“I have never seen a dog so attached to a human as Hal is to my friend Rok,” says photographer Anze Osterman, who caught this sunrise birdwatching shot on a whitewater trip in the Soca Valley.
See this photo in print here.
The Masochist’s Guide To Portaging
A truly laborious portage isn’t characterized by steepness of grade or total length. It’s what blocks your way that defines how punishing it will be. If the portage has a sign indicating that a maintenance crew gives it a visit now and then, you can’t complain. If you need a compass to guess the line of sight and there’s only a rusty beer can or a strip of discolored flagging tape marking the starting point, then you’ve got every right to curse.
The masochist’s guide to portaging
Though I’ve had my share of nasty portages, I met my nemesis in the Diablo portage on the Steel River—a good example of a bad bushwhack. Moss, rocks, rotting logs, branches and knee-high dead trees cover the ground obscuring holes, stumps and other boot-snagging hazards.
The route becomes almost vertical at one point—I knew I’d reached this section when the bow of the canoe continuously rammed the trail in front of me. With forward motion impossible, I resorted to winching the canoe uphill by looping a rope around a tree.
Staggering down an unmarked trail, littered with giant jagged boulders and fallen trees followed. A network of well-hidden crevices only sweetened the deal. By the time the portage was complete I was relieved that the only casualty was my face—I’d kissed the earth and had the canoe come crashing down on my forehead.
Portaging will never be enjoyable; it’s the sweet moment of spotting the sparkle of shimmering water in the distance that makes the abuse we endure worth it. But these tips, earned through years of blood, sweat and a few tears, might help you grin and bear it.
6 tips for a (relatively) painless portage
1 Suit up
Forget Bermuda shorts and tank tops. Wear long layers to protect exposed skin that will otherwise be ripped apart by gnarly branches and gorged on by bloodthirsty mosquitoes. When you’re overheated and dripping, don’t curse your sweat suit, instead give thanks for your suit of invincibility.
2 Fall with dignity
Slippery rocks and exposed roots may induce unbalanced teetering, inevitably resulting in a crashing of flesh, packs, canoe and expletives. Don’t expect sympathy unless the canoe makes a bang when it hits bone. Try to channel the stoicism of Spock as you stand up, dust yourself off and carry on. A true paddler won’t judge you anyway—not unless you turtle.
3 Your canoe is a weapon
Think of your canoe as a 50-pound ram. When bushwhacking your way to the next lake with only the odd piece of flagging tape to guide you, don’t be afraid to part the vegetation with violence. If you’ve tried to slam through the overgrowth only to be thrown back by the strength of the branches, try a running start. Your trip mates will appreciate the path you create for them. (Not recommended for Kevlar models.)
4 There are no heroes
There are no extra points for making the portage in one go. However, there are demerit points if you can’t find your way back to your gear.
5 Perfect your dance
With at least one hand occupied by the canoe in the balancing act of the portage, you’re a slow-moving, non-swatting meal for hungry insect life. Incorporate a little shimmy in your step to dissuade the locals and keep them guessing.
6 Don’t look back
With an upper body carting 16 extra feet in length, there are very few situations that warrant turning around.
Kevin Callan’s Butt End column is published in each issue of Canoeroots.
“Anyone who says they like portaging is either a liar or crazy.” —Bill Mason | Feature photo: Tim Irvin
NRS Flux Drytop
This old favorite has been rereleased with new colors and the same breathability we know and love—no sweat-soaked inner layers with this one. The fabric is soft to the touch to reduce friction and boost comfort when paddling.
We like the Flux’s lightness and adjustability. Tabs at the wrist dial in fit, while the neck has a punch-through neoprene cuff so your hair won’t get caught in moving parts. The neoprene has an inner coating to reduce chafing against your skin.
A pull-tab tightens the inner tunnel to reduce bulk against your body and the grippy outer tube bonds with your skirt to stay in place.
www.nrs.com | $324.95
Click here for more dry top reviews in the free online edition of Rapid, Summer/Fall 2014.
This article originally appeared in Rapid, Early Summer 2014. Read the entire issue on your desktop, Apple or Android device.
What’s In Expedition Grandma’s Kayak Kit
How do you pack for a yearlong, transcontinental kayak trip that involves stepping from backcountry to boardroom en route?
“Well, I don’t travel light,” says Dr. Deb Walters, 63, a retired cognitive scientist and university vice president. The grandmother of four is several months into her 2,500-mile solo expedition, paddling from Maine to Guatemala for charity.
Struck by the families living in poverty in Guatemala City’s garbage dump on a trip a decade ago, she began volunteering with Safe Passage, a non-profit that sends local children to school in an area devestated by poverty. Making presentations to schools and potential donors along her route south has already brought her more than halfway to her goal of $150,000.
What’s In Expedition Grandma’s Kayak Kit?
- Walters built her 18 foot, 75 pound wooden kayak 16 years ago but never paddled it after trouble getting the hatches watertight. Instead, it sat in her barn, a cozy den for porcupines. Chesapeake Light Craft, manufacturers of the kit, helped her get the kayak expedition ready. By using recycled materials found around their shop, Chesapeake’s designer customized the cockpit to fit Walters and made modifications specific for this trip, including moving bulkheads, adding hatches and reinforcing the structure with carbon fiber and fiberglass. “We’re a good team,” Walters says of her and her boat.
- Allowing Walters to stay in touch with her family and send daily social media updates is her MacBook and DeLorme InReach Explorer. Her favourite feature of the Explorer is that it automatically updates her route every 10 minutes, making it easy for strangers to surprise her at the end of the day with a hot meal or for fellow paddlers to join her for an afternoon on the water.
- Though Walters loves her freestanding Hilleberg Staika tent, she hasn’t had to use it very often when paddling near urban areas. “Strangers are putting me up in luxury,” she says. “This is the first expedition on which I’m gaining weight.”
- Walters carries up to a week’s worth of food at a time, most of it homemade dehydrated snacks, including turkey pepperoni and spinach chips. Her favourite meal? “It’s a weird one – instant mash potatoes with lemon olive oil, drizzled with a dark chocolate balsamic vinegar.” At capacity, her food and gear weight 160 pounds.
- With presentations to make in schools and fundraisers to attend along her route, Walters also had to pack a city outfit, housed in its own dry bag, so it doesn’t take on the stink of her wet neoprene.
- “It’s a hammock – lots of people ask what it is,” says Walters. Along the coasts of Florida and Belize the mangrove forest will prevent her from finding land to set up the tent. “I just tie my hammock up in the top of the mangroves and tie up my kayak as well, and while the tide goes up and down I have a wonderful sleep in the trees.”
- “The children in Guatemala thought I would be lonely on my trip so they gave me a rubber duck,” says Walters. Dubbed Patito Amistosos (Friendly Duckie), the squeaky totem stays in the pocket of her PFD. An occasional star in Walters’ blog entries, Patito is a timid alter ego to Walters’ positivity and confidence. “Whenever I talk with a boater they always tell me how the next portion of my journey will be the most terrifying section – I hear about disasters and ships running aground – If I listened to them I’d be scared the whole time, like Patito. Just a little concern keeps me alert and on my toes though.”
This article first appeared in the 2015 Paddling Buyer’s Guide. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine and get 25 years of digital magazine archives including our legacy titles: Rapid, Adventure Kayak and Canoeroots.
Skill: traditional forward canoe stroke
My dad used to suggest “keep your stroke short, it’s more efficient and relaxing,” as we paddled the flatwater stretches of the trip. It was 1983, and we were on the Nahanni River preparing me for a summer of guiding.
I fondly remember my dad’s voice as I paddled in the stern of the canoe. Being a teenager, I rolled my eyes at his instructions and was determined to prove him wrong. With stubborn resolve, I pulled with both arms and lengthened my stroke.
Dad’s stroke was smooth and relaxed even as he took two strokes to one of mine. I watched him more closely just as he had learned by studying a First Nations paddler.
This short canoe stroke, which I now call the traditional stroke, has become an important forward stroke in my flatwater repertoire.
Learn the canoeing forward stroke technique
1. Start with the blade in the water at your knee and your grip hand at your chin.
2. Punch your grip hand forward and down towards the onside gunwale creating a lever with your lower shaft hand as a travelling fulcrum. Rotate your torso to put some bodyweight behind the punch.
3. As your grip hand gets closer to the gunwale start to roll your thumb down setting up the blade for the correction stroke. Having your grip hand over the gunwale ensures that the blade is close and parallel to the hull throughout the stroke.
4. After the grip hand punch is accomplished relax your arms, let your bottom hand trail smoothly behind you and do your correction stroke.
5. Return to an upright position and feather your blade out on the recovery
6. Knife the paddle in toward your knee to start the next stroke minding that your grip hand doesn’t creep up over your head.
To get the feel of the punch with power, try this learning technique. Hook your shaft hand thumb onto the gunnel to force yourself to create a fulcrum, punch your grip hand from your chin all the way to the gunnel until your knuckles touch.
Repeat this a few times and you’ll be well on your way to mastering this relaxing traditional stroke.
Bomber Gear Blitz Splash Top
The lightest option in our dry top lineup, the Blitz is perfect for cool summer paddling.
It completely avoids the sweaty feeling dry tops can cause when the weather is warm by prioritizing breathability while keeping your core warm and dry.
It’s a splash top, not a dry top, meaning it doesn’t have gaskets to keep every last drop of water out, but still does up tight at the neck with a hook-and-loop tab and has neoprene cuffs around the wrists.
Bomber Gear uses what they call Performance Cut design, which means the Blitz fits like a normal, comfortable piece of clothing that you’ll be happy wearing all day.
www.bombergear.com | $99
Click here for more dry top reviews in the free online edition of Rapid, Summer/Fall 2014.
This article originally appeared in Rapid, Early Summer 2014. Read the entire issue on your desktop, Apple or Android device.
War Machine: The Strangest Source Of Canoe Innovation In Modern Times Has Been War
Locked in Canada’s intellectual property vaults are something in the order of 150 patents having to do with canoes and kayaks, the earliest of which were taken out by builders in the mid-19th century. They’ve accumulated at a slow rate—some of the more recent innovations include the packsack canoe (2001), outboard canoe seat (2002), heated paddle shaft (2009) and pedal-propulsion system (2010).
You’d be forgiven for thinking that very little has happened in the world of canoe innovation and even with the craft itself, since maritime history began. But you’d be wrong.
A Strange Source Of Canoe Innovation
Breakthroughs in canoe design and construction techniques over the years that have resulted in leaps in the utility, elegance, durability, buildability and popularity of our much-loved vessel.
By far, the strangest source of canoe innovation in modern times has been war. War has been responsible for the strong and steady growth in canoeing of all kinds since WWII. Even Bill Mason’s first canoe, a Plycraft, was made thanks to wood laminating technology perfected in the construction of de Havilland Mosquito bombers.
It was slick aluminum fabrication technology used to produce military aircraft that allowed the Grumman Aircraft Company to create a peacetime fuselage—the enduring Grumman canoe. Thanks to the low cost and ease of manufacture that comes with mass production, canoeing became more accessible in North America and single blades flooded the water.
Similarly, we owe the best canvas-covered sectional canoe the world has ever seen to the Link Trainer, a flight simulator designed to mass educate young pilots without crashing too many real planes in the process. Edwin Albert Link, an ingenious inventor, parlayed air piston technology from his family’s organ business in Indiana into creating one of the first flight simulators. More than 500,000 pilots were trained in the U.S. alone.
When the war came to a close, Link adapted the same wood-trimmed phenolic resin panels with canvas cover, used in the simulator production, to the manufacture of 10-piece sectional Linkanoes with commercial success. The patent is still in effect today.
More recently, cloths, resins and plastics developed for war tools and equipment have continued to further the path of the paddle. Best known of these materials are aramid synthetic fibers, such as Kevlar and Twaron, the staple of bulletproof garments and portable armor plating.
These war-driven cloth and resin manufacturing techniques made it possible to mold canoes with incredible strength-to-weight ratios and offer modern designs. Not only can canoeists now paddle and portage farther with less effort, they can even do it alone—solo-carry ing a wood canoe requires the strength of a marine.
While flipping through this year’s edition of the Paddling Buyer’s Guide, you might find it strange to consider how our peaceful little boats have evolved by leaps and bounds thanks to an industrial production cycle powered by global conflict.
James Raffan is the former executive director of the Canadian Canoe Museum and a regular contributor to Canoeroots.
This article first appeared in the 2015 Paddling Buyer’s Guide. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine and get 25 years of digital magazine archives including our legacy titles: Rapid, Adventure Kayak and Canoeroots.
Gear Trends: Crossover Crazy
What better way to lure novice and intermediate paddlers out of their flatwater comfort zones and into the more adventurous niches of river, surf and open water paddling, than to build boats that effortlessly bridge the gap? Case in point, the new S14S, an efficient 14-foot sit-on-top from surf ski veterans, Stellar Kayaks. “People have a head trip about surf skis,” says Stellar sales rep, Vaughn Smith, “they’re skinny, they’re tippy, they’re weird. The S14S is a boat anybody can jump on.” Current Designs also entered the surf ski crossover market this summer with the Ignite. Echoing Thomas, CD says the 16-foot Ignite “is not an elite-level, hyper-sensitive surf ski requiring a lifetime of skills, rather it is a surf ski for all paddlers.” Add to this a new wave of river crossovers and the plethora of transitional kayaks—compact, lightweight craft that tempt recreational paddlers into the higher performing realm of touring kayaks—available in 2014, and there have never been more options to get on the water.
This article originally appeared in the 2015 Paddling Buyer’s Guide.
Inflatable Kayak Review: Advanced Elements Airfusion Elite
I watched her roll down to the waterfront and lean her Schwinn 10-speed against a garden pagoda. Her earbudded head bopping to some unknown beat, she proceeded to unpack the inflatable kayak stashed on her bike trailer and lean into a hand pump very similar to the Advanced Elements pump I held in my own hands. The race was on.
The AirFusion Elite streamlines Advanced Elements’ hybrid frame and airtube design. High-pressure air chambers along the chines and gunwales add stability and tension the PVC skin, while aluminum poles along the keel and front deck improve tracking, hull speed and water shedding. The result is a boat that feels surprisingly rigid in the water, yet avoids the complex assembly of a folding kayak.
Advanced Elements AirFusion Elite Specs
Length: 13’
Width: 28”
Material: PVC
Weight: 32 pounds
Price: $899
While the competition takes shape like a parade float down the shore, I insert the AirFusion’s foam floor, slide in the keel and deck poles, and inflate the side chambers, removable bow and stern thwarts and cockpit coaming.
The AirFusion’s design appears simplistic, but it’s actually ingenious. The foam tile floor insulates, stiffens and gives shape to the hull.
The inflatable thwarts serve as bulkheads, acting as a foot brace in the bow and creating a roomy, well-defined rear storage area accessed through a Velcro hatch and dry bag-style roll closure on the stern deck.
Earbud Girl beats me to the water—I’m scribbling notes when she launches—but I beat her out of the harbor.
While her department store pool toy spins in circles with each paddle stroke, my craft accelerates quickly, cruises comfortably, tracks well on the level and snaps around with a slight edge.
Rock-solid stability and a standard-sized cockpit opening keep it dry when playing in waves, although there’s not quite enough knee support for aggressive bracing.
Lightweight and lively, the AirFusion Elite is great for paddlers who want fast and easy set-up without compromising performance.
[ Paddling Buyer’s Guide: View all Advanced Elements inflatable kayaks ]
Ideal for: Grab-and-go lunch break and after work adventures; traveling with your ‘yak; carefully packed overnights on lakes, rivers and sheltered coasts.
Assembly time: 10 minutes
Video: How To Re-Enter and Roll Your Kayak
Dympna Hayes from Ontario Sea Kayak Centre shares step-by-step tips that make performing a re-enter and roll in your kayak simple and straightforward. If you’ve exited your kayak, the re-enter and roll is the fastest self rescue, increasing your confidence and safety on the water.
Stay tuned for more great paddling skill videos, including canoeing, kayaking and whitewater techniques, brought to you in partnership with Rapid Media and Ontario Tourism.
