Learn how to keep your food away from hungry critters with these tips and how-to video from Happy Camper, Kevin Callan.
The Mechanics of Personal Flotation
Thanks to Archimedes, we know that an object immersed in fluid is buoyed upward by a force equal to the weight of the fluid the object displaces. In other words, when your body is in the water, it floats because the weight of the water it displaces is greater than the weight of your body.
What does that mean for paddlers? Well, because the human body is made up mostly of water, the average adult weighs between about 10 and 15 pounds submerged in freshwater. Body fat is less dense than bone or muscle mass, making it quite buoyant. Therefore, just because someone is heavier doesn’t mean they require more flotation.
That’s a lot of science, but stick with us here. If we trust the cute kid from Jerry Maguire when he says a human head weighs around eight pounds, then in order to keep the most important parts above the water, somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 pounds of flotation is required. Phew!
A PFD, which stands for personal flotation device, is anything used to keep you afloat and includes everything from a seat cushion to a life saving ring to a vest.
A lifejacket on the other hand, is specifically designed to keep your head above the water should you become unconscious. These are usually either keyhole-shaped, like you might find on a cruise ship, or vests that have flotation flaps behind where your head would go. True lifejackets must also be red, yellow or orange, one-size-fits-all and reversible so they’re easier to don in an emergency.
This is an important distinction—most paddling jackets are PFDs, not lifejackets. Designing for comfort and mobility has won out over the necessity to keep a paddler’s head above water should he go unconscious.
Okay, back to the science.
Any flotation device worth its salt has been approved by one of a number of agencies depending on its type and your location. Most vest and waist belt PFDs designed with paddling in mind currently fall into either Type III or Type V U.S. Coast Guard ratings, or Type III or Special Use ratings in Canada. The discrepancy in regulations has created some difficulty for consumers. But all that is about to change.
An initiative to harmonize standards across North America has been underway for the past five years and a resolution is likely to come sometime in 2013. Flotation devices will soon go through the same testing in both countries so that they will no longer be subject to separate certification processes in order to meet legal requirements. The hope is that this will reduce confusion for users, put more options on the market and increase innovation since the barriers to releasing a new product into both U.S. and Canadian markets will be fewer.
Among other things, these ratings mean that the PFD offers a minimum level of buoyancy. Currently, for Type III that’s 15.5 pounds in a buoyant foam device and for Type V or Special Use ratings, it’s anywhere between 15.5 to 22 pounds, depending on its intended use.
Why the extra flotation? In choppier conditions, like coastal paddling or whitewater environments, it’s nice to have a little extra clearance above the water. Aerated water like the stuff found in rapids and surf is less dense than water, requiring even more flotation to keep a swimmer afloat. Another important factor is whether or not a paddler intends to perform rescues with the vest. If you’re towing another person or boat, once again, more flotation will help keep your head above the water.
Many paddlers opt for inflatable devices that use a cartridge or lungpower to blow up the device. Belt packs are especially popular for standup paddlers. These are handy as they don’t interfere with your strokes (or your tan) like a traditional vest will. They don’t, however, offer the same degree of protection as inherently buoyant foam-packed paddling jackets because they require the extra step of inflation to become buoyant.
The consequence of a well-used paddling jacket isn’t just faded nylon and a worked-in feel. All inherently buoyant PFDs will lose flotation over time as the foam breaks down. Keep your jacket stored out of the sun so UV rays can’t break down the materials. Allow it to dry fully so mold and mildew can’t accumulate. And resist the urge to sit or kneel on it to maintain its effectiveness. If you attend a pool training session be sure to rinse out your PFD as chemicals can break down its components. It’s also a great idea to check for worn stitching and weak points to ensure that the jacket will do its job during an emergency or rescue situation.
To test out a new PFD or to check the effectiveness of an older one, try it out in the water. Relax your body and let your head tilt back. Make sure your PFD keeps your head out of the water and that you can breathe easily. If not, check the label and go for something with a couple more pounds of flotation or retire your old one. For average users, replacement every five to seven years is a safe bet, more often if you’re on the water every day.
Competent paddling shops will only sell PFDs that are approved, making most of this technical stuff less vital information. That frees people up to focus more on style, fit, comfort and whether the colors match. The flotation offered by your device will come into play in more adverse conditions and rescue situations. At the very least, now you understand the label in your paddling jacket and have some great conversation for your next cocktail party.
This editorial originally appeared in the 2013 Paddling Buyer’s Guide. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it on your desktop here.
Brave New Board
Meet the Rum Runner by Point 65, the world’s first modular Stand Up Paddleboard (SUP).
Following the success of Swedish manufacturer Point 65’s modular kayaks comes a three-piece SUP, available in two sizes: the Rum Runner 11.5 and Rum Runner 12.5. The Point 65 Rum Runner is an innovative, high-performance, take-apart, touring SUP with a displacement hull, making it a fast, stable, straight-tracking board on which to explore, exercise, and easily take home in the back of your car.
Like the modular kayaks, the Rum Runner features Point 65’s patented Snap-Tap system for ultimate usability both on and off the water. The 11.5’ Rum Runner has a carrying capacity of 265 lbs and weighs 55 lbs assembled. It easily separates into three manageable sections, each weighing as little as 15 lbs, allowing for easy transport in almost any car. Using the longer mid-section, your Rum Runner 11.5 is transformed into a 12.5’ SUP with a carrying capacity of 300 lbs.
The Rum Runner is fast and fun, yet comfortably stable and straight tracking. It is a SUP that snaps apart and reassembles in seconds, making it by far the most easy to carry, rigid SUP. The rotomolded polyethylene construction provides a combination of strength and impact resistance that most other materials can’t match.
Point 65’s Rum Runner features dry storage space with a watertight hatch in the front. The deck is partly covered with a structured EVA foam padding for paddling comfort and grip, and also features D-rings for installation of the optional AIR seat pad. Other features include a retractable fin for shollower draft and easier storage, cupholders, carrying handles on all sections, and scuppers to drain the deck area.
The Rum Runner is in production now and will be widely available at REI, LL Bean and many other retail stores by late winter/early spring 2014.
US MSRP 11.5′ $999
US MSRP 12.5′ $1,099
For detailed specs and to learn more, visit www.point65.com/kategori/5535/modular-sup-new.html
PRESS RELEASE
Tripping Canoe Review: Mad River Expedition 176
Whether it’s for the weekend or a whole month, Mad River’s Expedition 176 is a tripping canoe designed to take on the miles with you. It has the speed, capacity and seaworthiness to excel on long open-water paddles but is sized to handle smaller lakes and rivers.
The 176’s roots lie in Mad River’s famed tripping boat of the ‘70s, the TW Special.
“Tripping boats are essential to Mad River. We hadn’t had a true composite tripping hull come out through the early part of the century and that’s the heart of the canoe market. We wanted to bring it back into the game,” says Mad River Canoe’s product manager Buff Grubb of the 176’s release three years ago.
Mad River Expedition 176 Specs
Length: 17’6”
Width at gunwales: 34”
Depth at bow: 22”
Depth at center: 15.25”
Depth at stern: 18.5”
Weight: Aluminum trim 60 lbs; Wood trim 63 lbs
MSRP: Aluminum trim $2,579; Wood trim $2,799
The Expedition series, designed by Bob McDonough, began with the Expedition 186. Both are classic tripping boats, though the 176 is a foot shorter and more maneuverable. Whereas the 186 is large enough for a summer-long trip, the 176 is a more flexible option.
“The 176 is a boat both for the real enthusiast and someone who’s an aspiring paddler and doesn’t want to limit where they can go,” says Grubb. “It’s a boat that can take you from the Barren Lands to tripping in the borderlands.”
At first stroke, it’s easy to see why the 176 is such a popular boat. Its asymmetrical hull provides excellent forward speed and tracking, making for efficient paddling.
The shallow V-shaped hull offers high secondary stability and superior rough water performance. The lightweight composite construction makes portaging easy, while still providing solid durability.
Side by side with another tripping canoe of a different brand, what you’ll notice first is the outfitting. Mad River’s high-quality wood trim sets it apart from the rest. It boasts a sliding contoured cane bow seat, contoured portage yoke, adjustable stern ash foot brace, cane bucket stern seat and shaped ash carry handles.
[ Paddling Buyer’s Guide: View all Mad River canoes ]
You’ll also notice the Mad River logo laminated into the foam core of the hull. Confident Rabbit, Mad River’s symbol since 1971, was born out of a Micmac legend. While the rabbit sits, smoking his pipe, around him creeps his mortal enemy, the lynx.
But the rabbit isn’t worried—he’s confident in his own wisdom and knowledge. Similarly, canoeists can be confident in the knowledge that they would be hard pressed to find a better canoe to trip in. The only question that’s left is, what’s in the pipe?
Why I’m No Longer Opposed To Blowup Boats
The first time I took on Oregon’s wild and scenic Rogue River, I was in a solo hardshell open canoe, as were my boating buds. Self-supported, with camping gear and food for our three-day trip, we used every trick in the book to avoid capsizing as we negotiated 35 miles of remote, challenging whitewater. We weren’t always successful, but we did fine-tune our skills chasing down runaway boats. Tackling rapids can test even the most experienced wilderness tripper.
Ten years later, I returned to the same section of the Rogue with the same crew. Only this time, there were no swims and we were even able to run one difficult rapid that we portaged before. What gives?
We were all paddling inflatable canoes. Self-bailing, and with more stability than their hardshell counterparts, our burly, blowup boats bounced through the frothing rapids of the Rogue, emerging triumphantly into the emerald pools below every time.
I wasn’t always a cheerleader for inflatables. When I was first invited to use one—on a weeklong, self-supported, 100-mile whitewater trip, no less—I was suspicious of their durability, usability and lack of sex appeal. Would it be sluggish on the flat stretches between rapids? Would it hold up to the beatings a hardshell can take on a wild river? Would my buddies think I was a wimp for choosing an inflatable over my trusty Bell Nexus tripper? Could I really trust my life in the wilderness to some kid’s ducky?
How an open boat and open mind can change a stubborn man. That 100-mile trip made me a true believer. My fully loaded, 14-foot inflatable felt and responded like a hardshell canoe. And because of its stability and self-bailing attributes, I was able to run boat-swamping rapids with aplomb while my hardshell brethren scrambled to make it through the gauntlets unscathed.
The inflatable canoe has evolved into a technological marvel over the past 15 years. Built of rugged materials and designed by paddlers for paddlers, these are serious boats for serious boaters. The fun factor definitely diminishes when paddling an inflatable on flatwater rivers and lakes, but speed isn’t everything when river tripping, which is the inflatable canoe’s true domain.
I’ve grown to rely upon these versatile craft. Their large cargo capacity is perfect for multi-day river safaris and I’ve taken them across the continent, everywhere from Texas’ Lower Canyons to the Nahanni in the Northwest Territories. My friends used to laugh at me, but I’ve since made converts out of them, too.
More than anything, my inflatables have proven their worth on remote and exotic rivers—the steamy jungle of Nicaragua, mountains of Bolivia and in the wild steppes of Mongolia. You try getting a hardshell there by mule, backpack or public bus. These rivers are only an option if your boat packs smaller than a golf bag.
Whether it’s short sojourns near home or hardcore getaways, don’t be surprised if, after putting it to the test, you, too, advocate for these practical and efficient blowup boats.
Larry Rice resides in Buena Vista, Colorado. Among his fleet of canoes are four inflatables, from 10 to 16 feet in length, stored neatly in bags under the pool table in his basement.
Skills: Night Photography
Of all the great canoe tripping memories I’ve had over the years, some of the best evoke the magic of the night sky and the warmth and comfort of the evening fire. Capturing the spirit of a wilderness trip through the lens can be a challenge at the best of times, but photographing low-light and nighttime scenes demands some expertise and a lot of patience.
Beyond the essential equipment for effective low-light photography, which includes a digital SLR camera, tripod and fast aperture lens (less than f2.8 is ideal), there are some basic concepts to remember when out on your next trip.
The first is that the longer your exposure, which is also known as your shutter speed, the brighter your photo will be because more light is let in.
While you can photograph a campfire after dark, some of the most effective campfire shots are taken during twilight, when landscape detail or silhouettes put the campfire in context. Also, the darker it gets, the smaller your fire needs to be if you hope to balance it with the ambient light. A glowing bed of coals and a few flickering twigs will appear as a crackling campfire after a 10- or 20-second exposure.
On clear, moonless nights, capturing the stars can make for great images. To include foreground elements you’ll first have to expose for the sky, being sure to keep your exposure to 30 seconds or less to avoid blurring the stars due to the Earth’s rotation. Foreground lighting can take the form of a headlamp, off-camera flash or simply the glow from a nearby campfire.
A bright, moonlit night is a great time to make unique images. Moonlight provides backlighting to clouds, shimmers off water and provides an all-round spooky array of shapes and silhouettes. Including the moon as part of a longer exposure will result in a soft, circular glow.
If you’re lucky enough to experience the northern lights, photographing the display makes for an exciting and memorable tripping experience. If the aurora display has definition, keep your shutter speed to 15 seconds or less to avoid washing out the bands of light. Don’t forget to include some foreground to help with framing the image.
View seasoned wilderness traveler and photographer Mike Monaghan’s work at mikemonaghan.ca.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2014 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.
Basecamp: The Forgotten Phase
The nacho chips and salsa were just placed on the kitchen table and already conversation was shifting from how nasty the ski conditions were today to my idea of a family rafting trip down the Coulonge River next summer.
By the time the pizza was coming out of the oven, the mothers were planning the menu. The other dads and I were Googling river levels to see which rapids we could run and which we may need to portage. Sitting at the cooks’ end of the kitchen table, one dad, hearing talk about boxed wine and lawn chairs, suggested we best keep the portaging to a minimum and run everything we can. That was our plan.
If we’d invited Professor Ed Krumpe from the Conservation Social Science Department at the University of Idaho to join us for dinner, he’d say we were deep into phase one of the five phases of a satisfying recreation and tourism experience.
Anticipation and planning is the pouring over guidebooks, route and food planning, campsite booking, travel plans and gear preparation phase. It’s an important step because it creates buy-in and commitment. Done well it sets expectations for the whole group. Done poorly—well, you probably know the answer—the experience would more than likely end in disaster.
The dads were looking for a big water run. The mothers had more of a low-water float trip in mind. The dads were thinking of starting way up north in the spring and stretching the trip over 10 days. The mothers were thinking three nights in August without bugs. Eventually we’d settle on a trip that offered just enough adventure and margaritas on the sand bars.
These important details are best worked out before the travel phase, before the participation phase and before the travel home phase, so the final recollection phase is a pleasant one.
A truly satisfying experience, according to Krumpe, is one where expectations are met or exceeded. How the story will be told après ski in years to come has everything to do with anticipation, planning and setting these expectations before the trip. Our memories are burned into our subconscious and affect the planning or likelihood of follow-up trips.
But we know that family trips never, ever go exactly as planned, especially ones in the backcountry, which is why I believe there is an even more important phase of the outdoor recreational experience. The imperfect recall phase falls somewhere between Krumpe’s travel home phase and recollection phase. You may know this phase better as selective memory.
When planning goes all wrong—shuttles are late, rafts flip, fish hooks enter fingers, tequila runs short and bugs live too late in the season—imperfect recall is our natural ability as parents to remember the good times and block out or make light of the bad. Imperfect recall is really what affects the likelihood of a follow-up trip.
Rounding up our ski jackets and our kids, we’ve already forgotten how cold, windy and icy it was on the hill today. Going out the door, we make plans to meet again early next Saturday morning at the lodge. —Scott MacGregor
This article originally appeared in Spring 2014 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions here, or download the Paddling Magazine app and browse the digital archives here.
Betcha Didn’t Know About…Bears
Bear Brutus is just part of the family for naturalist Casey Anderson. His 800-pound ursine pal attended Anderson’s wedding as his best bear. He’s even sat down with the family for dinner.
Bears can run at speeds up to 35 miles per hour. The average human sprinter clocks in at 12 to 15 miles per hour. Don’t even try it.
Spokesbear for U.S. Forest Service, the original Smokey Bear was an American black bear cub rescued from a 1950 wildfire. After being nursed back to health, he lived at Washington’s National Zoo for 26 years, receiving up to 13,000 fan letters per week.
Though attacks are a common wilderness fear, bears have been responsible for only two to three deaths per year in North America since 1990. By comparison, dogs kill an average of 15 people and lightning kills 80 people each year.
For his show, Man vs. Wild, Bear Grylls has consumed frozen yak eyeballs, camel intestine juice, raw goat testicles, a live snake, giant maggots and live insects. The goat testicles were the worst, he reported—he bearly made it though.
It was Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot a tied-up bear on a hunting trip that gave the toy teddy bear its start. Roosevelt’s refusal made the papers, painting the soon-to-be-president as a compassionate man. It boosted his popularity and toy manufacturers jumped on the opportunity, creating the immediately successful “Teddy’s bear.”
This article first appeared in the Spring 2014 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.
Idaho: Home of the Best Hole in America
“It’s the sickest play hole probably ever built,” says Junior World Champion freestyle kayaker, Jason Craig. “At least, that I’ve paddled in—and I’ve paddled in a lot.”
He compares the top feature at Kelly’s Whitewater Park to the Ottawa River’s world-class waves, but at Kelly’s, there’s never a line in the eddy.
It’s a ghost town a lot of the time says Craig, who spent a month at the Cascade, Idaho, park last summer—an eerie emptiness that you’d expect to see bustling with big-name boaters and beginners alike, based on the quality of whitewater.
There are four main waves at Kelly’s and the biggest is Craig’s secret training ground, a hole he says is the best in the country for boosting freestyle scores. The bank is landscaped with boulders that form amphitheater-style seating for more than 3,000 spectators near this feature alone, benches that are packed on event weekends when people flood to Kelly’s to join or watch high-level competition.
BRINGING IN BUSINESS FOR CASCADE
Since it opened in 2010, the park has hosted two National Kayak Championships and the 2013 Payette River Games, which drew 14,000 people, including a long list of world- class kayakers, to the park for a weekend of SUP and kayak competition.
The 2014 Payette River Games are from June 20 to 22 and have a prize purse of over $100,000, with $10,000 top prizes in both men’s and women’s categories—the biggest money weekend in whitewater history.
The events are booming business for Cascade, a single-store town that only 1,000 people call home.
Mark Pickard is the man responsible for plopping this world-class whitewater on the map in the middle of Idaho. A retired Wall Street hedge-fund founder, Pickard and his wife Kristina poured funds into the park as an act of philanthropy— a memorial to Kristina’s late sister, Kelly, and an economic jolt for Cascade, a town the New York-Miami Beach couple had fallen in love with.
“We’re not paddlers,” says Pickard, who transplants to the area for a few months each year. But a whitewater park was a long- time dream of the community so Pickard worked with a team of engineers to blast through its planning and construction in a matter of months, turning a donated abandoned sawmill site into what he hopes will become a national tourist attraction.
MORE THAN JUST WHITEWATER
Everything at Kelly’s is completely free, and Pickard didn’t stop with whitewater. Beach volleyball courts, an outdoor concert area, horseshoe and bocce ball pits and an extravagant visitor’s center are all part of the plan to bring more people to the not-for-profit park, on more than just competition weekends.
Between events, the site is scattered with small groups of local kids attending Kelly’s Academy—a program where fifth- to twelfth-grade students from the area get free lessons from world champs like Craig, who agrees that it’s just a matter of time before the park catches on as a whitewater hotspot.
“It feels like paradise. Every level of paddler would love that whitewater park,” he says, adding that it’s only a short drive from Kelly’s to the legendary 15 miles of Class V on the North Fork of the Payette River.
It’s “an incredible place to be a kayaker,” he says.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2014 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here
Access Denied in Wyoming
I write this stuck in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park—not a bad place to be—but the park is closed, the place is deserted. The river I came here to run is now out of bounds; one of the most famous, historic and flat rivers most paddlers have never heard of.
Here for a risk management conference at a private lodge, we are victim to the U.S. government’s Obamacare shutdown and budgetary deadlock. We’re carrying on with our conference, but the park’s gates are locked. We can leave but we can’t get back in if we do.
Famed landscape photographer Ansel Adams’ black and white The Tetons and the Snake River (1942) seared the jagged skyline of the Teton Range into the American psyche, making them what most Americans picture when they think of mountain peaks. Snow capped, ominous and rising from the western plains, the iconic mountains have served as the center of American mountaineering for over a hundred years.
Adams’ famous photo used the upper reaches of the Snake River to contrast against the triangular peaks: the river’s sinuous curve draws the eye from the foreground, down the bank and up the jagged peaks into the sky above. When I first saw the photo on a Christmas gift coffee table book, the image of the Snake drew me in, left me longing to be pulled down the humble river beneath those peaks. And now I sit here, struck by the reality that the river is beyond my reach, its access controlled by the government’s whim.
Rows and rows of sad-looking rafts and dories sit on trailers on the parking lot of Jackson Lake Lodge, where I’m locked up. They, too, are imprisoned, leaving one of the busiest scenic float rivers in the world deserted like the rest of the park. River guides either mill about with nothing to do or have called it a season and moved on. The same Snake that downstream passes through whitewater Ho-
back and Hell’s canyons, up this high is just flat and swift, dwarfed and humbled by the Tetons. The Snake is often overlooked by seri- ous whitewater paddlers, but is magnificent in views and important in our history.
Grand Teton National Park is one of the birthplaces of commercial rafting and the Snake continues to put any other commercial rafting river to shame—upwards of 200,000 tourists float this section every year.
THE TETONS FAMED HISTORY
The famous and extremely wealthy John D. Rockefeller Jr. was an avid outdoorsman and visited the Tetons in the 1920s. Rockefeller secretly began buying up land with the intention of handing it all over to the government as a gift.
Political and legal wrangling got in the way, and it was not until 1950—more than 20 years later—that his donated land gained of- ficial park status.
Rockefeller promptly set about building Jackson Lake Lodge and hired horse wranglers to take clients down the Snake in WWII surplus inflatable bridge pontoons with sweep oars.
That was the start of commercial rafting in this watershed. Further to the south in Utah and Arizona, Bus Hatch and Norman Nevills were pioneering commercial whitewater on the Green and Colorado, but for Rockefeller, the river was about scenery. He wanted people to float through Adams’ photo, and revel in the spectacle of the mountains looming overhead. When whitewater daredevils were gaining media attention in the mid-60s, a half dozen river operators sprung up and still operate on the Snake, capturing the road traffic through the Tetons and nearby Yellowstone National Park.
As the creator of the commercial float trip, Rockefeller waited out decades of government delay to ensure this land would spread the love of rivers to the masses. Like Rockefeller and so many others, I was drawn to this river, but here I sit, my access denied, looking at a real-life image of the Tetons and the Snake River, and a snapshot it will remain.
This article was first published in the Spring 2014 issue of Rapid Magazine. 
