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Butt End: Canoe Virgin

By
Kevin Callan
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Photo: Kevin Callan
Butt End: Canoe Virgin

The first time I attempted a canoe-borne romantic escapade was shortly before an article I wrote on making love in canoes hit the newsstands. The article covered all the bases—but I had yet to do actual primary research.

I was okay with this. It was my wife, Alana, who wasn’t going to stand for it. She believed journalistic integrity demanded that we make love in a canoe. Alana left me to figure out the details while she put our three-year-old daughter to bed.

Getting out on the water was going to be impossible. We live in the middle of a city and didn’t have a babysitter. At first I thought a quick (though not that quick) solution would be to just flip the canoe over on the back lawn. But I worried the set-up would lack romantic quality. Instead, I put the 16-foot boat through our back window, rested it beside our fireplace, placed two glasses of wine on the bow seat and put a CD of nature sounds in the stereo.

The mood was set. I sat in the stern, wearing only my bathrobe, and waited for Alana to return for the big surprise. Before long she did, but with our daughter in her arms. Kyla had a slight fever and needed comforting before going to bed.

There was no getting around the embarrassment, but Kyla saved me by asking if we were going camping. I spent the next hour playing camp-out with Kyla and her dolls.

So there I was, still a canoe virgin and, according to Alana, also a complete idiot for hauling a canoe into the house and thinking she’d be up for a romantic encounter in a boat resting on a shag carpet. The good news is my daughter thinks I’m the coolest dad ever for bringing in extra props for her dollhouse. She cried the next morning when I took the canoe back outside. So did I.

The problem was, I had to write another piece about making love in a canoe for my next book. And the publisher wanted photos.

I decided to buy a blow-up doll. I went to a joke gift shop and, since I had Kyla with me and the inflatable dolls were on display in the back near some rude sex toys, I asked the sales clerk to retrieve one for me. As she went to fetch it a woman from Kyla’s daycare wandered into the store. When the woman stopped to say hello, the clerk yelled out, “Which model do you want?”

I panicked and blurted out, “The cheapest one.”

“The androgynous one it is, then,” came the reply.

I slinked out of the store with my doll double-bagged, hoping to never see the woman from Kyla’s daycare again, and wondering how I would photograph a moment of passion involving an inflatable hermaphroditic canoeist.

For better or for worse I’m still a canoe virgin, but I was lucky enough to have a neighbour who really wanted to help me out of a tight spot. If that’s not why he offered to pose for me then I don’t want to know the real reason.

Kevin Callan does not recommend inflatable dolls as a substitute for a proper PFD. 

This article on making love in a canoe was published in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots magazine.This article first appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Paddling The Stikine, The Fastest Canoe River In The West

By
Dave Quinn
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Canyon with river running through
Don't paddle or you'll miss it. | Photo: Dave Quinn

“The Stikine is huge, man. And fast,” exclaimed a canoe guide I know when I told him our plans to spend 10 days paddling 240 kilometers of the Lower Stikine River.

“The river just rips by, all those huge boilers and whirlpools. My advice: don’t paddle, or you’ll get to the end too soon.”

With this bizarre warning, we piled our gear—paddles included—into the truck and headed north.

The fastest navigable free-flowing river

The Stikine rises on the Spatsizi Plateau in northwestern B.C. before squirting violently through the unrunnable (for mere mortals, at least) 100-kilometer Grand Canyon of the Stikine.

From the bottom of the canyon at Telegraph Creek, British Columbia, to its communion with the Pacific at Wrangell, Alaska, the river drops nearly 1.3 meters per kilometer, a grade that makes it the fastest navigable free-flowing river in North America.

Even at our put-in at Telegraph Creek the size and strength of the Stikine stuns us—a 200-meter-wide channel of silt-laden water churns by at more than 20 kilometers per hour.

The Stikine’s cargo of salt

In 1879, legendary naturalist John Muir visited the Lower Stikine, calling it, “a Yosemite 100 miles long” whose “views change with bewildering rapidity.”

As we leave the drier pine forests of the interior behind and enter into the granite and glaciers of the Coast Mountains, we understand this to be a great compliment to Yosemite. Here the river becomes a boiling, coffee-with-cream-coloured waterway several hundred meters wide. We heed my friend’s advice and stow our paddles, feet dangling over the gunwales in the icy water.

Our canoes spin a lazy dance, showcasing a 360-degree panorama of peaks. The ABS bottom of the canoe hisses through the Stikine’s cargo of silt, and the cool air hints at the scent of pulverized granite in icy water. Bewildering indeed.

The wildness of this valley is etched on every sand and gravel bank we visit. Wolves, grizzly, black bear and moose have all scribbled their stories here. In Little Canyon—a notorious challenge both to modern canoeists and the sternwheelers that ferried 19th-century optimists inland to the Cassiar and Klondike gold rushes—we spot what looks like a bear swimming the confused waters of the 100-meter-deep rock cleft. Instead we realize that in this boiling, whirlpool-filled canyon, 170 kilometers from the sea, we are seeing our first seal.

Three men sitting on sand bar pouring scotch.
This sand bar is always open. | Photo: Dave Quinn

An artery of trade and travel

Like its scenery, the Stikine has a rich and storied past. An artery of trade and travel for millennia, local legend tells of a vast ice wall that once blocked the valley, under which the entire Stikine flowed through a gaping ice tunnel. To test whether their canoes could safely pass, traveling groups of the indigenous Tahltan would send an old woman through in a canoe. If she emerged unscathed, they knew the tunnel would offer safe passage downstream to trade with, or raid, the Tlingit villages on the coast.

Today a remnant of this ice wall lies in a pool of its own meltblood—a large iceberg-choked lake separated from the river by a thin, treed moraine. Resisting the forward push of the river, we portage to this hidden lake and pass a day of contrasts playing chess and reading in the warm white-sand beside grounded icebergs. Ten-thousand-year-old ice commands us to break out our supposedly well-aged scotch, and we toast the Tahltan, the gold rushers and the spirit of adventure that brought us here.

[ Paddling Trip Guide: View all paddling trips in British Columbia ]

The First Nations presence on the Stikine is strong. Fading pictograms dot the shore, while sandy eddies bristle with well-tended salmon nets hung from long pine poles. Five salmon species return each year to the Stikine and have been a source of conflict for decades. Alaskan, Canadian and First Nations fishers have all angled for the grizzly’s share of the catch. Although the so-called Salmon Wars ended with a 1999 treaty, it is an uneasy truce and tensions are still palpable on both sides of the border, each country blaming the other for declining salmon stocks.

The Stikine salmon squabble was nearly rendered moot in the late 1970s when B.C. Hydro unveiled a plan to build five immense dams along the Grand Canyon of the Stikine and the Stikine’s main tributary, the Iskut River. The hubris required to build sufficient dams along this river is hard to conceive of, and I’m happy it didn’t prevail. After nearly a decade of opposition by conservationists and First Nations, the dam plans were scrapped, and Stikine River Provincial Park was created.

A landscape still unscarred by modern industry

After another diversionary side trip upstream through Shakes Slough to the granite-girded and iceberg-laden Shakes Lake, we relent to the last leg of our journey and enter Alaska.

Here the river meets its match and finally slows as it runs into Pacific tidewater. And with the tides comes fog. We feel our way by compass through nomadic sandbars and finally across five kilometers of Pacific swells from the mouth of the Stikine to the barnacle-caked dock at Wrangell where we trade the wilderness of the Stikine for the rough-and-ready, deep-fried town full of bumper stickers reminding us of the driver’s constitutional right to bear arms.

The estuary at the mouth of the Stikine is immense—the accumulated energy of this river has created a sprawling finale that encompasses a 27-kilometer-wide delta. The Stikine here seems pristine and permanent; unbreakable. It has persevered through glacial assault, First Nations battles, two gold rushes, the Salmon Wars, and B.C.’s plans to shackle it with hydro projects.

But even B.C.’s most remote rivers are within range of the crosshairs of industry, and the scopes of two industrial giants are set on the Stikine. Shell Canada has announced plans to develop coal-bed methane fields in an area known as the Sacred Headwaters—the rolling, wildlife-rich plateau where the Stikine, Nass and Skeena Rivers come to life.

Downstream in the headwaters of the Iskut River, the Lower Stikine’s main tributary, Teck Cominco and NovaGold have permits to create in Galore Creek the world’s largest copper- gold mine—an open-pit operation involving more than 80,000 hectares of Stikine wilderness, processing 65,000 tonnes of ore a day. Skyrocketing access and construction costs in booming B.C. have led to the recent suspension of the project, although the mineral giants have promised to “reassess the project and evaluate alternative development strategies.”

As paddlers, we sought out this pocket of the old world, a place still unscarred by modern industry. We are like the gold seekers who came before us, searching for something rare and precious.

Like daring to paddle too hard on the already fast waters of the Stikine, if we rush to industrialize our last wild areas, we may find we come to the end of them too soon. The power of the Stikine is such that to paddle it is to appreciate the importance of knowing when to stow your paddle.

If you go

Access

The drive up the Stewart-Cassiar Highway and along the 113-km gravel road to Telegraph Creek is an adventure in itself. Park your car and rent canoes at Stikine Riversong Inn at Telegraph Creek. To return, arrange a jetboat shuttle with Riversong ($2,200 CAD).

You can also fly or take the ferry from Seattle to Wrangell and arrange a jetboat shuttle to Telegraph Creek with either Riversong or a Wrangell-based operator. Due to border bureaucracy, air shuttles are no longer available.

[ Further reading: Lake Of Two Skies: A Trip Through Great Slave Lake ]

Recommended reads

This article was first published in Canoeroots & Family Camping‘s Early Summer 2008 issue. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions here , or browse the archives here.

Dave Quinn wrote about paddling on Banks Island in the Northwest Territories in the August 2007 issue of Canoeroots. 

Eating Outdoors: Full Day Menu

By
Dave Quinn
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Photo: flickr.com/oskarlin
Eating Outdoors: Full Day Menu

So you have proven them all wrong – your camping trips and adventures didn’t end when kids entered your life. Not only do you still get out, your kids enjoy it as much as you do. But getting children to eat healthy foods is always a challenge for parents, especially while camping when they’re out of their normal routines. While in the backcountry active parents are often left wondering what to feed their kids to ensure they are getting the energy they need and are laying the foundation for a lifetime of outdoor enjoyment and healthy eating.

As with anything in Kidland, the only way to ensure a long-term connection with wilderness and to encourage healthy eating is to make it fun. Bad weather, cranky youngsters or parents, and leaky tents can make an outing difficult, but poor camp food that no one eats can outright ruin the entire trip.

Roll up your sleeves, unleash your creative spirit, and start your kids’ lifetime of wilderness appreciation the right way, with good food. Here are a few ideas—a day’s worth of recipes— that will help you and your kids have more fun and eat better in the campground or backcountry. Bon appetit! 

BREAKFAST: SUPER GRUEL

Porridge. Oatmeal. Gruel. Slop. Sludge. All these lacklustre names have been slapped onto this classic trail breakfast. Like most of my generation, I had econo-mizer parents who fed their offspring nothing but boiled oats for breakfast, every day. As a result, I grew to despise porridge with a passion normally reserved for rival soccer teams in Latin countries. That is, until I discovered Super Gruel. This recipe serves four hungry campers.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups instant or regular oatmeal (1/2 to 3/4 cup dry oatmeal per person)
  • 3 tablespoons butter
  • Chopped dried or fresh fruit; mango, peach, apple, banana, or even raisins will do
  • Magical flavours such as a pinch of cinnamon, a wee dusting of nutmeg, a splash of vanilla, and, for the adventurous, a dash of ground cardamom
  • Decorations or disguises such as almond eyes, chocolate chip freckles, cookie noses, licorice hair, brown sugar beards, blueberry dimples

Directions:

  1. Boil roughly twice as much water by volume as you have oats. Add dried fruit first and let boil for several minutes to re-hydrate.

  2. Add oats and simmer until soft. Stir in butter and magical flavours.

  3. When cooked to your preference, remove from heat and either decorate the entire pot or individual bowls with various fruits, nuts, and cookies. Serve with milk or unwhipped whipping cream. 

LUNCH: MUD BURRITOS

In the backcountry, lunching usually starts right after breakfast and continues to dinner, especially for little ones with the metabolisms and attention spans of hummingbirds. When you’ve hidden the last of the jelly bellies along the trail and the last animal cracker lays beaten in a mushy pulp on the bottom of the canoe, it is time for a real lunch of Mud Burritos.

Ingredients:

  • 1 whole wheat burrito shell or wrap per person
  • 1 jar Nutella or other chocolate-hazelnut spread
  • 1 jar of nut butter such as almond or cashew butter
  • 1 handful of fresh or dried fruit of your choice such as banana, apple or pear

Directions:

  1. Pretend you’re a family of beavers making their winter home. Smear layers of mud (hazelnut-chocolate and nut butters) on the burrito shell and lay a line of fresh or dried fruit down the middle.

  2. Roll it up like a big burrito and eat whole or slice into bite-sized swirls. 

DINNER: PARENTAL POLENTA

This is a simple dinner that most kids and adults will enjoy. The restaurant version is very upper crust, as they say, served in individual slices with all kinds of fancy garnishes. Backcountry polenta is a deep-dish, layered pie—a true mess, which is a prerequisite for fun for most kids!
 
Ingredients: 
  • 3/4 cups polenta, a fine ground corn meal, per person
  • 1 veggie bouillon cube, or use chicken or beef for carniphiles
  • 1 small pile grated cheese of your child’s preference. I prefer Asiago but most younger kids will prefer mozzarella or cheddar
  • Parmesan cheese
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 bag or small can tomato sauce of your preference; the bags of sauce found next to the fresh pasta at the grocery store work well for this

Directions:

  1. Boil twice as much water as you have polenta. Once boiling, stir in polenta and bouillon cube.

  2. Continue stirring to avoid burning the polenta, especially if you are cooking on a backcountry stove that doesn’t simmer.

  3. As the polenta begins to thicken, stir in butter and remove from heat. Cover the polenta with an inch or so of grated cheese.

  4. Heat the tomato sauce and pour over the cheese layer. Cover this with a thin sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.

  5. Cover the pot and let sit for 3–5 minutes to melt the cheese layers. Serve by digging deep to the bottom to ensure that everyone gets polenta, sauce, and both cheese layers. 

DESSERT: ORANGE CAKES

Like most of the cool things I’ve learned in life, I learned this one from a kid. This backcountry dessert is inspiring in its simplicity. 

Ingredients:

  • 1 large fresh orange per person
  • 1 package instant lemon or chocolate cake mix—check the box before leaving town to see if you need milk or eggs for the cake mix
  • 1 roll tin foil, enough to wrap the oranges
  • 1 campfire with lots of hot coals 

Directions:

  1. Carefully slice the very top off the oranges making a hole just big enough to allow you to scoop out the orange juice and pulp with a spoon, which makes a healthy appetizer for this dessert. You should have empty orange skins with orange skin lids like miniature uncarved jack-o’-lanterns.

  2. Mix the cake mix as per directions on the package.

  3. Fill the orange skin pots with the batter. Put the orange skin tops on and wrap them in tin foil with the shiny side in.

  4. Carefully place them in hot coals. Allow them to bake for 10 to 15 minutes.

  5. Allow to cool then carefully unwrap the oranges. Open and enjoy your freshly baked orange cakes. 

This article on camp food was published in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots magazine.This article first appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Family Camping: Creek Walking

By
Scott MacGregor
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Photo: Scott MacGregor
Family Camping: Creek Walking

Long before I should have been out of a booster seat, I’d go on rides with my dad in his transport truck. Perched high above traffic in the air-ride seat of his freightliner, I’d watch him double clutch and shift through the gears of the 10-speed fuller transmission. I even had a belt buckle that read, “My Daddy’s a CBer” to hold up my Toughskins.

What does driving an 18-wheeler have to do with family camping? I’m sure taking me on rides was my dad’s way of giving my mother a break, but my parents were inadvertently planting seeds. The seeds I’m talking about are the early experiences that grow with us as we become teenagers and adults.

At age 18 I wrote my truck-driving licence and put myself through school by rolling up and down North America’s highways. It’s been 10 years since I’ve been a driver, yet I maintain the licence, mostly for nostalgic reasons. I love the smell of diesel fuel, the PISSSST sound of air brakes coming on, and the blue-collar charm of truck stop waitresses everywhere who always ask, “What can I getya Honey?”

Much has been written about Richard Louv’s sociological book, Last Child in the Woods. Louv writes about why our children are losing touch with nature and what it will mean for nature as today’s children become tomorrow’s recreationalists and environmental policy makers. He asks, if kids don’t care about wilderness now, why will they care later as politicians, developers or parents? Louv asks critical questions and explains societal influences but offers few practical tips for parents and educators who wish to reverse this trend.

CREATING TOMORROW’S ADVENTURERS AND STEWARTS

This winter I received an advance copy of A Natural Sense of Wonder by Rick Van Noy. Where Louv looks at the problem, Van noy offers solutions in an easy to read how-to guide. The book is a series of essays about how he engages his kids in nature. My favourite of his essays is “Creek Walking.”

My kids were playing in creeks long before they could walk. As a paddler I had my kids in canoes and kayaks and floating in rapids soon after they were born. When you’re two-feet tall even a small river is an ocean—too big to understand and too dangerous to explore on your own. But a creek is perfect. 

Our creek adventures began as a game. I’d gather rocks in a bucket for them and they’d bomb stick boats anxiously floating below.

As soon as they could walk this progressed to full-stream-ahead exploration. Gathering rocks turned into finding critters underneath them. Pockets are now for frogs and buckets for minnows. rubber boots last as long as their first soakers and then they’re stripping their clothes and turning a shallow pool into a gravel-bottomed bathtub. Do I care if my one- and three-year-old are buck naked in Little Eneas Creek? Not one bit.

A Natural Sense of Wonder is a practical guide for parents who want to get their kids playing outside and off concrete. Creek walking is just one of Van Noy’s suggestions. He also writes about the almost forgotten joys of walking to school, skating on ponds, building tree houses and getting dirty.

To me it’s a gardening book; a book about planting seeds and growing healthy and happy wildflowers. I hope my wildflowers grow up to be lifelong family campers, adventurers and stewards who will appreciate the natural environment the way I do a plate of greasy bacon and eggs.

This article on kids and the outdoors was published in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots magazine.This article first appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Betcha Didn’t Know About the Hudson’s Bay Company

By
James Raffan
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Photo: Algonquin Park Archives 5573 (MNR)
Betcha Didn't Know About the Hudson's Bay Company
  • The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) is the oldest incorporated merchandising company in the English-speaking world. When you buy socks at The Bay you’re continuing a 338-year-old tradition.
  • During the first half of the 19th century, the HBC held sway over 1/12th of the earth’s land surface—allowing HBC overseas governor Sir George Simpson to be introduced at a fancy 1838 dinner as the “head of the most extended dominions in the known world, the Emperor of Russia and the Queen of England excepted.”
  • Although HBC are the initials of English heart-throb actor Helena Bonham Carter (who has never portrayed a beaver but did appear as a chimp named Ari in Planet Of The Apes), HBC also once stood for “Here Before Christ” in the minds of traders frustrated by the company’s monopolistic ways. Those who found themselves inside isolated fur trading posts often left thinking HBC stood for “Horny Boys’ Club.”
  • In a related story, it is rumoured that Sir George Simpson sired 70 children between Quebec and the Pacific during 40 years with the HBC, lending legitimacy of a sort to his title of father of the fur trade.
  • The original Latin motto of the HBC, pro pelle cutem, meaning “a skin for a skin,” sounds benign enough for a fur trading company, until one realizes that these words were interpreted by employees to mean that to join the fur trade they had to trade their own skin for the brutal and short life of a fur trader.
  • The iconic voyageur canoe paintings of Frances Anne Hopkins notwithstanding, after 1820 most HBC freight was carried not in canoes but in boats fashioned after Orcadian dories that were rowed, not paddled.
  • Though many assume that 19th-century Canada was buzzing with folk-song-singing French-Canadian and Métis voyageurs, 80 per cent of HBC employees at the time were stolid Scots from Orkney, who had as much trouble carrying a tune as they did their heavy dories.  

This article on the Hudson's Bay Company was published in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots magazine.This article first appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Editorial: The Right to Bear Paddles

By
Ian Merringer
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Photo: Gary McGuffin
Editorial: The Right to Bear Paddles

Imagine a smiling figure walking to the front of a crowded hall. Those nearby slap him on the back while the rest cheer. Stepping onto a stage he squints into rapid-fire camera flashes.

He grabs a paddle, raises it above his head and tells the crowd that if someone wants to take the paddle from him they will have to pry it from his “cold, dead hands.” The crowd roars; the politicians fall in line.

You probably have an easier time picturing a gun-toting Charlton Heston—movie star and former president of the National Rifle Association—in this situation rather than Paddle Canada president Richard Alexander. Here’s hoping Paddle Canada finds a way to put a little NRA firepower into its organization. The time may be coming.

As reported in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots, Paddle Canada has entered a braided section of river and chosen what it hopes is the channel with the strongest current.

At first we were gun-shy about reporting on Paddle Canada’s political manoeuvres. Paddle Canada owns Kanawa magazine and the Waterwalker Film Festival, two ventures that compete, however politely, with Rapid Media’s magazines and our Reel Paddling Film Festival. We were wary of being seen as biased, but in researching the story I came to appreciate its importance.

BRINGING IN ADVOCACY AND LOBBYING

Paddle Canada was formed in 1976 to promote four pillars of recreational paddling: instruction, safety, environmental awareness and appreciation of our paddling heritage. It had struggled lately and some doubted it could continue fulfilling any part of its mandate. The 2006 sale of its member-built Ron Johnstone Paddling Centre headquarters and the liquidation of its inventory of boats, computers, staplers and a few paper clips fuelled the worries.

Alexander told me Paddle Canada will run a surplus this year for the first time in five years. He understandably feels a huge sense of accomplishment and credits the strength of the money-generating instructional program. But when I asked about the other quarters of Paddle Canada’s mandate the conversation slowed while we checked the website to remind ourselves what they were.

“Advocacy and lobbying are not primary purposes of this paddling organization,” explained Alexander.

Perhaps not now, but if Alexander continues to strengthen Paddle Canada, why couldn’t they become more a part of its purpose? Imagine for a moment if paddlers had a vehicle for wielding political influence. That’s where the famous scene with Charlton Heston comes in (the one from the NRA convention, not when he finds the Statue of Liberty on the beach in Planet of the Apes and goes ape).

The NRA marshals more than four million members, claims an 86 per cent success rate in helping the politicians it endorses get elected and is routinely ranked by members of Congress as the most powerful lobby group in the United States.

Paddle Canada could be similarly influential. After all, if the NRA can convince politi- cians not to renew a ban on semi-automatic assault rifles, which it did in 2004, then surely an activist paddling organization could lobby for more palatable things like fewer dams, more parks, rights of access and a halt to the creep of canoe licencing fees.

If we found our voice we could have politicians pandering to canoe-owning voters by promising chain gangs for portage clearing and long weekends every other week from May to October. Wide-brimmed Tilley hats would become a symbol of power and prestige.

What’s more, if we model ourselves after gun owners, our bumper stickers would become way more interesting. 

This article on Paddle Canada was published in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots magazine.This article first appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Off the Tongue: Rivers Without Borders

By
Scott MacGregor
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Photo: Scott MacGregor
Off the Tongue: Rivers Without Borders

Lasy fall I rode my first ever conveyer belt to the top of the river. It was so intriguing I rode dozens of times. I was riding on a dream, the dream of every long-time whitewater boater. “Dude, what we need is a river that goes in a circle and we end up back where we started.” But none of us dudes ever thought it would happen, nor did we consider what it would do to the sport.

The fifth annual Whitewater Symposium was held in McHenry, Maryland, home of Adventure Sports Center International and America’s newest and most technologically advanced circular river.

The Whitewater Symposium is a gathering of like-minded river professionals who come together on a yearly basis to plan the future of the sport. Many see these whitewater parks as the saving grace of declining participation. They say they are the climbing gyms of whitewater.

The theory goes that more climbers on safe and attainable plywood walls morphs into more climbers on rock. More climbers on rock leads to a healthier industry and stronger stewardship organizations like the Alpine Club, or in our case American Whitewater.

There was plenty of talk like this at the Whitewater Symposium. But no one had the answer to my big question, Is this true? Do more gym climbers lead to a healthier rock climbing industry and community?

Afterward, I called David Chaundy-Smart, the editor of Gripped, a magazine similar to Rapid but for climbing. The similarities and growing pains of the two activities are strikingly similar and his advice about what to expect from whitewater parks was simple: “be prepared for massive change.”

Paddling, like climbing, has traditionally been made up of guys like me—a homogenous group of white, outdoorsy men sworn in to the fraternity by like-minded, scruffy-bearded brothers. We learned the hard way. Long drives, frigid swims, blackflies and hiking out after dark were just part of the adventure and the culture. And for the most part we liked it that way. Whitewater grew slowly.

Climbing gyms and whitewater parks on the other hand distill everything that is fun about the sport, taking away the unpleasant stuff like risk and personal discomfort. At the ASCI course you can be on the water right after dinner, paddle a few circuits on the sweetest waves and be back in the chalet slamming gin and tonics by eight-thirty.

Do climbing gyms create more climbing enthusiasts and environmental stewards? David thinks yes, but not the way you might expect.

He estimates that a big climbing gym in a major city puts 300 new climbers in harnesses every week. Fifteen years ago that number would have been true for the region’s entire outdoor climbing season. That one gym would introduce 15,000 people to climbing a year. Even if only three per cent of those become climbing enthusiasts—the type who climb outside on real rock—that’s 450 new core climbers coming out of one gym, every year.

Whitewater Parks are Rivers Without Borders

This trickle-down, small percentage of the bigger number appeals to me most. This issue of Rapid we’ve called “Rivers Without Borders,” and in a way whitewater parks are rivers without borders. Parks open the floodgates so wide virtually anyone can try whitewater. We’ll have a wider, healthier cross-section of paddling enthusiasts including some who’ll bring their gangster rap persona to the river, but also soccer moms and soccer teams, steel workers, lawyers, environmentalists and politicians—people with money and power.

Some of them will buy a lifetime family membership to the Action Sports Center. I hope others will take their $5,000 and give it to American Whitewater for the preservation and access of real rivers, so they’ll run free longer than just our lifetime.

This article on whitewater parks was published in the Early Summer 2008 issue of Rapid magazine.This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2008 issue of Rapid Magazine.

 

River Alchemy: Mystery Moves of Squirt Boating

By
Jeff Jackson
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Photo: Paul Villecourt
River Alchemy: Mystery Moves of Squirt Boating

The Tao Te Ching (pronounced something like ‘Dow De Jing’) is perhaps one of the oldest known books. As mysterious as its author Lao-tzu, its exact origins are unclear but likely date to before the time of confucius (551-479 b.c.). translated literally, the title becomes The Book of the immanence of the Way and how it Manifests itself in the World or, more commonly, The Book of the Way.

Translated into dozens of languages several times over, the Tao Te Ching is a book of wisdom; an instruction manual on how to navigate the forces of the universe. Its most oft-quoted line is likely familiar to all river people:

Nothing is more soft and yielding than water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it.

Lao-tzu’s philosophy is based on one of softness, and the giving up of control. One must understand and harness the forces of the universe rather than being rigid and fighting them, he suggested—common in the practice of Zen, t’ai chi and aikido. Throughout the years the Tao has been mined by hippy spiritualists, yoga instructors, high-powered management gurus, and squirt boaters.

Seen by the general paddling public, squirt boating is viewed as either confusing or passé… and totally awesome, on rare occasions. Unanimously regarded as the parent to modern playboating, pure squirting enjoyed its heyday in the early ‘90s on big-water rivers such as the Gauley and Ottawa.

The tight-fitting, custom-built, surfboard-like kayaks were designed for neutral buoyancy—half way between floating and sinking—and to tap into un- derwater currents. Back in the day, moves like pirouette squirts, cartwheels and blasting were radical and completely out of the realm of possibility for the voluptuous plastic boats of the time.

The last of the purists (all 70 of them) still gather every summer on the river-left eddyline above McCoy’s on the Ottawa for the infamous Jimmy Cup. The event’s namesake is, of course, Jim Snyder, the Lao-tzu of squirting.

His The Squirt Book is both a manual of squirt technique and an unintentional river translation of the Tao Te Ching. It is as instructive in the art of living as it is in squirting, and as relevant today as when it was first released in 1987 (Menasha Ridge Press).

Even though the moves seem quaint, it is worth re-visiting Snyder’s words at a time when freestyle kayaking is moving about as far away from the Tao as possible.

With pure squirting all but gone—stern squirting in a plastic playboat is incredibly uncool, I’m told— and freestyle defined by aerial acrobatics—getting as far away from the water as possible—softness and “going with the flow” are gone.

The similarities in message and style between the Tao and The Squirt Book are striking. Approach, humility, and control are a few of the many parallel themes.

Like the Tao, Snyder’s guiding philosophy is what he calls charc; the angle of one’s approach to the current dictates the outcome. Charge in and we will be rejected; look at the current and work with it, and we find the “power to apprehend the slipperiness of freedom for those few fleeting moments and to let it soak into our souls,” Snyder writes.

The Tao speaks of this, but refers to an approach towards life:

Rushing into action, you fail.
Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion,
You ruin what is almost ripe.

Ultimately, squirting is about humility and respect

Snyder writes, “Our attitudes are putty in the hands of the river… almost everyone went through the stage of being an expert-turned-beginner. Expertise re-emerges as an ability to learn, to listen to the river and our friends.” While Lao-tzu wrote simply:

All streams flow to the sea. Because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power.

Snyder’s approach to squirting, rivers and life mirrors the Tao every step of the way. Snyder’s book, while setting the stage for much greater things in kayaking, speaks louder now as a comment on putting the river, current and universe first. It stands in contrast to the bounce and bravado in today’s kayaking, approaching the timelessness of the Tao Te Ching’s verse and message.

But if both of these philosophers are right, and time seems so far to have proven it so, it is worth noting these two final thoughts:

“The best way to affect the outcome of an event is through its beginning” (Snyder).

The master takes action
By letting things take their course.
he simply reminds people
of who they have always been. (Lao-tzu)

Do you think they know where kayaking is going in the future?

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

This article on squirt boating was published in the Early Summer 2008 issue of Rapid magazine.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2008 issue of Rapid Magazine.

 

Hell Bound and Determined on the Huallaga River

By
Bryan Smith and Todd Gillman
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In the heart of the Great Bend, the entrance to the most constricted stretch of the Huallaga, the river-left wall rises straight up 2,000 metres. Photo: Todd Gillman & Andrew Oberhardt
Hell Bound and Determined on the Huallaga River

Disappearing into a deep canyon abyss just downstream of Huanuco in northern Peru, El Rio Huallaga carves its course around the base of a massive Andean peak, and doesn’t rejoin a road until it drifts into the steamy jungle town of Tingo Maria nearly a hundred kilometres later. The Department of Huanuco considers this River Styx unsafe for travel and the U.S. State Department forbids its employees from visiting it. The jungle surrounding the Huallaga’s lower reaches bubbles with malaria and besides Kurt Casey’s original attempt of the Huallaga in 1999, few Westerners have ever peered into the canyon’s depths. 

On July 10, 2007, Andrew Oberhardt, Todd Gillman, Shane Robinson and I boarded American Airlines Flight 827 bound for Lima, Peru. Our mission: attempt the un-run stretch of the Huallaga that Casey’s team was unable to complete. Our team, The Range Life, was selected by the Vacation to Hell steering committee and awarded $12,000 to explore and document this last major un-run tributary of the Amazon.

It’s easy to see why the Immersion Research Vacation To Hell board members decided this would be the perfect holiday.

The Huallaga is a logistical nightmare. Situated in northern Peru’s Department of Huanuco, it is far better known for its history with the Maoist rebel group The Shining Path, and for coca production, than as a kayaking destination.

Research leading up to the trip had yielded scant results beyond ’70s topographic data, Kurt Casey’s failed trip report, and plenty of horror stories about the cocaleros and the Shining Path.

After arriving in Lima we made our way towards Huanuco, where we connected with Peruvian whitewater guru Piero Vellutino, who proved invaluable. Few locals knew anything about the deep canyon’s lower reaches. Pilots in Huanuco and Tingo flatly refused our requests for an aerial reconnaissance mission. Hiking the canyon with the help of a pack string was said to be impossible. 

After 10 days in Huanuco, the sum total of our preparations was trumped by a couple hours of Piero’s research. We learned that there was in fact a trail some 1,200 metres high on the river-right canyon wall that offered possible egress in the event of a bail-out. Still, we were left with little other option than to just head in.

Late in the afternoon on July 22 we piled four Jefes and Piero’s H3 into the back of a worn Toyota pickup and headed off to Puente El Rancho to put in on the Huallaga.

It was just our second day on the river when we reached the towering gorge that forced the Casey expedition into a multiday evacuation. By sending one team high to scout the lower portion of the gorge and another at river level on the right to scout the entrance, we managed to put together a safe line through a series of blind ledges, dropping ever deeper into the canyon. Only strong teamwork made it possible for us to make good time through innumerable unseen and gorged-out rapids.

On the afternoon of our third day, one filled with endless boat-scoutable class IV–V rapids, the character of the river began to change. The canyon walls closed in dramatically and we had considerably more volume than when we started. The dense vegetation hanging from the gorge walls meant we had made the descent into a new climatic zone, la selva.

We were deep in the section of the river we’d referred to in our planning as the Great Bend. It was here that the river takes a 90- degree bend to the left and the canyon walls soar to more than 2,000 metres. That night in camp Piero, Andrew, Shane, Todd and I pored over the 30-year-old topos trying to count the gradient lines in the next 30 to 40 kilometres. The 1:100,000 maps were as good as we could get but lacked the detail we needed to be certain of what lay ahead. They were littered with wide swaths of white space and the words “datos insufcientes.” Insufficient data is the last thing you want to see on a topo when you are trying to reason your way through a potentially unreasonable river.

We woke up the next morning to a muddy river. The overall mood had shifted from stoked to somber. Knowing that we were about to paddle into a cavernous dirty gorge that dropped several hundred feet per mile, we pushed on cautiously.

The river disappeared into another, even more committing gorge 

The Huallaga cascaded down a very marginal, sieve-laden rapid before disappearing under a huge chock stone 10 or 13 metres high, and then into what appeared to be an unscoutable, unportagable canyon. Scouting river left was impossible due to the gorge wall that shot up 1,500 metres from river level.

Todd and I volunteered to scale the steep and densely vegetated right wall to gain a vantage of what lay downstream. Beating our way through vines that would silently wrap around our ankles and any exposed gear, pulling us to the ground in an instant, we finally reached a high point on river right after about an hour of jungle bushwhacking. Unable to see into the canyon, we dropped down toward the gorge rim and belayed Todd over the edge to inspect.

From what he could see, the rapid under and just downstream of the chock stone might go. The crux being the exit rapid which had a super boily entrance with compression wave features, then a fast, narrow tongue down the middle, over a steep vertical ledge with massive holes and pockets on both walls. We felt good about it, but the problem was downstream.

Even if we were able to deal with this canyon, the river disappeared into another, even more committing gorge. From our perch, we could see that there was an eddy at the lip of the drop leading into the gorge, but from there, if we didn’t like what we saw, there were no options for egress right or left. We headed back to the rest of the team to give the grim details.

Piero, Shane, and Andrew sat on the rocks deep in discussion with the topos, GPS, and SAT phone littered about. Our plan B of accessing the old Inca trail 1,200 metres up on river right would disappear if we pushed on. We still had 60 kilometres left of the steepest and most committing section of river, and we had only travelled one kilometre in more than three hours.

Our river senses were telling us to get out. Slowly we came to the conclusion that we had to, at a bare minimum, hike around what lay below us. Shane described it as “this feeling of relief where you decide to go with your instincts of survival and judgment, versus your ego to want to complete something big.” None of us wanted to leave the river.

Piero and Todd bushwhacked ahead with the machete to scout a possible evacuation route while Shane, Andrew, and I began roping boats. It was slow.

In two hours we moved the boats only about 400 feet up the relentless terrain. Then Piero returned. “I hope you guys have insurance, ‘cause we are going to need a helicopter to get out of here.” As he was dialing numbers on our satellite phone leaving messages with his family and any other helpful connections he had, the rest of us hacked out a base camp on a thin, rocky jungle ledge above the churning, victorious Huallaga.

Fighting fierce ants we camped and waited. Our gear was soiled in mud, we were battered and demoralized. As we awaited rescue or finding our own escape route, the reality slowly set in; we were not on an ordinary summer vacation. We were at the gates of Hell, temptation trying to lure us in and divine judgment telling us not to look back. 

This article on the Huallaga River in Peru was published in the Early Summer 2008 issue of Rapid magazine

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2008 issue of Rapid Magazine.

 

Open Canoe Technique: Power Steering

By
Andrew Westwood
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Photo: Carole Westwood
Open Canoe Technique: Power Steering

Forward Stroke Rebirth

The forward stroke is enjoying a renaissance as more open canoeists use it as not just a method of propulsion, but as a means to steer their canoes. A proven skill that harkens back to the earliest C1ers, power steering is the ability to control your solo boat while using nothing more than basic forward strokes. The key is understanding that the stroke can be broken down into distinct variables that allow you to easily guide the canoe in whichever direction you wish to go. All this without having to draw from the traditional set of rudder strokes, which slow your canoe and waste valuable energy.

Power steering with the 2×4 technique uses the four main variables which define the relationship between any stroke and your boat. These are: stroke cadence or timing; stroke position; paddle angle; and boat tilt.

Individually or together, these stroke elements are used to change the direction of your canoe while paddling with forward strokes. Add the cross-forward stroke playing with these same elements on your offside, and you achieve total boat control using only forward strokes. It’s also easy to remember. Think of the two forward strokes and the four variables, and voila, you have the 2×4 technique.

2×4 Forward Stroke Technique

Power steering builds on the concept of carving, or paddling your canoe on an arcing path. To understand this, picture the canoe in motion and how the bow is cradled by bow waves. By using the 2×4 technique you can control how these bow waves direct the canoe’s path, much like the reins on a horse. By simply allowing a wave on one side of the canoe to be bigger than the wave on the opposite side, the larger wave will push the canoe into an arcing path. Canoeists “steer” by controlling the wave effect by paddling on the inside of this arcing path in such a way as to resist, or enhance, the circular route of the canoe.

The easiest way to get the sensation of paddling a controlled arc is to experiment with stroke timing. Get your canoe moving by alternating three to four forward and cross-forward strokes. Finish with a cross-forward stroke, pause and wait for the canoe to arc toward your onside.

Now continue paddling an arcing path with just forward strokes.

If the canoe begins to straighten out, slow or pause the timing of your strokes and allow the canoe to regain its arcing path. If the arc is sharper than you desire, simply increase your stroke rate to straighten your path. The timing of when you apply power to your stroke has the effect of tightening or widening your arc.

Stroke position has the same effect on the diameter of your arc. By positioning your stroke ahead of your knee you will experience a tightening arc. Pulling past your knee toward your hip causes the canoe to straighten its path.

Similarly, stroking with a nearly vertical paddle shaft keeps the canoe travelling in an arcing path, while an angled shaft can dramatically straighten your path.

Finally, paddling the canoe with more tilt to the hull uses the chine to carve a tight arc, while paddling with a flatter hull favours a straighter course.

All these elements apply equally to the offside with the cross-forward stroke. As a result, solo paddlers have complete control for turning left or right while the boat is under power. One important rule applies for power steering: always place your strokes on the inside of the arcing canoe– never paddle on the outside.

Implications on Instruction

Often, beginners learn the 2×4 technique after their first lesson and show effective boat control for entering and exiting eddies. The implications on instruction are groundbreaking as teaching more advanced stern strokes can be delayed until paddlers reach higher novice to intermediate levels.

The bane of many solo canoeists—and their instructors—is the difficulty in getting the canoe going in a straight line from a stand still. By teaching forward and cross-forward strokes to beginners, along with a method of boat control, new paddlers quickly overcome the number-one obstacle to success in solo canoeing. Greater success surely means more new paddlers sticking with open canoeing.

The rebirth of the forward stroke as a control stroke maximizes forward speed and provides directional control. Use of various stroke elements to tighten or lessen your arc means you can carve the canoe with complete control. Power steering with the 2×4 technique makes paddling a solo canoe easy!

Andrew Westwood is an open canoe instructor at the Madawaska Kanu Centre, member of Team Esquif and author of The Essential Guide to Canoeing. 

This article on the forward stroke was published in the Early Summer 2008 issue of Rapid magazine.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2008 issue of Rapid Magazine.

 

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