When Alison Howard front-crawled into Port Edward, B.C., last August, she was completing not just her 28-day source-to-sea swim of northern British Columbia’s Skeena River, but the circle in a longstanding river tradition. In raising awareness of threats surrounding this beautiful and pristine watershed, Howard enthusiastically volunteered for what so many of us enthusiastically avoid—swimming.

Twenty years on, I still have a mark on my jaw from when it hit the bedrock ground beside the Ottawa River. After briefing us on our ultimately futile, high water Coliseum rookie attempt, our raft training guide simply jumped in. To us, the rapid was a mess of roaring white and certain death. He disappeared in the first wave and surfaced somewhere below, indignantly waving for us to get in the boat and get on with it. Later on in my rookie guide years, I would commonly come upon a senior guide, on a day off, swimming the river for fun.

For many paddlers, those who swim rivers— whether for a cause or for pleasure—defy reason. Kayakers view swimming with contempt (if they are good) or humiliation (if they are not), and canoeists are typically terrified of the very idea. Raft guides, always the realists, take swimming for what it is—insignificance while immersed in a tremendously powerful, uncaring force of water and gravity.

The swimming ethos can trace its roots back to 1955, when footloose former servicemen Bill Beer and John Daggett swam the Colorado’s Grand Canyon on a whim, more or less, and became daredevil media darlings. Dragging two 80-pound army surplus dry bags each, they swam the 200-plus miles in 26 days—with no plan, no backup, and no idea what they were doing.

Amazingly, they hauled a film camera with them, and for a time Beer made a living touring with his movie and telling his story. His memoirs are subtitled The True Story of a Cheap Vacation That Got a Little Out of Hand (We Swam the Grand Canyon, 1988, Mountaineers Books). These two single handedly shattered the certain death mentality that early river runners carried with them, and they likely also opened the door to public acceptance of whitewater rafting as a carefree means of having some fun on the river.

This river swimming subculture persisted for many years, and in many places, but came to an abrupt end in 1993 when Stan Hollister—the same guide who willingly swam Coliseum, scarring my jaw—died while swimming Colorado’s Cataract Canyon.

Among guides, Cataract is considered significantly more difficult than the Grand Canyon, and above 60,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) is the hardest commercially run big water in the world.

Hollister swam it at 110,000 cfs in 1983, covering the standard two-day whitewater section in one hour. In 1993, the flow was 65,000 cfs and Hollister was 52 years old. He saw some friends above the Big Drops—notorious for their massive pourovers, chaotic and churning flow and grip- ping speed—and was later found drowned below them. No one knows what happened.

Swimming fell out of favor, even though canoes still swamped and rafts still flipped. For a time, raft guides were even trained without intentional swimming.

Then in the early 2000s, during the heart of the kayaking boom, river rescue training—with its strong focus on swimming—finally gained acceptance among the rapidly expanding ranks of mainstream paddlers, knocking back the certain death mentality once more.

Today, it is not uncommon to again see rookies bobbing down the main lines of commercial rafting rivers. Sometimes just for fun.

Jeff Jackson is a professor of Outdoor Adventure at Algonquin College in Pembroke, Ontario.

This article originally appeared in Rapid, Early Summer 2010. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

This article originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.

Since the passing in March, 2011 of canoe guru Captain Kirk Wipper, I’ve been thinking about one of the first amazing things I ever saw him do in a canoe—a headstand on the center thwart of a 16-foot, wood-canvas Peterborough Canadian.

Back when most rivers flowed the other way because the ice age had yet to come, proficiency in a canoe included a variety of novelty moves that any novice hungered to learn from the masters. Take Omer Stringer, a contemporary of Wipper’s, and his mesmerizing effect on young paddlers. Stringer mastered all the functional canoeing and portaging skills as a guide and general factotum in Algonquin Park. But in the 1960s he crisscrossed the province demonstrating canoe stunts—a kind of canoeing that is all but gone today, lost in the rush of getting certified and carded up.

I vividly remember Omer standing on the dock at Camp Kandalore, describing head- stands and shakeouts and all the cool stuff you could do in a canoe. As he was talking, his canoe, which floated behind him untethered, drifted gently away from the dock. Kids in the audience got agitated, pointing and calling out to Omer: “your canoe is floating away!”

Totally unconcerned, he kept talking. Then, with the power of a gymnast and the timing of a circus showman, he did a standing broad jump from the dock into the moving canoe, clearing a couple yards or more without missing a beat in his discourse. Howls of approval pealed out from the audience.

There were other tricks as well. Canoe over canoe is a rescue technique, of course. But the term also referred to a stunt per- formed regularly during free canoeing at camps throughout the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s.

The stuntman or woman sat behind the stern seat and paddled like crazy toward a willing participant in another canoe. Lining up for a T-bone collision, the stunt involved ramping the moving canoe as far as possible over the mid-ships of the stationary canoe. Next, in one fluid motion, the paddler stood and ran up the moving boat until it balanced over the stationary canoe, and then see- sawed down on the other side. At this point, the paddler settled in and continued on his or her merry way. Canoe over canoe.

The spectacular headstand was some- thing that many Kandalore campers felt compelled to learn if ever they were to paddle like a master. Training for the headstand included the monkey walk—turning 360 degrees in a canoe with hands and feet on the gunwales—and progressed to the flip— spinning the canoe on its longitudinal axis, above the water, without sinking it.

Adding a second person opened doors to gunwale bobbing, jousting and the double headstand.

Since Kirk and Omer were doing their stunts, and encouraging others to do the same, canoeing has evolved. The glamor of these tricks has faded, lost to historic irrelevance. Maybe today’s leaders should sit down and delineate a curriculum for Flat- water Stunting levels I, II and III certification. A flashy badge could be awarded to those who achieve Master Stuntman status.

Why would you want to do a headstand in a canoe on flatwater? It’s a bit like practicing Zen. A path to enlightenment known only to the great canoe masters of old and those willing to wade in and give it a whirl.

James Raffan mastered the monkey walk in graduate school and is still working on his headstand.

This article appeared in Canoeroots & Family Camping, Late Summer 2011.

Consider the evolution of climbing. Once upon a time there was only mountaineering. Then along came rock climbing. Now there’s indoor sport climbing. It reminds me of the Darwinian t-shirts we wore in college with the six stages of evolution from prehistoric ape to Homo sapiens. All still involve ropes (usually) and going uphill. Are they really the same sport? i doubt if climbing gyms feed Mount McKinley.

It was difficult for equitable journalist Conor Mihell to find anyone to go on record saying that whitewater parks are bad for the sport. No one in the industry is going to speak up and give municipal officials any reason to stop urban paddling developments. No one is going to bash a nationwide trend that’s reverting old dams into rivers, opening green spaces and putting butts in boats.

So are whitewater parks good for the sport?

If you only paddle in whitewater parks you’ve never considered death as an option. And why would you? If your boat gets pinned in a park, a lifeguard blows his whistle and an engineer inflates a baffle or dewaters the course. A mild annoyance to the guy downstream setting up for a pistol flip, but he’s come to expect it and he too doesn’t know any different.

Maybe I shouldn’t care, I’m past pushing myself to the edge. With a young family, death is not an option for me either. There is too much about paddling (and life) I want to share with my kids. Like, for example, adventure.

Whitewater parks offer leisure, a freedom academics say is intrinsically motivating in and of its own merits. For true adventure, however, the outcome must be uncertain. Information to complete a task (like getting to the bottom of the river) must be missing, vague or unknown. Think about changing water levels, leadership, morale, weather, unknown access and times when your own skill and confidence (or the group’s) may be challenged.

For real adventure you need real rivers. Riding a conveyor belt to the top of the rapids or locking your keys in your truck at the clubhouse is not adventure.

Whitewater parks are neither good nor bad for our sport, they are simply creating a new leisure-based paddlesport—a name for those who paddle only in parks will evolve over time.

I’ve paddled at parks and had a great time. However the soul of whitewater, like that of mountaineering and backcountry skiing, lives inside those of us who paddle where we are not quite sure how the day will end.

Scott MacGregor is the founder and publisher of Rapid and host of Rapid Media TV.

This article originally appeared in Rapid, Early Summer 2010. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.

This article originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.

I really don’t know what made me want to explore the world, let alone in a canoe.
 I grew up in a Chicago suburb where Wisconsin was considered somewhere far-off and foreign. Maybe it was my inexplicable interest in African wildlife; I visited Chicago’s stately Field Museum of Natural History, with its immense African Hall, every chance I got. Or maybe it was my penchant to devour classics like Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Is- land and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Even the Mississippi River was exotic and enthralling to a city kid.


But, digging deeper, I believe it was my discovery of canoeing that helped rock my sheltered world. Seeking a means to commune with nature somewhere closer to home than Africa, I purchased an Old Town Tripper and ventured—often blundered—through places I had only imagined up to then: the Florida Everglades, Missouri Ozark rivers, spectacular canyons of the Rio Grande. My horizons quickly expanded far beyond the urban jungles and cornfields of Illinois.

Since then, I’ve been fortunate to canoe in 25 countries and on all seven continents, but I’m still humbled by how big our planet is and how precious little of it I have visited. Running my index finger over the smooth curve of a globe in my living room in central Colorado, my mind begins to wander. I dream about canoeing far-flung places with challenging waters, unfamiliar cultures and more unknowns than knowns: Botswana, Tasmania, Peru, Ellesmere Island, Vietnam, Moldova. The list goes on and on. It’s impossible to see around the bend, which only raises the possibilities.

I like that about traveling, about paddling. Once you slip your bow into the current and let it usher you downstream, everything is possible, or seems to be.

When everything clicks on a paddling trip, I find not only the rugged wilderness I am seeking, but also a new way of appreciating the world. An appreciation of the unique qualities of the country I am visiting—its history, culture and the people I reach out to and meet along the way. Traveling by canoe allows me to discover my internal compass as well as be guided by an external one. By going with the flow, not fighting it, I find myself floating through life and oftentimes laughing along the way.

Following the path of the paddle these past 35 years, my passion for travel still burns as bright today as when I was that youngster fantasizing about tripping down Ol’ Man River.

Canoeroots columnist Larry Rice uses his global travels to justify his personal fleet of 18 canoes. 

This article appeared in Canoeroots & Family Camping, Spring 2012.

A paddling buddy once told me that kids are like orcas—beautiful in pictures and best admired from a distance, hard to care for and most likely fatal if you get too close. I used to think this was funny—but now I know better.

My wife and I are standing on a frozen beach that winter has wiped as clean as a baby’s bottom. We have a date with each other, the first one in months, but more importantly, we have a date with the water—the first time we’ve paddled together since our oldest child was born four years ago.

I watch her dress in layers of polypro and Gore-Tex with latex accents. Bend to pull on—good gawd—knee-high neoprene boots. Gulp. It’s March in the North Country and a heatless spring sun tosses its rays across the near freezing water, but right now she’s looking hotter than the Bahamas.

What you need to know is that we fell in love on the water one star-crossed and kayak-crazed summer half our lives ago. Paddling is more than what we do, it’s who we are—or more like who we were.

Hoisting the boats hip-high we crunch through rotten, knee-deep drifts down to the water’s edge. In the distance I hear a county plow truck scraping along the highway, but on the water all is still. Our cores are like jelly donuts and the boats seem unsteady. I’m flapping wildly with little to show for it, like a baby bird falling from a nest. I’ve paddled a bit since the kids arrived but it was always in a fog of guilt thick as stink on neoprene.

A few miles go by and now we’re falling into our old rhythm, matching strokes and talking easily. The beach fades behind us. We talk with hope about the upcoming summer. We will hire more babysitters. We will guilt-trip the grandparents. There will be more paddling.

We’re getting out to the point now. It’s a northwest-facing stab of sandstone cliff that gathers ice like crumbs in a car seat. Our bright boats are swallowed whole in the hushed kiss of brash ice whispering an endless parable of change. It’s a tale of winter’s dwindling youth and the lake’s growing wisdom. In the back of a sea cave, meltwater plip-plops a lecture on glaciers and patience. I close my eyes and see birthday cakes, a used tandem, salt-and-pepper eyebrows and laugh lines. The water is electric cold but I dip my hands to the cuffs and hold them there as long as I can.

On the paddle back we’re trying to figure out how four years passed so quickly. We decide child rearing can be like hypothermia—it’s no big deal at first, you’re just a little cold and wet but then that becomes normal and numb and by the time you need to do something about it you can’t. You can’t rely on your friends to help because, let’s face it, they’re already goners. You just glubglubglub down into the orca-filled waters of minivans and soccer practices, dance recitals and dental appointments.

We pull off the water at dusk, drive into town and get a good meal and a better room. Today we shook off the chill of a four-year bout with hypothermia and paddled like it was the first time. But tonight we’re not taking any chances: I’ll be dressed for immersion.

Aaron Peterson is a well-adjusted full-time writer, photographer and toddler wrangler.

This article originally appeared in Adventure Kayak, Spring 2013. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.