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Dubai: In the Land of Sand and Surf

Named for the lush green spaces that surround its seven oases, Al Ain is known as the Garden City of the United Arab Emirates. | Photo: MICHAEL NEUMANN

Just a couple hundred miles from Rub’ al-Khali, the largest sand desert on Earth, one of the world’s longest and most unusual manmade rivers flows under the scorching desert sun. 

The Wadi Adventure whitewater park was conceived as part of a tourism vision for Al Ain, the fourth largest city in the United Arab Emirates, just 90 miles from the glitzy metropolis of Dubai on the Persian Gulf coast.

In 2012, when Wadi opened its doors to the public, 50,000 visitors enjoyed the plush white pillows and shaded lounge chairs of the VIP zone next to the artificial rivers. But mixed in with the tourists was a core group of canoeists and kayakers with a mind to train in the off-season while avoiding an expensive flight to Australia, the usual winter training ground for European paddlers.

Welcoming the international crowd of slalom athletes is Fergus Coffey, the whitewater manager at Wadi Adventure. A lifelong paddler, Coffey guided rivers in North and South America and ran the kayak program at the U.S. National Whitewater Center (USNWC) in Charlotte, North Carolina, before getting offered the gig at Wadi.

“I had the opportunity to come to the UAE and set up a completely new facility,” he says. “It was too odd to pass up.”

Inspired in part by the USNWC, Wadi was originally built as a slalom site, but given the UAE’s tourist traffic, a surf pool was added to increase wider demographic appeal.

Now, as word in the paddling community spreads, Wadi Adventure is becoming a winter wonderland for whitewater paddlers from all over the world, each with a different take on its unlikely desert waterways.

man kayaking in Dubai

THE UNEXPECTED OASIS

It was 6 a.m. on January 25 when French paddler Nouria Newman and her Caimen Storm kayak arrived at Dubai’s international airport. Along with her coach and four teammates she had driven to the airport in Lyon, France, and taken a six-and-a-half hour flight that landed her in a different world.

The Fédération Française de Canoë-Kayak had coaxed her into signing onto a two-week training intensive in the middle of the desert at Wadi Adventure, Al Ain’s newest city planning success and the Middle East’s first whitewater facility. It was much warmer than the zero degree winter training conditions in Toulouse and cheaper than flying to Australia.

Last year she had managed to talk her way out of the training venture but this year she didn’t get off the hook so easily.

Exhausted from the flight, she nodded off as they drove the E66 towards Al Ain, a route cutting straight south through an otherwise blank desert landscape. When she awoke it was still dark but perfectly spaced streetlamps lit the way, and in the distance the rising sun started to shine on Jebel Hafeet, one of the UAE’s highest mountain peaks.

“When you actually enter the place it feels like Disneyland,”

says Newman, recalling her first impression of Wadi Adventure as the drive from Dubai finally ended.

Paddlers from Italy, Germany, Russia, England, America, Switzerland, Slovenia, Japan, Slovakia and Czech Republic joined Newman and her team. From June to September, Newman’s used to seeing competitors at races around the world, but to be all in one place during the off-season was something new.

“It’s like a summer camp, coming here,” she says. “We have barbecues and hang out and turn into slalom geeks for two weeks.”

Paddlers all stay in fully furnished chalets just off site and share meals when they can. They go on day trips
to Abu Dhabi. They take camel rides. On off days, some paddlers visit the massive indoor theme park of Ferrari World or the indoor ski slopes in Dubai. Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Maseratis with tinted windows roll past the park.

“Even a Russian oligarch will be able to find something expensive here,” says Coffey.

But at the park itself, cell phones turn off and crystal clear waves flowing from a mysterious water source become Newman’s primary fixation.

Waterpark in Dubai

THE PLAY PARK MIRAGE

While Nouria Newman was making rounds of the Wadi’s three whitewater runs, Ciarán Heurteau, a seasoned slalom kayaker, was taking a break from the scene.

Heurteau made the trip to Dubai with two teammates and a coach as part of the first group of kayakers to pass between the slalom gates after Wadi’s grand opening in 2012. He left feeling unsettled and uneager to return.

It’s no secret that the UAE was built on an oil regime and hosts some of the wealthiest business tycoons in the Middle East. Al Ain itself was home to the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan, the first president of the UAE. The nearby Rub’ al-Khali, a desert roughly the size of France, is home to the world’s largest oilfield, the Al-Ghawār.

When Heurteau’s not paddling, he lives in a small village in Northern Ireland where he avoids using plastic bags and is conscious of the compost that comes from his morning breakfast. For him, this artificial river was too far from the green lifestyle he leads. “The amount of money that’s just wasted, it blows you away,” he says. “It’s easy to go there to train and just not look at the whole other side of it.”

The crystal blue waters of Wadi’s 1,100 meters of faux river are sourced from municipal lines that pump and desalinate water from the coast in Abu Dhabi, about 100 miles west of Al Ain.

Ninety-four million gallons of water recirculate through the concrete channels with up to a quarter of an
inch of depth lost to evaporation each day. Five vertical pumps run for about 12 hours at a time to keep the water flowing, says Coffey, and two conveyer belts transport paddlers from the bottom of each course to the pond at the top.

For Heurteau, the illusion of a pristine desert oasis was more unsettling than magical, more manufactured fantasy than reality.

“I reckon more and more this is where people will head for training. There are no more races on natural rivers any more so it makes sense to train in places like this.”

The line goes quiet for a few seconds.

“It’s a very different feeling paddling on artificial courses,” he says. “You can see the shift in people’s thinking.”

Named for the lush green spaces that surround its seven oases,
Al Ain is known as the Garden City of the United Arab Emirates. | Photo: MICHAEL NEUMANN

THE BLISSFUL DESERT VOID

Under the black desert sky with the course floodlights turned off and only the sound of running water ringing in his ears, Vávra Hradilek finally found the desert space he’d been seeking.

In the pitch black of the night with only a photographer following him from land on an otherwise empty river, the Czech paddler got in his kayak and began running the course.

“I could only hear the water without any vision, so from memory I just went through the strokes,” he says. “It was amazing.”

For Hradilek it was a moment of pure kayak bliss.

During the day, intervals of 25 paddlers at a time would take turns running the slalom course, watching in front and behind them to avoid a collision. Along with other European paddlers, he and his 34 Czech teammates stayed in a massive block of chalets beside the river and fired up the barbecues to cook their meals together.

Hradilek was even more crowded than most with a film crew following him around for a week tracking his training and off time for a short film.

“I think summer camp is the right word. It’s all the paddlers in Europe in one place hanging out,” he says. “I’ve been in the circuit for a long time so I know most of the paddlers who come out on race days but here there were so many new people.”

The course offered night sessions to anyone interested in taking on the whitewater away from the beaming sun.

For the slalom vet these spacious hours were the highlight of his month- long intensive, his escape from the claustrophobia of a packed whitewater course. Surrounded by the vast sprawling sands of the Rub’ al-Khali—a desert dubbed the Empty Quarter—all it took was for the lights to go out for him to experience bliss in the desert void.

Katrina Pyne is a freelance journalist whose mind is constantly drifting from her desk job to quiet untouched rivers and chaotic whitewater parks. At heart, she’s still a wilderness guide. 


This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2014 issue of Rapid Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.

VIDEO: Surfski at Skookumchuck

"In a sea kayak a swim at Skook is an ordeal, but in the V8 a remount is relatively easy in comparison." Photo: Screen Grab
"In a sea kayak a swim at Skook is an ordeal, but in the V8 a remount is relatively easy in comparison."
[iframe src=”//player.vimeo.com/video/97145503″ width=”550″ height=”309″ frameborder=”0″ webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen ]

Epic V8 at Skookumchuck Tidal Rapids from Deep Cove Canoe & Kayak Centre on Vimeo.

Deep Cove Canoe & Kayak Centre

“I had been wanting to take the Epic V8 surfski to the Skookumchuk Tidal Rapids for the past few years and finally decided to make it happen,” said Bob Putnam, of Deep Cove Canoe & Kayak Centre. “Having paddled there twice before in a sea kayak, the experience was always filled with anxiety as my eskimo roll is terrible. Edited out of the video are the multiple swims where the surfski was ripped out from beneath me.

In a sea kayak a swim at Skook is an ordeal, but in the V8 a remount is relatively easy in comparison. You certainly need solid remount skills in challenging conditions, but once on the wave the V8 performed like a champ was really fun. Thanks to Vince and the great folks at Epic Kayaks and paddles for building such a game changer of a surfski. David O’Brian did an awesome job of creating this video.”

 

Hidden Coast Paddling Adventure

This year the HCPA has moved up the coast to Steinhatchee/Jena. Photos: Courtesy Hidden Coast Paddle Festival
This year the HCPA has moved up the coast to Steinhatchee/Jena.

“Over the first weekend in October, the 5th Annual Hidden Coast Paddling Adventure is expected to attract close to 100 keen paddlers to the coastal region of Florida’s Hidden coast to experience the area’s unique combination of fresh and salt water environments. This marks the fifth year for this event, which has primarily been developed by a group of committed volunteers working together.                                                                                                       

Hidden Coast Paddling Festival body 1

How it all began – On February 16, 2010, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) held a workshop in Steinhatchee with the object of stimulating regional interest in paddling as a recreational option for attracting tourism.  After the event, a number of individuals from Steinhatchee, Suwannee and Cedar Key began talking about the possibility of a paddling festival for the entire Hidden Coast.                                                                                   

After a couple of years of a multi location plan, the group decided to hold the event in one location, and rotate the location, each year.  The result was that over the weekend of Oct. 5-7, 2012 about 80 paddlers attended a well-planned event in Suwannee that included a full schedule of guided paddles, plus social events, all-day non-paddling events (speakers, workshops, excursions) and booths at the Suwannee Community Center. Paddlers stayed over the weekend in Suwannee and the event gave participating businesses a good cash boost. 

Last year, using basically the same model but with many tweaks and adjustments, the event came to Cedar Key and was a resounding success. The event grew, not just in the numbers of those attending, but in structure, visibility and long-term viability.                                                                                                          

October 2-5, 2014 – Hidden Coast Paddling Adventure – This year the Hidden Coast Paddling Adventure (HCPA) has moved up the coast to Steinhatchee/Jena and has expanded to include a Wednesday-Thursday 10-mile paddle with primitive overnight camping on Butler Island off Horseshoe Beach. The Steinhatchee Falls and River are the centerpiece of the event. There will also be a “Sunset to Moonlight paddle” to the mouth of the river, where it flows into the Gulf of Mexico.        

Good Times Motel & Marina, in Jena, is acting as the event headquarters with a meeting area, full restaurant, hotel rooms, and primitive camping within walking distance. This allows HCPA to offer an “all inclusive” registration fee, that covers all paddles and land events, three nights of primitive camping, and all meals, excepting the Saturday night dinner. Other area overnight accommodations are available and will be listed on the website. Since this is an environmentally-conscious event, part of the registration fee will go to help support the American Kestrel Fund, which works to protect one of our most admired small birds of prey, whose population is on the decline.      

Register Now! – Online registration is open, so go to the website HiddenCoastPaddlingAdventures.com. Remember, to insure the high level of safety and excellence, registration is limited to 100 paddlers. Each year we have more and more returning to the event, so please register early.

Submitted by Kay McCallister, co-chair of the 2014 Hidden Coast Paddling Adventure. (Kay and her husband, Russ, have been very involved with all the Hidden Coast Paddling Adventures. They own Suwannee Guides & Outfitters, helping paddlers on the Suwannee River, and Big Bend. They are also active in the Florida Paddling Trails Association and Dixie County Tourism Development.)”

For more information about the Hidden Coast Paddling Adventure or next year’s event, check out their website, hiddencoastpaddlingadventures.com.

In the Hatch: Titika Active Wear

The Titika Bolt shorts, $38. Photos: Courtesy Titika Active Wear
The Titika Bolt shorts, $38.

Titika Active Wear is a “Canadian eco-friendly and fashion-foward active wear brand, captures the essence of femininity and strong girl mentality in athletic products that offer the latest technology and innovative fabrics.

Titika Active Wear offers versatile apparel with bold playfulness and refined sportiness. From leggings that combine the much-loved comfort of a basic legging with sexy, yet functional mesh detailing on the sides to oversized, cozy sweaters with floral mesh sleeves.”
 
Inside the clothing, there are key technologies perfect for paddlers such as: 
  • Anti-aroma silver yarn: silver thread woven through the fabric to inhibit the growth of odour-causing bacteria
  • Moisture Wicking: keeps sweat away from the body
  • Free/flat seam: special stitch to create flat seams. This reduces extra fabric that can rub and irritate your skin while you workout

Bolt/Bubbly shorts, $48, has the chafe free/flat seam technology: Titika uses a special stitch to create flat seams on their garments. This seam reduces extra fabric which can rub and irritate your skin while you work out

Titika BubblyShorts 48
 
Nathalie shorts, $60, has the Durablend technology: this fabric is a comfortable water repellant and wind breaker. It is lightweight and tear resistant, making it the perfect fabric for any outdoor activity.
Titika Nathalie 60
 
Keisha Tank, $52, has the Anti-Aroma Silver Yarn technology: silver thread is woven through the fabric to inhibit the growth of destructive and odour-causing bacteria, mold, mildew and fungus.
Titika Keisha 52
 
Heather Bra, $28, has the moisture wicking technology: keeps sweat away from the body.
Titika HeatherBra 28
For more information about Titika Active Wear or more of their latest release of female athletic wear, check out their website, titika.ca.

Trip: Moose Safari Adventure

Photo: Planet D
Trip: Moose Safari Adventure

“We’ve all been there before. Roughing it in the woods for a few nights while facing the elements and putting up with the mosquitoes and black flies. We love the freedom of camping under the stars, heading out at first light seeking wildlife to capture with our camera lens and cooking breakfast over the open flame of a fire. We feel like real men (and women). There’s nothing better than bragging to your friends after a week of being outside in the middle of the wilderness for a few days. Algonquin Park in Ontario Canada is one of the premier spots in the country to go on a canoe and camping trip. It’s a 7600 square km region filled with wildlife and it’s one of the best places in the world to see moose!”

 

Read about Deb and Dave’s Moose Safari adventure and see amazing photos at their blog, the Planet D

 

 

Gear: Pat’s Backcountry Beer

Photo: Alex Cousins
Pat's Backcountry brew, backcountry beer

Got beer? Not if your multiday paddling trip features portages of any length. Thanks to Pat’s Backcountry Beverages canoeists can drink beer in the woods without getting weighed down. Pat’s portable backcountry brew kit includes beer concentrate and an easy-to-use carbonator—add potable water and you’ll be drinking a glass of your own delicious suds just minutes later. Handcrafted pale lager and dark ale concentrates are available, as well as a variety of traditional soft drink flavors for the kids.

www.patsbcb.com | $39.95 for kit, price for concentrate varies 

 

CRv13i2-48.jpgGet the full article in the digital edition of Canoeroots and Family Camping, Early Summer 2014, on our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it on your desktop here.

 

 

 

Ghosts of the Fur Trade

Ghosts of the Fur Trade | Photo: Archives Ontario

By 1690, Europeans no longer relied on aboriginal traders bringing their furs to Quebec. They had traveled west from Montreal, the epicenter of trade, and entered the wilderness to live and work with the natives, establishing trading posts. As a result, the fur trade boomed.

To accommodate the flow of goods, the Hudson Bay Company (HBCo) commissioned the building of Montreal canoes. Handmade in Louis Maître’s shop in Trois Rivière, the canoes were 30 to 36 feet long, six feet wide and weighed more than 700 pounds. Able to carry four tons of trade goods, they could hold passengers and even livestock. Paddled by the Voyageurs, these canoes plied the big waters from the St Lawrence Seaway to the western shore of Lake Superior, delivering and receiving goods from major trading posts.

Exploring the waterways further west required smaller boats. Looking to compete and carve out its own territory, the North West Company (NWCo) built freight canoes with half the load capacity of the Montreal canoe.

Built by local First Nations men employed by the NWCo, these birch bark canoes were called North Canoes. They were 25 feet long, light enough to be portaged by two paddlers and able to carry two tons. Unlike the Montreal canoe, North Canoes were nimble enough to paddle up and down small rivers. The NWCo paddled them across the continent to the Pacific and Arctic oceans. Those paddlers were the first to trade with uncontacted First Nations communities on the west coast and Canada’s northern territories.

Four to eight paddlers, collectively known as Winterers, manned each North Canoe. Many considered themselves a tougher and more wilderness-savvy breed of trader than the Voyageurs who didn’t often overwinter in the First Nations communities.

By 1821, the HBCo and NWCo ceased their ruthless competition by merging under the Hudson’s Bay name. For another eight decades, annual brigades of North Canoes carried furs to James Bay and brought back trade goods for posts near the height of land, such as Grand Portage and Northern Ontario’s Temiscamingue.

Ghosts of the Fur Trade | Photo: Archives Ontario

The big Montreal canoe continued to serve the Great Lakes until 1858. The construction of the canals on the Great Lakes, the introduction of steamboats on the Ottawa River in 1851, and finally, the completion of the railroad to Mattawa in 1881, were nails in the coffin of the freighter canoe, rendered slow and old-fashioned.

This photo depicts one of the last North Canoe brigades, seen in the Temagami area in 1902. The local fort closed shortly after and the remaining canoes fell into personal ownership. A few still survive in the historical collections of heritage sites, including former fur trading posts Fort William and Grand Portage.

Paddling historian, Wally Schaber, is currently writing a book about the history of the Dumoine River watershed. www.dumoinewatershed.blogspot.com.


Get the full article in the digital edition of Canoeroots Early Summer 2014. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.

Trust The Trucker’s Hitch To Cartop Your Canoe

If you start canoe trips with a sore neck from looking up at the wiggling canoe on your roof racks and worrying that it is making a bid for freedom, then you need to learn the trucker’s hitch knot.

Trust the trucker’s hitch knot to cartop your canoe

First, we need to cover some knot-tying terminology. The free end of the rope is the end we are using to tie the knot. For an overhand loop you pass the free end over itself to make a loop. And a bight is a bend in the rope so it is doubled.

Begin by making sure you have a set of sturdy roof racks set as far apart on your roof as possible. You’ll also need two three-meter lengths of rope (avoid the braided, yellow polyproylene cheap stuff). Tie one end of the rope to the rack using a bowline (you remember: the rabbit goes up the hole, around the tree and back down the hole). Then, throw the free end of the rope over the canoe. Apologize if in doing so you have put out your partner’s eye.

4 steps to secure your canoe

  1. Make a small overhand loop about a foot above the gunwale
  2. Take the bight of a few inches in the free end and push it up through this loop.
  3. Pass the free end under your roof rack and back up through your bight
  4. Pull down on the free end. The bight will act as a pulley as the tightening rope slides through it. In this way you gain a mechanical advantage to tighten the rope. Pass the rope under the roof rack and tie a half hitch around all three lengths of rope.

Finish the knot with a second half hitch, or however many you need to feel good about passing a truck into a headwind.

The trucker’s hitch is so effective and reliable that you’ll soon find yourself using it for things like erecting your campfire tarp and a dozen other uses where you need a taut rope.

Doug Scott teaches at New Brunswick Community College in Saint John.

cover of Canoeroots Magazine, Fall 2007 issueThis article was first published in the Fall 2007 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions, or browse the archives.


Hitch it! | Feature photo: USCG PTC Developer/Wikimedia Commons

 

Video: Canoe Strokes and Control

Photo: Rolf Kraiker
Video: Canoe Strokes and Control

This introductory video by Rolf Kraiker provides insight into some of the basic principles of paddling a canoe in what’s referred to as the traditional “Canadian” style.

This video is an overview of three different steering strokes, a breakdown of some elements to improve paddling mechanics and a short demonstration of paddling control exercises.

Video: Whitewater Competition Highlights

Photo: Screen Capture Whitewater Competition Highlights
Video: Whitewater Competition Highlights
[iframe class=”wistia_embed” name=”wistia_embed” src=”http://fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/13yv568a1t?canonicalUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sunplay.com%2Fpaddleboards-s%2F742.htm&canonicalTitle=Stand%20Up%20Paddleboards%20(SUP)” allowtransparency=”true” frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” width=”480″ height=”232″ ]Stand Up Paddleboards (SUP)

In case you missed the action from June’s Payette River Games, here’s a series of highlights from Sunplay.com. 

To read about the event, at Kelly’s Whitewater Park, click here.