a Necky Crux and liked it just fine. It was smaller than most creek boats at just over seven-and-a-half feet with rounded chines and a bit of a peak on the front and rear decks, designed to shed water and resurface quickly after plugging big waterfalls. I never ran big waterfalls in it, but I appreciated the little creeker’s maneuverability on low-water class IV, which I’ve run a lot of over the years. Is that lame? Probably, but that’s not the point.
You’re supposed to miss the rocks. | Photo: Rapid Archives
The point is, the Crux was designed, built and named for super steep technical whitewater, the kind of new age gnar just opening up to the masses when the boat came to market in 2004.
It was designed to fit in tight spaces, turn quickly and accelerate out of harm’s way. And it did all those things quite well.
Sadly, in whitewater lore, all this performance takes a back seat to the gimmick—a pair of galvanized steel springs rigged to the footplate. These things looked like they came off somebody’s garage door, and weighed about two pounds apiece. This kind of extra weight up front isn’t exactly desirable in a boat you’re going to boof for your life a few times every weekend. Speaking of weight, the Crux was quite heavy. Necky originally listed it at 37 pounds, and later had to revise the figure up to 43 pounds. I actually weighed mine—the only boat I’ve ever bothered to put on a scale—just because I wanted to know how heavy it was. The answer was 47 pounds with the springs, 43 without them.
The idea of the spring-loaded bulkhead was to save your ankles when you piton. Fair enough, but may I remind everyone pitoning is lame? Pitoning isn’t something you plan for. It’s something you plan to avoid.
I can’t say how the springs worked because I never hit anything hard enough to test them. That’s no brag; I bumped plenty of rocks and speared a few boaters, mostly on accident. But when it came to 10-foot-plus drops with rocks anywhere near the landing zone I either made sure I could hit my line, or I walked. Remember kids: In portaging there is no shame, but with a 47-pound boat it surely is lame.
8. The Riverbug
Maybe it’s just that “trend sport” is one of those German phrases that doesn’t translate. Or it could be the “trend” in the context of the Riverbug is wishful thinking, like when the 2006 film The Secret had everyone “manifesting” things, as if by thinking about it hard enough you could become rich or get to hang out with aliens.
“The Riverbug life still haunts me,” says David Hartman of his 2011 tongue-in-cheek film, Bugz 4 Life. “Strangers recognize me from time to time and it’s always a good laugh.” | Photo: David Hartman
No matter how much you want it to be, the Riverbug ain’t cool. Now, I’m not saying it doesn’t look like fun. It does look fun. In fact, Riverbugging looks suspiciously like tubing, and we all know tubing is fun if you don’t take it too seriously. In fact, the coolest thing about tubing is not trying too hard. All you need is a hot day, an inner tube, and a pair of cutoffs—and maybe another tube to float your cooler. This brings us back to the Riverbug, which if you’re still curious, looks like a hyper-engineered inner tube, stretched into a U-shape and available in canary yellow or fire engine red. You sit in with your feet facing downstream, geared up in a wetsuit, helmet, fins and webbed gloves. Most of the time there’s a GoPro involved too.
It’s basically an inner tube taking itself way too seriously. Folks are running steep creeks and developing play moves, like getting window shaded in pour overs and coming up smiling. You can see it all on YouTube. Though allegedly a thing in Austria and New Zealand, this “trend sport” is still a rarity on North American rivers.
Lightning round
Fuzzy Rubber Good: Like a wetsuit that’s furry on the inside. Bad: Stinks even if you don’t pee in it.
The Brown Claw Surfers have the shaka, all hang loose and island vibey. We pantomime a bag full of “the shit.”
Oversized Hoodys, a/k/a ThuggiesPro: Drop drawers with impunity at the put-in parking lot. Con: Everything else.
Closed-Toe Flip-Flops Bad.
Toe Booties Worse.
Raft Guide Jokes They’re funny if you’ve never heard them before, but you have. Question: What’s the difference between a raft guide and Bigfoot? Answer: One is big, hairy and smells funny when he gets wet. The other is a myth.
Any C-Boater Who start sentences with “half the paddle. . .”
Red Bull Lids Can’t we find another way for boaters to get paid?
GoPros Your helmet looks like a preschool art project made out of empty juice boxes.
The Candwich Pro: It’s waterproof, just throw it in your boat and go. Con: It’s a sandwich in a can.
The Kavanaugh Hearings Why are boaters the only ones who know what boof means?
The original dinner and a show. Photo: Andrew Strain
On a drive to a distant put-in, I listened to an audiobook about a photographer-ethnologist visiting the same location back in 1910. His assistants were amazed at his skill in whipping together meals based around salmon he cooked over the campfire.
How efficiency could ruin sea kayaking’s soul
That evening, I was cooking dinner on perhaps the exact same beach. Well, cooking is a relative term. I was boiling water and pouring it into a bag of some unknown substance more suited for space travel.
In 2003, the Jetboil Integrated Cooking System made its debut at Outdoor Retailer. It was quickly mimicked by the nuclear-named MSR Reactor and others. With two-and-a-half-minute boil times, these acetylene-torch-as-stoves rapidly found a place in the kits of minimalists. Sea kayaking trips would never be the same. Sort of.
Long wilderness trips have been declining in length for decades
The average wilderness trip was six days in the 1980s. Now, it’s barely a weekend. There are plenty of culprits for this compression. Blame urbanization, an aging population with sore backs, helicopter parenting, lack of wilderness itself, a generation distanced from big wildlands conservation victories, Netflix and social media.
If wilderness appreciation is in poor health, then these turbo stoves are like cigarettes to lung cancer patients.
Let me explain. A basic Jetboil stove claims to boil water 30 percent faster than a standard stove. When talking in terms of percentages, it sounds like a lot. In real time, we are talking 70 seconds. Two-and-a-half minutes instead of three-and-a-half minutes to boil a liter of water. If waiting for a boil is keeping you from catching a three-knot current, you’re losing a whopping 350 feet.
Ultra-efficient stoves make sense for high elevations, when getting water to boil is difficult, and when melting snow for water. But on sea kayaking trips paddlers are at sea level and usually have nothing but time.
We wait for the tide to rise, wait out currents and wait out wind. Books, campfire stories and jokes are the real essentials. What will kayakers do with their extra 70 seconds? Probably sit around, just like as if they were waiting for the water to boil.
What’s the harm in a more efficient stove?
Maybe nothing. Stoves have been improving steadily, from Homo habilis’ cooking fires in Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge to Alexis Soyer’s “Magic Stove,” which gave soldiers in the Crimean War something to eat other than salted pork.
In the 1980s, we lugged around tanked white gas stoves, until someone figured out how to attach the fuel bottle to the stove directly, meaning fewer spills and potential explosions. Rapid-boiler stoves are the next level of efficiency. And efficiency has its merits.
Consider this though; camping is designed to be inefficient
We give up creature comforts. We paddle at three knots when a powerboat could get us there faster. Sometimes we even hire a powerboat to drop us off just so we can paddle back to where we started.
We camp to reconnect with the primal, and nothing is more primal than how we cook food. Since the rapid-boilers really only rehydrate freeze-dried food, we’re pushed into adopting a fast-food strategy even when we have plenty time to do better.
Sea kayaking is perfect for rediscovering the increasingly rare art of good backcountry cooking
We have time and the ability to carry fresh food and keep it cool packed against the hull. Driftwood abounds for ergonomically designed camp kitchens and leave-no-trace fires. We’re even surrounded by food: seaweed and mussels grow on rocks, crabs and fish are just below the surface. Even stranger critters, like sea urchins and sea cucumbers, are tasty. No one is going to masterfully grill a rockfish on a Jetboil.
When I think of my sea kayaking trips—even those involving early morning launches or late evening arrivals in camp, my favorite part is the slow ritual of waking up and watching the sea and the birds. Starting slightly hazy and uncaffeinated, I dig food bags out of hatches, bear canisters or tree hangs to make coffee, then observe the world as it kicks in. But I’ve noticed a weakening of this ritual.
When rapid-boilers became standard gear, I shifted from brewing real coffee to packing instant espresso packets, eliminating the extra step of dumping coffee grounds out of a bag into the cone. This activity took 10 of my 70 seconds. Space wasn’t the concern—an 18-foot Explorer has plenty of room for a bag of coffee grounds. It was just the fast-and- easy mentality. We’re on a slippery slope. What next—packing NoDoz to go with our freeze-dried food?
We’re sea kayakers on vacation, not astronauts.
You know, I have a Jetboil myself. It works great, and I love light, compact gear because it’s less to haul up and down the beach. The boil-and-go approach is a gift when I’m chasing a pre-dawn current or rolling into camp hungry as the light fades. In a world driven by tides and ocean swell, a rapid-boiler adds flexibility.
More often than not, however, my ultra-efficient stove is an item I leave at home. I like to pack home-dehydrated meals and when the grub needs to be reheated, the nuclear option often creates blackened tar out of what used to be Asian noodle stir-fry. Yum.
I’ve been amazed at how many cooking styles can exist in a group of just six people. Rapid boiling is great when six people stagger out of their tents demanding coffee, but groups tend to splinter into pairs, segregated by stoves and culinary styles, ranging from boil-and-eat-out-of-a-bag to three-star Michelin aspirants with four pans and a free-range chicken.
A friend once carried a cast-iron tortilla pan in his low-volume kayak for two weeks around the Broughton Islands, saying he was going to make fresh tortillas. He never did. One fellow paced ready to hit the water while waiting for another guy to cook eggs. We could have all boiled our water for coffee on the Jetboil and eaten scrambled eggs together on the white gas stove, but individuality took over.
Obviously, the rapid-boilers haven’t ruined camp cooking any more than rudders and skegs have ruined sea kayaking by robbing us of knowing how to manage a kayak in wind.
We have met the enemy, and it’s the instant gratification and impatience dominating our non-kayaking lives. Kayaking and camping are supposed to peel back those layers, to help us live according to the rhythms of things we can’t control. My Jetboil makes this both harder and easier.
"The worst of all human ailments is indecision." —Napoleon Hill | Photo: Henry Liu
On our last multi-day trip, my family’s search for a campsite exhibited some classic dysfunctional decision-making. It was late afternoon and it had just started raining. The kids were tired and wet. There was thunder in the distance and the storm was getting closer. However, we had a rest day coming up and wanted a good campsite for the next two nights.
Are We Picky About Our Campsites?
There was one campsite just ahead of us and two more around the corner nestled in a bay, a 20-minute paddle away. The previous year I had paddled by those bay sites and marked them with an asterisk on my map because they looked nice. The campsite in front of us didn’t look like anything special. I consulted my wife, Tory, who has the better mind for practical decision making, and she agreed we should paddle farther to the starred sites.
“The worst of all human ailments is indecision.” —Napoleon Hill | Photo: Henry Liu
We arrived in the bay just as the storm hit. The first site did appear picturesque from the water, perched on a high point with red pines.
But when we unloaded and hauled our dripping selves ashore we were underwhelmed to find only weedy swimming and no flat tent sites. Truthfully, it was a pretty lousy site, with the wind blasting through the trees on the exposed point where we were now stuck, trying to shelter from the rain and lightning, huddling together to keep warm.
Surely, the next site will be better. When the storm eased we reloaded, motivated the kids, and paddled around the next corner—only to find the site occupied by a motorboat.
We reluctantly paddled back to the first site we’d passed an hour earlier, before the storm hit. This time I saw it with fresh perspective.
[View all boats in the Paddling Buyer’s Guide]
It was actually a beautiful flat spot with shelter from the prevailing winds, smooth rocks and deep, clear water for swimming. Plus, it had a spectacular view of the clearing skies and the mist-shrouded cliffs on the far shore.
I think we even saw rainbows.
When our two-week trip was complete, we remembered the nearly-overlooked site as our favorite—the one truly deserving of a star on the map. Of course, I didn’t appreciate it until I’d made sure there was nothing better around the corner.
Around the fire during that first night in camp, Tory and I discussed how we’d succumbed to a classic decision-making error, like a gambler or gameshow contestant driving themselves to ruin in search of a bigger jackpot.
What Will You Discover About Yourself and Your Campsite Selection?
Tory took it particularly hard because she’s proud of her ability to judge a campsite—or anything—on its merits rather than in comparison to some unattainable ideal.
I’m the idealist in the relationship. We are each the antidote to the other’s worst tendencies. I can grasp hold of a dream and urge her to hold out for better things, while she keeps me from endlessly searching for perfection. How the two of us ever settled on each other is a mystery; maybe it means she is perfect and I’m just good enough.
It reminded me of one of our first big arguments, which took place over a similar decision years ago on the streets of Paris. One dark and hungry evening we walked for hours in search of the perfect restaurant, me rejecting everything we passed because it didn’t match the candlelit boîte in my imagination. I was so sure we would find just the place around the next corner, so why settle.
Where we ended up wasn’t half bad, but its charms were soured by the heat of battle, with Tory angry about all the perfectly good places I’d rejected and me defensive because I’d failed to find a restaurant good enough to justify the long search.
On our camping trip, we brought along E. B. White’s classic Stuart Little to read to our son. Stuart Little is the story of a mouse born into an ordinary middle-class human family, which is super weird but just go with it. I realized Stuart Little and I have a lot in common in our dissatisfaction. Stuart runs away from his obtuse human family in search of adventure.
On his travels he meets Harriet Ames, who is a metaphor for the good things we tend to take for granted. She’s a beautiful, bright, well-dressed daughter of the wealthiest family in town. And she happens to be only two inches tall. And she agrees to go out with an itinerant mouse, no questions asked. What are the odds?
But Stuart is so obsessed with having the first date go just so—showing off his boatmanship in a toy birchbark canoe, no less—when his canoe is destroyed by vandals, he ditches Harriet and skips town in a huff to continue wandering, as if that’ll show ‘em to mess with his canoe. As if this mouse can find himself some other two-inch-tall rich girlfriend.
You stupid idiot, I want to yell, you’re running away from your best chance at happiness! Stuart concludes he’ll keep heading north to the end of his days. His odds of finding another beautiful and wealthy girl his size are slim. I like to think he comes back to Harriet Ames, once he realizes there’s nothing better out there.
Have I gotten wiser in my middle age, better at not playing Stuart Little when everything doesn’t go exactly as I’ve imagined, and just appreciating what the circumstances deliver? It’s a particularly good attitude to have in the outdoors, where I can’t often control the outcome and must adapt.
While I’d like to think otherwise, I’m not sure I have matured, because the campsite search played into my mindset perfectly.
Tory wished she’d saved time by recognizing the good campsite on the first try, but I loved it all the more for having confirmed there was nothing better around the corner. The fear of missing out on something great would have gnawed at me otherwise. If Tory had forced us to stop, because it seemed good enough or because it was raining, I could have spent two days resenting the spot instead of loving it.
It’s a testament to how satisfaction is based entirely on the framework with which we choose to view the circumstance.
Maybe this is just how humans are. We search for reassurance we’ve made the right choice, that we’ve arrived at the best place or thing. Why else endlessly scour TripAdvisor and Yelp reviews, hangrily walk the streets of Paris for hours, risk being caught out in a storm in search of a better square of dirt, and brood instead of accept and give thanks. We’re seeking an imaginary “right” choice—perfect or best—when often we’re presented with more-or-less equally worthy options, each with their own unique set of pros and cons.
The need to find validation is all in our heads.
To recognize when the place we end up is the place we want to be without having to waste time looking elsewhere for proof, well, that’s the wisest choice of all.
“Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” —kris kristofferson | Photo: Daniel Stewart
Recently, I heard about a West Coast paddler, no names please, who stars in porn flicks so he can afford to paddle. It made me think.
What is the ultimate sacrifice in paddling?
Is it giving up a real job to paddle? Dying while pushing your limits? Or, maybe you are divorcing your wife because she doesn’t get it. What kind of sacrifices do you make to get on the river?
We all make choices in life and paddling is no different. The weekend warrior chooses to work five days for two days of paddling. It often means long hours in the car to hit the river—it usually means more driving than paddling. And, with recent gas price hikes, there is a considerable financial sacrifice as well. To assume the weekend warrior is not committed to the cause of paddling is bullshit! They make the ultimate sacrifice; they paddle the least and work the most for it.
pushing rubber means hanging with punters all day reciting the same cheeseball lines and answering the same stupid questions
Raft guides also make huge sacrifices. Theirs is a cruel and unusual punishment: floating within the very waters that have drawn them to the river, but essentially unable to experience the real thrill. Sure they get wet, but it’s not the ride they are looking for. And, pushing rubber means hanging with punters all day reciting the same cheeseball lines and answering the same stupid questions. Salt in the wound.
“Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” —kris kristofferson | Photo: Daniel Stewart
The few hours of paddling a guide manages to squeeze in after a day already spent on the river is poor compensation for the tithe they pay all summer long. Our hearts go out to you. Row, row, row your raft, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily your job is but a tease.
The people in the last group give everything they have to paddle. They are, for lack of a better term, professional paddlers.
Paddling is their job. Quite often, and rightly so, these are our best paddlers. Their quest is to make paddling a feasible career. A frightening thought: at least at this point. Like supermodels, pro-boaters are only as good as their last ride; once that goes, the options run out. A few have made it. But the rest, to be amongst the best in the world and have no bling bling, are a true testament to both the passion of their sacrifice and the reality of it.
The real cost of getting into kayaking can be much, much more than the cost of a new boat and gear
Let’s also not forget, pro paddlers must paddle year-round. While paddling is great, to paddle every day, often on the same river, over and over, can be a hard sell to some. So, what happens when their quest ends? No job. No recognized education, and few prospects. Only achy bones and outdated boats will remind them they have given everything they had to do what they love. Big props to those of you who will soon be collecting welfare and washing our windows on street corners.
Please don’t leave streaks. But hopefully, all of us will realize the sacrificing we do, no matter how dramatic, is really a testament to the sport we pursue. The real cost of getting into kayaking can be much, much more than the cost of a new boat and gear. It can cost you your soul. Spend it wisely.
