Look at the hands of a paddler and you’ll see scars, scratches, sun spots and chipped nails. It’s easy to see that these are important, but often neglected, tools of the trade. Paddlers tend to focus on the big joints: elbow, shoulders, hips. But the assortment of phalanges, carpals and metacarpals that make up your hands and wrists are the first link in this chain that provides power to your stroke and are responsible for everything from snapping on your skirt, to tossing a throw bag or performing the J-stroke.
For all paddlers—from whitewater enthusiasts to multiday canoe trippers—hand and wrist health is integral for a good day on the water.
Stretching To Prevent Pain & Injury While Paddling
Simply put, the best treatment is prevention. Being aware of paddling habits (good and bad), and working on flexibility is a great place to start. Getting into the habit of doing a thorough pre-paddle warm up is one way of preventing injuries; try adding these three stretches for hand and wrists.
Crab Grab
Extend your left hand in front of you, palm up, keeping you forearm, wrist and palm in a straight line from the elbow.
Make a ‘crab claw’ out of your right hand and grasp your left hand using your thumb as a supportive beam beneath the four knuckles of your left fingers, (close to where they join the hand).
Gently bend your left fingers back beyond horizontally and hold for 10-15 seconds.
Release and then repeat on the other hand for three reps.
Wrists extension and flexion
Hold your arms straight out in front of your body, with shoulder, forearm and wrist forming a straight line with your palm facing down.
Lift your palm and fingers up, flexing them to the sky, then back down to a horizontal position.
Repeat for 30 seconds.
Do three to five sets.
Then extend your hand down so that fingers are pointing to the ground, and back up to horizontal.
Repeat for 30 seconds.
Do three to five sets.
Fingers flexion and extension
Make a fist (flexing the muscles of you hand)
Then extend your fingers out.
Repeat this for 30 seconds.
Do three to five sets.
Abduction and adduction
Hold you hand out in front of you with your fingers close together and palm flat.
Open and close fingers (abduction and adduction them) slowly for 30 seconds.
Incorporate some hand and wrist-focused exercises into your workouts—or do them when you are driving shuttle. Add weight with common items like a can of soup, or water bottle. Add weight to the wrist flexion and extension stretches mentioned above to make them into mini strengthening workout. Try some reps with your thumb pointing up. Exercises with resistance in each plane of wrist movement will ensure your small stabilizers are strong and able to adapt to the rigors of paddling.
As with most things in life, wrist and hand health are all about balance. Strong hands and wrists mean strong forearms, biceps and shoulders, which makes for happy paddlers.
This article was first published in the August 2015 issue of Paddling Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions here, or browse the digital archives here.
I WOULD PADDLE 500 MILES, AND I WOULD PADDLE 500 MORE, JUST TO BE THE MAN WHO PADDLES 1,000 MILES TO FALL DOWN AT YOUR DOOR. | PHOTO: PETER MATHER
Whether you’re on a lengthy expedition or a day trip, paddling efficiently is always the goal. The less energy you expend on strokes, the more energy you have to go farther, go longer or indulge in post-canoe activities, like photography, guitar plucking and baking a killer loaf of molasses bread in the Dutch oven. Four experts offer advice so you can paddle a long way all day, then be ready to serenade the campfire all night.
Get Ready
HEATHER HERBECK
Paddle Coach and Owner at Fitness & Sport Evolution
Whether you are in your boat six out of seven days, or you paddle every couple of weeks, everyone can fall victim to tight muscles and a stiff back. Before I get on the river, I do a quick minute or two of an activity that gets my heart rate up and my blood flowing, like jumping jacks, high knees or a jog back and forth in the parking lot. This loosens muscles and protects them long term. Follow with some arm circles to warm up the shoulders, leg swings to loosen up the hips and torso rotations to get the core ready for powerful paddling.
Get Rotating
Rob Holden Canoe Instructor
Rotation, rotation, rotation. You hear instructors say it all the time. The power from the forward stroke comes from the rotation of the torso, not from flexing the arms. If you finish the day with your abdominal muscles more tired than your arms, you’re doing it right. The trick is to keep that shaft vertical. By keeping the path of the paddle blade close to the side of the boat, forward power is maximized and spin minimized. To be sure you’re doing it correctly, watch your T-grip; your grip hand should be over the water, not over your boat. It’s so simple, but this error is the most common I see on the water.
Get Speedy
Bob Vincent Marathon Canoeist and Coach
You can lift weights, run, bike or swim, but that will not make you go faster in a canoe. The stroke is the answer to speed, and many people who have paddled for a long time just slough it off. We as coaches say the words: vertical paddle, side to side, front to back. No cavitation; bury your paddle at the start of your stroke. Extend your back at the start of the stroke. Do not let your elbow pull past your back. When you want to go faster, push down harder and lock your arms. If your arms flex, you are deflecting your power.
I WOULD PADDLE 500 MILES, AND I WOULD PADDLE 500 MORE, JUST TO BE THE MAN WHO PADDLES 1,000 MILES TO FALL DOWN AT YOUR DOOR. | PHOTO: PETER MATHER
Get Eating (No, Really)
Al Pace Guide and Owner at Canoe North Adventures
I’m not sure if we paddle to eat or eat to paddle. Food is an essential part of every successful expedition. Canoe tripping is the only time in my life when I have three meals a day, plus morning GORP, afternoon GORP, appetizers before dinner and dessert after dinner. If you’re making miles, you need to fuel your body at least every couple hours. (Just 30 minutes of paddling at a quick speed of four miles an hour will burn almost 400 calories for the average male—Eds.) Beware of eating too much in one sitting, especially before a major crossing or portage. And as important as food is hydration. Even on cool days everyone should drink at least two liters during the day.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2015 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.
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What’s In Sander Jain’s Basecamp Kit | Photo: Sander Jain
When Tofino, British Columbia-based outdoor photographer Sander Jain packed for a stay of several weeks at a rustic, way-off-grid cabin in the remote rainforest reaches of Clayoquot Sound, his kit looked something like what you’d expect to find in a prepper’s basement. Canned foods, fuel, alternate energy sources, carbon-free transportation and, yes, toilet paper. “I had everything I needed,” says Jain, a strategic minimalist. “It was the ultimate luxury to experience remote living in a pristine wilderness area.
Packing for a basecamp—where I was dropped off by boat—I didn’t have to fit every piece of equipment into my kayak. I packed things in totes, so it felt more like a mini house moving. However, I avoided the urge to take as much as would fit. I always pack as minimalist as possible, to ensure my focus is on the experience itself, instead of material dependencies and distractions.
You can embark on an epic adventure without a big budget. I picked up a dated but reliable spare paddle, pump, float, PFD and spray skirt at various local kayak outfitters who support my adventures with smiles and anything they can spare of their old equipment.
I actually don’t own a kayak. Instead, I have friends who don’t paddle much anymore but are happy to see their kayaks in the water. My friend painted this aging Necky Tesla green years ago to keep it well camouflaged in the wilds. It needed a good scrub when I picked it up in his yard, but it was still perfectly oceangoing and steeped with its own rustic charm. I don’t worry much about style beyond how it affects function—I trust that the things we like will never be out of taste.
One of the biggest challenges of a long off- grid stay was figuring out how to charge my electronic devices—a DeLorme inReach satellite communicator, my usual camera gear, and a laptop for managing photo and video files. I tested a small solar panel and BioLite stove and came to the conclusion that they couldn’t keep all my devices charged, all the time. Finally, I embraced the minimalist philosophy. The only device I really needed was my communicator. For the others, I simply economized battery use.
What’s In Sander Jain’s Basecamp Kit | Photo: Sander Jain
A five-kilogram bag of rice was a must. Rice is easy to pack, and pairs well with freshly caught fish for a nutritious meal. For breakfast, I packed three kilograms of oats, raisins and trail mix, along with canned coconut milk. A dozen other tinned foods and assorted seasonings rounded out my staples. The boat drop meant I could also treat myself to some fresh luxuries for the first week, including eggs, carrots, yams, oranges, apples, mangoes and avocados. I wasn’t too worried about starving.
Surviving and enjoying the wet weather and moist forests of the Pacific Northwest is less about trying to keep everything dry, and more about staying warm while learning to live with the moisture. Certain gear proved invaluable: my Dunlop Purofort boots, Helly Hansen rain pants, SealLine 70-liter backpack and various dry bags kept me comfortable and the most essential equipment dry.
Abrupt weather changes on Vancouver Island’s coast bring heavy fog, mist and rain, dramatically reducing visibility and increasing the challenge of navigating these waters. I relied on charts, compass, familiarity with local tides and constantly observing weather conditions.
Last but not least, I took along caution, attention and awareness, as well as my love of the natural world, wild places and kayaking.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2015 issue of Adventure Kayak magazine.
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Length: 16 ft Width: 36 in Center Depth: 15 in Rocker: 2.5 in Capacity: 1,000 LBS Weight: TUFFSTUFF 54 LBS / EXPEDITION 59 LBS Price: TUFFSTUFF $2,499 CAD / EXPEDITION $2,749 CAD novacraft.com
Nobody in the last six months has called me asking how the Nova Craft Canoe Prospector 16 paddles. Not a single outfitter, guide, instructor or weekend tripper. Why? Because they should already know. It hasn’t changed shape since it was introduced way back in the 1970s.
We first reviewed the Royalex Prospector 16 exactly 13 years ago. It was one of five contenders in the light tripping tandem canoe shootout that appeared in the Fall 2002 issue of Rapid. Sixteen-footers, like Nova Craft Canoe’s Prospector 16, are nimble enough to make you want to practice surfing a wave, or carry back up and hit a drop eddy until you completely nail it
Nova Craft’s TuffStuff may be an alternative to Royalex
When you’ve had your fun, this workhorse will fit enough barrels and packs for real wilderness travel. What is new about this Prospector 16 is Nova Craft’s composite material they’ve branded TuffStuff.
The Innegra-basalt blend is billed as an ultra-durable, moderately-priced, sub-60-pound offering for trippers and whitewater paddlers. Rapid wanted to find out just how tough TuffStuff really is.
How tough is TuffStuff? So, I lifted the pristine canoe off my truck, carried it down to the river’s edge and tossed it over my head and onto a pile of rocks. CRACK! To our surprise (and slight disappointment) there was hardly a mark on it. In the right light, you could see the gel coat was dented just a little. So we tossed it again. And again.
[ Paddling Buyer’s Guide: View all lake water and touring canoes ]
It wasn’t until all 59 pounds landed on one protruding rock did we so much as crack the paint. Where the rock made contact, the gel coat finally cracked and on the inside, the paint broke in the same spots. Nova Craft’s TuffStuff Expedition core did not so much as tear a fiber.
The Prospector 16 TuffStuff is immune to rocks on the river
On the water, I paddled the canoe full speed into every rock on the river. Shallow ones sent me grinding up and over. Exposed rocks with steep faces slammed me to a dead stop, ejecting me like a crash test dummy out of my seat and over the yoke. It looked so ridiculous a crowd was gathering on the shore. Eventually, I paddled over to explain. I paddle here often; I was afraid people would talk.
The calls I have been getting from livery business owners and paddlers have all been for one reason. They, like those watching me from shore, all want to know what happens to TuffStuff when it’s wrapped. Completely wrapped canoes don’t happen all that often, and when they do, no matter what the material, the boat ends up a complete mess. Wrapping the Prospector before a long-term beatdown is a waste of a perfectly good boat and a perfectly good opportunity to put on a season’s worth of real abuse.
When Tim Miller delivered the Prospector he made a point of telling me he wanted it thoroughly tested. This from a guy who tossed a TuffStuff Prospector from his 10-story warehouse rooftop. So, our Prospector 16 is going on loan to a local whitewater paddling school.
[ Paddling Buyer’s Guide: View all canoes made from Royalex and T-Formex ]
Then it’s spending a couple of weeks on the Dumoine River with some inner-city kids. If it’s still in one piece, my son, Doug, and I will bump it down the Noire River. If you have a trip lined up for late summer or early fall and are willing to pick it up at the Rapid office, you too can have a go at it. When and if it survives all this—and after our initial testing, we expect it will—then we’ll wrap it, and wrap it good.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2015 issue of Rapid Magazine.
Subscribe to Paddling Magazine and get 25 years of digital magazine archives including our legacy titles: Rapid, Adventure Kayak and Canoeroots.
The World's Economy: Examining the World Freestyle Kayak Championships | Photo: Robert Faubert
From grassroots rodeo festival to slick mega-production, whitewater’s biggest competition has come a long way from a handful of river nomads gathering to twirl their paddles for bragging rights. With this year’s World Freestyle Kayak Championships expected to cost $425,000, and few whitewater companies ponying up cash to pick up the tab, has the long road to the Olympic dream created an event too big for the industry to support? Conor Mihell investigates.
It’s been over 20 years since boaters started getting together on rivers like the Ottawa, Caney Fork and the Ocoee, queuing up to surf waves and ride holes, throwing spins, enders and pirouettes instead of running downriver. Volunteer judges—often paddlers themselves—kept score; spectators by the hundreds crowded the rocky shores to watch. In the early days it was called rodeo and similar to its Western namesake, the events were spectacles, equal parts party and friendly competition to assert bragging rights on and off the river.
As with any upstart sport and competition, a faction of paddlers wanted whitewater rodeo to go bigger. The very first world championship was held in 1993 on the Ocoee River in Tennessee; in 1997, the worlds came to McCoy’s rapid on the Ottawa River; and by 2001, the event engulfed the Pyrenees village of Sort, Spain, in a boisterous festival. Over time, competitors morphed from weekend warrior types, raft guides and paddling school instructors to elite professional athletes with sponsors, including kayak brands, energy drinks and automobile manufacturers. It seemed as though freestyle, as it later became known, was destined for mainstream success—some even dreamed of inclusion in the Olympics.
PRE-DIGITAL SCOREBOARDING, CIRCA 1997. | PHOTO:RICK MATTHEWS
Today, the Switzerland-based International Canoe Federation (ICF) sanctions the biannual World Freestyle Championships. The worlds is now an international event with choreographed routines, professional judging and live-streamed broadcasts. To perennial optimists like Eric Jackson, a long-time competitor and freestyle pioneer, the “media, pomp and circumstance” of ICF championships push the sport forward. “It’s about keeping the trend upwards,” he says.
Yet as much as world championships have showcased freestyle kayaking, industry sales figures haven’t kept up—in part, some believe, because the activity has become less relevant to the masses.
“It’s now a sport for elite athletes,” says Corran Addison, the founder of Riot Kayaks and a freestyle and slalom competitor in the 1990s. “Back when I was competing, this is exactly where I would’ve hoped freestyle would be. But now I’m not sure it’s a good thing. Freestyle has become like slalom. It’s not all that attractive to the average paddler.”
Decreasing sponsorship dollars and greater demands mean hosts of the big show can be seriously burdened by red ink.
MADE FOR TV IN THUN, SWITZERLAND, IN 2009. | PHOTO: BALINT VEKASSY
Inspiring the next generation
This September, the ICF World Freestyle Championships return to the Ottawa River for the third time. Two-time event organizer Matt McGuire says the $425,000 festival at Garburator will be a far cry from the previous Ottawa worlds, held in 1997 and 2007 and run by volunteers on shoestring budgets.
McGuire hopes Garburator’s dynamic, heaving foam pile and the Ottawa’s remote, rocky shores will exude a siren’s call to competitors and spectators, and in turn captivate a new generation of whitewater enthusiasts. Compared to the 2013 worlds, held on a diminutive, man-made hole on North Carolina’s Nantahala River, athlete registration is up. Although costly, McGuire insists broadcasting real-time video footage of the world’s best paddlers competing in the Canadian wilderness has the potential to inspire people around the globe.
“Freestyle kayaking is a spectacular sport and the Ottawa River is a spectacular place,” he says. “Nowhere else has hosted the world championships twice, let alone three times. It is the best place in the world to have a freestyle event.”
[ Paddling Trip Guide: Plan a paddling trip to the Ottawa Valley ]
PIROUETTES WERE THE “IT” TRICK AT THE 1993 WORLDS IN TENNESSEE. EVEN FOR OPEN BOATERS.| PHOTO: PAUL MASON
Looking back
The whitewater industry blossomed in lockstep with the popularity of freestyle kayaking. Early world championships were as much a competition between boat manufacturers as paddlers.
“It was totally driven by the manufacturers,” recalls Joe Pulliam, the former president of Dagger Kayaks. “It was a battle between Wave Sport, Dagger and Perception. Teams were divided up according to brand of boats, not countries.”
There was big money to be made in producing a championship design because freestyle kayaks had not yet evolved into a separate genre, distinguished as they are today by their radical shapes and fragile composite construction, explains Pulliam. Boats like the Wave Sport X and Dagger RPM flowed out the doors of paddling shops into the hands of recreational paddlers. Athletes like Team Dagger’s Brad Ludden scored fully loaded Subarus (Wave Sport partnered with Chevy Trucks) and gas cards, with instructions to hit as many rodeos in the season as possible. In 2002, South African athlete Steve Fisher earned $25,000 from Riot Kayaks alone, according to Addison.
“About three-dozen athletes were making a real living off kayaking,” notes Addison. “The best guys pulled in $125,000 per year.” At the top of the game were Addison and Sean Baker.
Pulliam says the early rodeos were all about showmanship. Freestyle was viewed as counterculture— paddling’s version of snowboarding. Addison was known for his bad boy persona; EJ was the slalom Olympian-turned-freestyle jock. A repurposed limousine equipped with roof racks shuttled Perception boaters, while Team Riot arrived in a svelte black bus.
“You don’t see someone doing a big ender or pirouette, whooping and throwing their paddle away anymore,” laughs Pulliam. “The judging was subjective and it was all about crowd appeal.”
As long as you could ante up the $40 registration fee, which covered things like meals and camping, all competitions were open to everyday boaters.
GARB, THE HOME OF THE 2015 WORLDS ON THE OTTAWA RIVER. | PHOTO: ROBERT FAUBER
“Some boaters were just there for the party,” notes Jackson, who has topped the field four times out of the 11 world championships in which he competed. “They became more out of place over the years. This is the world championship, not a hometown throw-down.”
And so a mixed bag of professional kayakers and local weekend warriors descended on the Ottawa for the 1997 worlds, which was won by Canadians Ken Whiting and Nicole Zaharko. Boat manufacturers and regional outfitters provided sponsorship in the form of raffle prizes, demos, workshops and camping.
“The interest in McCoy’s was overwhelming,” recalls Paul Sevcik, a member of the 1997 organizing committee and owner of Equinox Adventures, an outdoor skills school based in Toronto. “But we never made a penny. Everything was done with volunteer labor.”
But then things began to change
Addison points to the early 2000s as a turning point. World championships held in Spain in 2001 and Austria in 2003 boasted far bigger budgets and carnival-like atmospheres, at the expense of the grassroots feel. The paddlesports industry played less of a role in supporting the European competitions. As freestyle competition evolved, a gulf widened between athletes and enthusiasts.
“The average punter could no longer do the moves the athletes were doing. Shit, they couldn’t even identify them,” says Addison. “Meanwhile, the Steve Fishers of the world realized there was more money in hucking waterfalls in Iceland than flopping around in some little hole.”
A pivotal moment occurred in 2007 when the ICF began sanctioning world championship events, buoying a movement to make freestyle an Olympic sport and further influencing its trajectory. On the other hand, that year also brought competitors back to whitewater’s heartland. McGuire and Wilderness Tours, a rafting operator and kayak school in Foresters Falls, Ontario, hosted the worlds on the Ottawa River’s infamous Buseater wave, generating huge buzz amongst competitors that harkened back to the early days of rodeo.
USING A TOW LINE TO ACCESS BUSEATER IN 2007. | PHOTO: ROBERT FAUBERT
McGuire says the Buseater event galvanized his vision of a freestyle event. “Athlete experience is paramount,” he says. “The wave needs to showcase the sport in a light that the athletes enjoy. It needs to make the competitors feel challenged, like the sport is going in the right direction. They come out in droves for a feature that’s world class. We saw this with Buseater. With the right feature, everything else falls into place.”
“It was a wilderness event,” recalls U.K.-based athlete Claire O’Hara, who made her world championships debut in 2007 and has since become a dominant force in women’s freestyle with two ICF world titles. “Buseater is a feature that most athletes would never otherwise experience.”
McGuire says hosting an event on the Ottawa River imposes a “steep rural tax” on organizers. Providing space for judges and spectators along a rocky shore, coordinating peak water levels with Ontario and Quebec hydro power utilities and finding banquet space in the backwoods of the Ottawa Valley all came at a cost (which McGuire refuses to disclose). In this sense, the 2007 worlds represented a transition to a new worlds economy.
The next installment, held in 2009 in Thun, Switzerland, upped the ante with “huge TV screens, big air ramps, festivals, live-streaming and massive spectator grandstands,” says O’Hara.
Things were progressing as Jackson hoped. “If an organizer wants to be a local, low-budget event, they should not bid for the world championships,” he says. “Athletes who want lower-key can find these events around the world all season long. The world championships is a stage set for the best freestyle kayakers in the world to compete and show off the sport.”
The Nantahala Outdoor Center invested $195,000 into an engineered hole for the 2013 worlds. While some athletes were disappointed in the feature, huge media and broadcasting efforts made it the most-watched worlds of all time. Now, McGuire admits Ottawa 2015 could be a last hurrah—perhaps “the last world championships on a naturally flowing river” because of the challenges of hosting an event in such a remote place.
“We’re not a canned venue,” he says. “We’re a remote, god-awful place to run an event. How do you get Internet to a place that doesn’t have power? How do you set up the proper facilities for the judges? How do you pack 1,000 people on a rocky shoreline that isn’t all that pleasant for a group of paddlers to sit and watch their buddies surf Garb?”
The answer: You spend a lot of money.
DOWNTOWN VENUE AND OLD WORLD CHARM IN SORT, SPAIN. | PHOTO: RICK MATTHEWS
The green problem
Securing funding is a struggle for all whitewater festivals—freestyle, creek racing and otherwise. The financial travails of Patrick Camblin, organizer of the boundary-pushing Whitewater Grand Prix, included $80,000 of debt going into the 2014 event. This June, Idaho’s Payette River Games, whose $100,000 purse is the largest in paddling, dropped kayak events altogether in favor of standup paddleboarding.
“We have really enjoyed doing our best to promote and expand the sport of whitewater kayaking over the past four years through our competitions with record-setting purses,” said organizer Mark Pickard in a press release. “But we’ve decided not to underwrite the expense of hosting another kayak event.”
For host Wilderness Tours, the 2015 World Freestyle Kayak Championship is more about promoting the Ottawa River as a destination than turning a profit. Sponsors include Wilderness Tours’ partner Algonquin College, a local post-secondary institution with a renowned outdoor adventure program, energy giant TransCanada (which, incidentally, has plans to build a massive oil sands pipeline through the area), and Ontario Power Generation and Hydro-Quebec, whose support is more related to providing the appropriate water levels than injections of cold hard cash. At press time, apparel and accessory manufacturer NRS stands alone in representing the paddlesports industry amongst title sponsors.
“We think sponsoring the World Freestyle Championships is the right thing to do,” says NRS brand manager Mark Deming. “For us it’s about being a good citizen, number one, but the event organizers are doing a great job of making sure we realize a strong value from our investment.”
Marketing philosophies are changing, explains Deming. Companies are moving away from traditional athlete and event sponsorship to web-based platforms. “The brands that go big into events”—such as GoPro, which made a last-minute contribution to the 2014 Whitewater Grand Prix and helped salvage Camblin’s bottom line—“are able to roll them into online campaigns where they’re basically creating content,” continues Deming. “That content is more important than the event itself.”
Jackson insists that the paddlesports industry shouldn’t be responsible for bankrolling world-class events. European hosts have employed freestyle’s television-friendly format to gain the support of brands like Volkswagen and Keen Footwear. Coca-Cola and Subaru contributed to the 2013 world championships in North Carolina, as well as Confluence Outdoor (which owns the Wave Sport, Dagger, Bomber Gear and Adventure Technology Paddles brands).
“The truly large-scale events, such as freestyle world championships and the Whitewater Grand Prix, really need much larger sponsors to help them flourish,” says LiquidLogic Kayaks designer Shane Benedict. “The events that support local rivers, clubs and are more connected with the core of the sport are more our focus.”
This means organizers like McGuire are forced to court big business— another hurdle for rural events.
“The level of [financial] commitment that it takes to have a meaningful impact on an event like this is beyond the threshold of most businesses in paddlesports,” says Deming. “If you look at the sponsors of the past two worlds—Confluence at Nantahala and NRS on the Ottawa—we’re probably the two biggest companies in paddlesports. The writing’s on the wall.”
[ Paddling Buyer’s Guide: View all freestyle kayaks ]
The World’s Economy: Examining the World Freestyle Kayak Championships | Photo: Robert Faubert
Barriers… but not insurmountable ones
Whitewater kayaking is different from surfing or skiing in that the most appealing places to paddle are out of the way, far removed from beaches, resorts and urban areas. By dint of geography alone, whitewater can never be as popular as mountain biking and standup paddling. Some paddling evangelists believe urban whitewater parks are freestyle’s future. But the reality is, electrifying features like Garburator and Buseater only exist in the wild. As infrastructure demands for freestyle events grow, hosting them at the places that best define whitewater becomes more and more improbable.
Yet competitors are hopeful. As much as the British freestyle phenom raves about the Ottawa, O’Hara’s eyes are locked on the future. The 2017 worlds have been awarded to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and will take place at the newly constructed Olympic whitewater facility. Sort, Spain, will host the 2019 freestyle event alongside wildwater and slalom world championships.
“Then who knows, we could potentially see an adventure community river-based event on a feature such as the Hawea Waves in New Zealand,” says O’Hara. “At which point we could very well be an Olympic sport.”
Meanwhile, McGuire is betting on Garburator’s wild aesthetics. “Back in ’07, there was an energy in the room during the awards ceremony that was insane,” he says. “I’ve never experienced anything like it before. It was a small room with 600 people jammed in, and we’d just finished the first world championships on a wave that wasn’t four feet high. We were on the Ottawa with this tight-knit community.
“I’m a boater,” he continues. “I love the sport and I love the Ottawa River and I would do anything for the river and the people who surround me on the river. That’s why I know we’ll succeed.”
A brief history of the World Freestyle Kayak Championships
1993: Ocoee River – Tennesse, USA
Manufacturers design freestyle boats for the first time in preperation for the event.
1997: Ottawa River – Ontario, Canada
Worlds first come to Ottawa river.
2001: Noguera Pallaresa – Sort, Spain
Grandstands and night events are introduced as kayak sales and participation numbers peak.
2007: Ottawa River – Ontario, Canada
The ICF begins sanctioning freestyle events.
2009: Aar River – Thun, Switzerland
Judging standards are formalized and VIPs from the Olympic committee attend. The event features giant TV screens, festivals and live streaming.
2013: Nantahala River – North Carolina, USA
NOC invests $195,000 in constructing a hole for the event. Huge media and broadcasting effects make it the most-watched worlds of all time.
Conor Mihell is a freelance environmental reporter and adventure journalist. Find him at conormihell.com.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2015 issue of Rapid Magazine.
Subscribe to Paddling Magazine and get 25 years of digital magazine archives including our legacy titles: Rapid, Adventure Kayak and Canoeroots.
We were three weeks into an eight-week trip on Nunavut’s Back River when we hit the ice. As far as we could see, Lower Garry Lake, part of the river’s legendary lake complex, was frozen solid. It was July.
The six of us pulled our three canoes onto shore and climbed up a rock outcrop to take a look. We should have planned for this, I thought, but we hadn’t. “I don’t suppose waiting is an option?” I asked. The others just looked at me.
We brainstormed our options, but it became clear that we would have to walk across the ice. Precisely what every child is told never, ever to do.
The situation reminded me of the movie Never Cry Wolf. My parents took me to see it when I was six years old, not realizing how much it would terrify me.
The main character, grasping his gun, falls through the ice. The current pulls him away from the hole, and he’s left pounding up from underneath. The camera follows him underwater through a chaos of bubbles, then cuts to the surface where the forest stands neutral and silent.
Frozen: Portage Across Ice | Photo: Tim Irvin
The next morning we donned wetsuits over light clothes and paddled out to meet the ice.
“Seems pretty solid,” my trip mate Tim said as he tested his weight on it.
We climbed out. The ice had a clear layer on top that looked and popped like bubble wrap. My paddling partner, Levi, grabbed the bow line; I grabbed the stern line. We leaned into the ropes until the boat began to slide.
Within minutes, sweat prickled into my suit and my back began to ache.
“We can’t do this all day,” I said. Then my foot broke through a patch of gray ice, and I dropped to my knees.
As a group, we tried different rope lengths, front and back, side by side. We tied the ropes up by our shoulders and down at our waists. A good lean forward and small steps helped, but the boats still weighed a few hundred pounds.
Levi found the winning system. He tied the bow line to the middle of a paddle, and we pushed against it—one on each side of the rope—in unison. We jumped small channels, clung to our boats when the ice got rotten, and invented smooth bobsled-like transitions to cross small pools.
“This is getting fun.” The landscape did not change all day. Morsels of ice collided in the intermittent pools of open water and filled the air with their tinkling. The drag of our boats provided a constant background hum as the ice scoured and scrubbed them with each step.
The enormity of the ice shifted my perspective. We all felt it; what had been so uncertain at the beginning of the day now seemed like an adventure.
By late afternoon, the white ice lost some of its shine, and rotten gray ice transitioned to bigger and bigger open pools. With a paddle-swirling flourish we arrived back to the water. We hooted in triumph, and the air felt clear.
Jennifer Kingsley is a writer, radio producer and naturalist, who goes north whenever she can. She’s the author of Paddlenorth: Adventure, Resilience, and Renewal in the Arctic Wild.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2015 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.
Subscribe to Paddling Magazine and get 25 years of digital magazine archives including our legacy titles: Rapid, Adventure Kayak and Canoeroots.
The 17 By Delta Kayaks. | Photo: Virginia Marshall
Delta Kayaks has been making thermoformed kayaks at its Maple Ridge, British Columbia, factory since 2006. While other manufacturers experiment with various materials and models, Delta has focused on perfecting this high-gloss, lightweight and incredibly versatile plastic, and on refining a streamlined selection of kayaks to suit touring and recreational paddlers.
Delta Kayaks 17
Length: 17 ft
Width: 22.5 in
Weight: 50 lbs
Max Capacity: 410 lbs
Price: $2,495
deltakayaks.com
True to this mission, the revamped-for-2015 Delta 17 remains the quickest and most efficient boat in the brand’s performance touring line-up—a series that includes the recently updated 15s and 16, as well as the 18.5—while receiving similar performance and contemporary aesthetic updates.
From the top down, the 17’s deck illustrates Delta’s expertise when it comes to shaping plastic sheets. Molded-in bungee clasps help secure the new press-lock hatch covers—even easier to use
than previous iterations thanks to their single gasket seal—and recessed grooves for bungees keep the deck super sleek and snag-free.
The front deck has been raised slightly to accommodate larger paddlers and a new day pod (more on that below), but its sculpted shape allows an efficient paddle catch. Bigfoot could slip his dogs in here, yet medium-sized paddlers won’t feel like they’re helming the control tower of a container ship. The rear deck, meanwhile, has been lowered to facilitate rolling and re-entries.
The 17 is Delta’s flagship touring kayak, and as such it packs an immense amount of dry storage in its three hatches. Campers who love their luxuries (camping cot and double-burner stove, anyone?) will appreciate the oversized stern hatch. The day pod in the front deck is also more generously sized than most, and easy to reach from the cockpit.
Like its siblings, the 17 features a shallow V hull and well-defined chines for stable, precise edging. Novice paddlers will find the boat encourages development of edge control by resting comfortably on a slight edge, and sitting just as solidly when pushed further onto its chine. Plenty of freeboard means the 17 remains a capable performer on edge when loaded for a longer trip.
Great final stability means the 17 doesn’t capsize easily. When we did finally manage to get it over, the boat’s natural positive buoyancy brought us right side up in a hurry. Greenland rolling competitor and instructor, James Roberts, confirmed our findings, “We love it for rolling—it just pops out of the water and back upright.”
Still, the Delta 17 is most at home devouring open water miles. The long waterline and moderate rocker make for efficient glide and tracking. The sharp bow cuts through calm waters or chop quietly and effortlessly—we reached an impressive cruising speed in just a few strokes.
Whether you’re starting out on your journey or you’re a seasoned paddler, larger folks looking for a lightweight touring kayak will appreciate Delta’s commitment to bending plastics. With its sophisticated looks, affordable price tag and hardwearing construction, the thermoformed 17 is built for the long haul.
THE 17 By Delta Kayaks | Photo: Virginia Marshall
Comfortable Control
The new, well-padded Contour Seat System has four inches of travel fore and aft, and can be adjusted on the fly to optimize contact with the thigh braces or trim a loaded kayak.
Tough Stuff
Delta’s acrylic Solarkote thermoform layup is durable and UV protected—that means no oil-canning or sun-fading.
Let Loose
Reflective decklines tie into bungees bow and stern. Delta says this eliminates loose deck rigging, but we found these are precisely the places we want rigid lines for hauling on during rescues and re-entries.
My kayak is a survivor. She’s survived surf landings and seal launches; summers stored under blazing sun; cartwheels and preposterous payloads; countless rescues, demonstration and otherwise; pressures from the rat race; roadtrips to the country’s easternmost coast, and its westernmost.
Like an old friend, she has been at my side since I first discovered my calling in the cock- pit of a kayak. Perfect to me just as she is, I’ve ornamented and altered her very little. Today, she wears a deck compass on her bow. The spring she came into my life, I christened her Chiquita and for a time a blue-and-gold badge rode the waves with us. Then it washed away.
If memory is a strange thing, so is loyalty. Chiquita is not the fastest boat, nor the most capacious. There are kayaks that surf better, sprint quicker, cruise easier, carry more and, yes, even look prettier. But Chiquita is and does a bit of all those things—she’s never held me back. Maybe that’s what makes her a survivor.
In my profession, I can’t wear blinders. At kayaking events and in reviews for this magazine, temptation taunts me with scores of graceful bows, glitzy colors and cozy cockpits. For a time, I entertained a dalliance with a robin’s egg-blue Pilgrim Expedition — think of the places we could go! More recently, I fell for a hot pink, rocket-fast Stellar S14S surf ski —it’s not cheating if it’s a ‘ski, right?
The only crush I never quite got over was the Pygmy Murrelet I borrowed from Dan Jones in the fall of 2012. Patiently hand-built by its owner, the Murrelet’s mahogany deck gleamed with an inner luster, and its multi-chine hull parried every challenge I could muster with grace and alacrity. I returned the boat reluctantly.
Over the years, Chiquita’s rotomolded yellow plastic has faded just a little, and her hull bears the scrapes and gouges of many a cobble beach and unseen shoal, including that mussel-encrusted rock that hides beneath the wave at Surge Narrows. But the plastic has never oil-canned, the welded bulkheads and lovingly 303-protected rubber hatches have never leaked. The foam seat now appears as if chipmunks have mistaken it for an acorn, yet it’s cradled me through hundreds of rolls and along thousands of kilometers of coast.
I WILL SURVIVE. | PHOTO: VINCE PAQUOT
Perhaps loyalty is simply a nostalgic and hopeful elixir of shared experience and tantalizing promise. Going on a paddling trip without Chiquita feels like leaving a trusted friend behind. I imagine if I did so permanently, the remorse would approach something akin to survivor’s guilt.
Still, when I had the opportunity to join Jones’ boat-building workshop and craft my own Murrelet, I couldn’t pass it up. For a blissful week of building, I thought only of the new boat taking shape in my hands. Then I brought the partially finished shell home and lay it in the basement beside Chiquita. Guilt and a hint of doubt needled at my excitement.
I placed a hand on Chiquita, suspended in her place of honor on the wall. She felt cool and smooth. Capable. I thought of my brother, who parks his first car—an ’85 Pontiac Bonneville four- door that once belonged to our grandmother—in the garage under carefully draped quilts, while his new Jeep collects pollen and bird droppings in the driveway. I contemplated my canoe-crazed friend who builds and paddles the most beautiful cedar- canvas boats, but scoured the classifieds until he found and bought an exact twin of the first plastic Royalex canoe he ever owned.
“Don’t worry, Chiquita,” I softly reassured the yellow kayak, “you’re staying right here.”
Searching for that happy place. | Feature photo: Jordan Manley
Like you, I can vividly remember the first time I rolled. Not my first roll on flatwater, or the one I learned in a course or with a friend at a lake, but the first time I rolled when it really mattered. That elusive, exciting and surprising first whitewater roll. The moment I became a kayaker.
Why your roll is your most important rite of passage
Rolling is by far the most complex thing a paddler will learn—it provides a great example of the dynamic interplay between motor skills, cognitive understanding and affective values—an academic way of saying emotion. Having built my career around guiding and teaching people to paddle, I estimate I have taught about 1,500 people to roll. I can tell you it is rarely the motor skills part of the equation that is the limiting factor. The maneuver itself is relatively easy.
Searching for that happy place. | Feature photo: Jordan Manley
After figuring out the basic motions, comes wrapping one’s head around how all of this happens upside down. On-water demonstrations are a confusing mirror image of what the paddler really needs to do. A good instructor accounts for this and comes up with ingenious ways of demonstrating and then helping a new paddler understand and replicate these motions. That is the easy part. Then comes emotion—more specifically, fear.
“Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.” – W. Clement Stone
Fear is incredibly powerful. It is a rare beginner who can tolerate being upside down, under water, confined and in an awkward position. As water burns into his untrained sinuses, he reaches for the panic button. When it comes to learning, emotion trumps all. Fear overrides a normally rational brain with its flight, fight and freeze reflex, and even the most basic motor skills dissolve.
When I learned to paddle back in the long boat days, even though I could roll in a nice controlled setting, I panicked and bailed any time it really mattered. Fear overrode my cognitive understanding and proven physical ability to roll. Kayak instruction has come a long way since then, but fear is still addressed by most instructors by trying to rationally think it away. “Relax and don’t panic,” I hear instructors tell students. “You know you can hold your breath for 45 seconds.” Unfortunately emotion doesn’t work that way.
Getting beyond the grip of emotion
Good instructors understand that fear happens before thinking can, so we skip the cognitive part of the story and focus on motor skills, as that’s all that’s left. This is known as patterning—as in repetition, repetition, repetition—until the body responds with a pre-planned set of actions, regardless of what the brain thinks or affective response screams. Soldiers, karate black belts and elite athletes have all stumbled upon or purposely pursued this repetition and patterning. No cognition or emotion required, only engrained motor pattern. Shoot. Block. Jump. Roll.
My moment was several years in, with many rivers and many swims behind me. It was on the entry into Third Drop on the Gauley’s Lost Paddle Rapid. I flipped on the first move, felt the blast of water in my nose and the surge of fear, and then was upright! Before my cognitive brain could catch up, I was up and paddling again. The sense of surprise and amazement was so completely disorienting, I flipped over again.
This moment—the automatic and patterned roll—is when we have proven our dues are paid. An automated roll proves time invested in training one’s body to respond with a complex set of actions. While no one is ever beyond swimming, the first whitewater roll is the rite of passage and badge of membership into this small and unique tribe.
Jeff Jackson is a professor with Algonquin College’s Outdoor Adventure guide training diploma and is the co-author of Managing Risk: Systems Planning for Outdoor Adventure Programs.
This article was first published in the Fall 2015 issue of Rapid Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.
Searching for that happy place. | Feature photo: Jordan Manley
Children today have more structured time than any generation before them. This spring at my house, for example, Monday was baseball practice, Tuesday and Wednesday were afterschool academic booster programs for standardized testing (don’t get me started), and Thursday was dance class and a baseball game. On Fridays everybody was too tired to do much of anything.
For weeks after the snow melted and the ice went out I’d ask the kids if they wanted to go paddling or biking after school or after dinner.
“Sure Dad, but when?” they’d reply.
Another weekend would come and go and we’d make loose plans to go the next week, if we could find the time.
Our lives are run by an oversized calendar stuck to the refrigerator door. It’s probably the same at your house. Everything important gets neatly printed in pencil inside 31 little squares and reviewed every morning at breakfast. Important events get stickers. My son strokes out the days counting down to really big occasions like summer vacation and Christmas.
Time management is an important skill
Life coaches suggest that time management is an important skill to teach young children. Our elementary school issues every child an agenda on the first day of class. Teachers are instructing children how to write every due date and appointment in the book. What they are not teaching is how to choose what goes on the list and what doesn’t, or how to prioritize the truly important things in life.
We always make our scheduled appointments. If it is written on the calendar we never miss. It’s important to commit to things and not let your team down, or leave your dance instructor waiting in an empty studio. It’s also important to schedule family time. Why? Because, if it’s not on the list it gets pushed to next week.
PADDLE WITH DAD. CHECK. | PHOTO: SCOTT MACGREGOR
When the kids were smaller, before team sports and sleepover birthday parties, life was simpler. We had more free time together and that meant more time outside. Lately, we’ve found that real life is running our lives. We’ve been putting off the things we value the most and we’ve been too busy driving to the next agenda item to notice.
“Why don’t we make Wednesday night, Do Something Adventurous Night?” she asked. “I’ll make stickers. We’ll put them on the calendar.”
It was my daughter, Kate, who came up with the idea. “Why don’t we make Wednesday night, Do Something Adventurous Night?” she asked. “I’ll make stickers. We’ll put them on the calendar.”
In took us a few weeks before we fell into the routine.
Wednesday mornings we make lists of gear we need to have packed and ready at the back door. We stick the lists to the fridge and refine and reuse them every week. We’ve gotten smarter about being organized with bins and bags consolidating and keeping everything for a given activity all in one place.
On Wednesdays I work a little faster and get home a little earlier. Dinner is reheated leftovers or a quick omelet so we can get out the door more quickly. We made going for a paddle as easy and as routine as heading to the ball diamond. We found bike trails closer to home. We learned which fishing lures to bring and what tackle we could leave behind. Most importantly we made playing outside as important and as routine as anything else in our busy lives.
Scott MacGregor is the founder and publisher of Canoeroots.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2015 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.
Subscribe to Paddling Magazine and get 25 years of digital magazine archives including our legacy titles: Rapid, Adventure Kayak and Canoeroots.
Get Ready 
Get Eating (No, Really) 
This article first appeared in the Fall 2015 issue of Adventure Kayak magazine. 
A brief history of the World Freestyle Kayak Championships
