Put Out That Fire: The Case Against Campfires

Stories

June 1, 2003

Photo: Scott Card — Put Out That Fire: The Case Against Campfires

Amidst Canada’s vast wilderness playground of trees, rocks and water, it seems incredible that our cozy, marshmallow-roasting campfires could have an impact. Unfortunately, campfires are among the most damaging practices in the ecosystems we escape to when we go camping. Fires deplete topsoil nutrients, scar the ground, pollute the air and introduce a risk of forest fires.

Campfires have a significant impact because there is very little topsoil on the scenic rocky coastlines of popular paddling areas such as Ontario’s Georgian Bay Islands. What little soil there is comes primarily from the decomposing wood of fallen trees, branches and leaves. The removal of deadwood for fires removes the nutrients available for plants.

Fires have also left scars on the rocks of many beautiful campsites. When I was a graduate student in archaeology, I learned that the signs of fire—be they carbon deposits on rocks, layers of ash in the soil or rock heat fractures—are among the longest-lasting markers on a campsite, remaining visible for thousands of years.

Sand will also hold a fire trail for future campers to find. Sand will melt or scar, and on popular beaches the sand is full of unburnt and partially burnt wood. Unless the fire is below the high-tide line, turning the sand under only hides the fire pit until someone tries to build a sandcastle there.

Fires also emit a lot of particulate matter. The air pollution from campfires mimics the smog of city air that so many of us are trying to escape when we head out on a kayak tour.

The risk of forest fires is almost too obvious to mention, but still a very important reason to forego the evening blaze. I recall paddling along a wilderness shoreline and smelling smoke—not directly from a camper’s fire, but pouring from the ground 50 metres away from an old fire pit. The fire had travelled through the tree roots below the fire pit. The firefighters who eventually subdued this blaze said such root fires were all too common.

Combine the potential impacts of fire with the increase in the number of people camping in an ever-shrinking wilderness and the results are obvious. In many parts of the world, fires have been banned due to limited wood supplies and heavy recre- ational use. In Canada, we are fortunate to be self-regulated with the exception of fire bans during extremely dry weather. To continue enjoying this freedom we must minimize or eliminate our fire use.

Doing without fires is simple. For cooking, camp stoves are easy to use, reasonably inexpensive and far easier to control than a campfire. Plus, your pots stay nice and shiny.

Once you get used to camping without fire, you’ll wonder why you ever bothered to spend hours of your precious vacation collecting deadwood. You’ll use that time for swimming or just relaxing. You’ll see the stars much more clearly and enjoy north- ern lights, sunsets and the serene change from dusk to dark. And when looking back at a campsite you’ve left, you’ll feel good to see no evidence, not even a fire ring or scar on the rock, to mark your stay. The next camper can enjoy the pleasure of feeling like they’ve discovered the place for the first time.

But if you must…

Use an existing fire pit if available.
Build beach fires in sand or gravel below the high-water mark.
Better yet, use a fire pan that you carry with you—essentially a piece of sheet metal with the edges turned up to contain the ashes. Place the pan over a bed of sand about 5 cm thick on top of solid rock, or perch it on top of smaller rocks.
Always keep your fires as small as possible—20 cm across for cooking.
Use small pieces of wood and use only dead, fallen wood.
Burn your fire completely so you have minimal ash and charcoal left over.

Jonathon Reynolds is co-author of Kayaking Georgian Bay and The Soft Paddling Guide. He and partner Heather Smith own and operate Nomadic Adventures.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

The Garden of Annie: Paddlers Paradise in Tofino

Stories

Ryan Stuart

June 1, 2003

All photos: Josie Boulding — The Garden of Annie: Paddlers Paradise in Tofino

On Vancouver Island’s West Coast, stories grow as fast and tall as the fat red cedars and amazon Douglas firs they’re told under. The characters grow larger than life and their feats beyond human. Take the tales of Cougar Annie, who is rumoured to have shot a cougar one-handed, dealt with more than one husband by force, withstood the shelling from a Japanese subma- rine and cultivated a garden of exotic plants amidst the wild coastal rainforest. Tall tales indeed, except these stories are true. Cougar Lady really did earn her name from her ability to dispatch meddling big cats and black bears and she made a life and a horticultural career for herself far from civilization in an environment where it rains almost every day from October until April.

So says Margaret Horsfield in her book Cougar Annie’s Garden. By the time I finished reading the introduction I was inspired to visit the storied garden and see for myself if the rumours were true that after years of neglect, Annie’s exotics were blooming once more.

So I planned a seven-day kayak trip. Beginning in Gold River, a remote West Coast logging town deep in Vancouver Island’s Nootka Sound, I would make my way to the exposed outer coast, paddle south around the noto- rious headland of Estevan Point to Hesquiat Harbour and visit the famed garden at Boat Basin. Then I would zigzag my way further south through the forested islands of Clayoquot Sound to the resort town of Tofino. On the way would be plenty of solitude to give me a taste of Cougar Annie’s life on the edge.

At the docks in Gold River, I loaded my gear aboard the Uchuck III, a former World War II minesweeper that now runs goods and people out to the coast’s remote lodges, homes and camps. With my kayak on board, the Uchuck motored west through the channels leading to Vancouver Island’s outer coast. The forested mountain- sides opened up to reveal snowcapped peaks behind them, fishermen fighting salmon and the odd curious

gaze of a sea lion or seal. Nearing the Pacific, the boat began to roll on a light swell. The Nootka Lighthouse appeared, marking the southern tip of Nootka Island and the entrance to the mouth of the sound. The Uchuck docked nearby at the historic coastal village of Friendly Cove. Today the settlement contains little more than a church, a graveyard, a single house, derelict foundations and a fallen totem pole. It is the landing site of Captain James Cook, the first European to set foot in B.C., and once an important summer residence for the local Mowachaht people. That was back when there were thousands of First Nations spread along the coast in pros- perous communities, and the way it was in 1915 when a woman named Ada Annie Rae-Arthur arrived on the coast with her husband Willie for a clean start and a new life.

The drug problems of today’s Vancouver were problems 90 years ago, and Willie was addicted to the city’s opium dens. The community of Boat Basin, a full day’s travel from Tofino, was remote enough to be free from temptation. Like few others, Annie stayed long enough to witness the decline of the Mowachaht. Until 1986, long after her neighbours had dwindled to none and she had gone blind, Annie stayed at her garden, not leaving for years at a time. She spent 70 years out here; I would spend seven days.

Icrossed the channel from Friendly Cove to the southern edge of Nootka Sound with the waves splashing at my side, glad to be alone on the ocean. I felt like a coastal explorer, with empty beaches, wave-washed cliffs, crashing surf and dense forest on one side, and open ocean, the odd sea otter, seals and sea birds on the other. I made camp at one of the many white sand beaches. Wolf, deer, and bear tracks dimpled the sand in lines that disap- peared into piles of bull kelp. I expected to see hand-sized cat-tracks too, here on Annie’s turf.

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Cougar hunters were held in high regard amongst the pioneers of old, and Annie was the big-cat hunter’s queen. The animals were regular visitors to her garden, and she is reputed to have trapped and shot 70 to 80. Sometimes she would bait them with young goats; other times she would find them treed. She even shot them one-handed in the dark. When she heard the traps snap at night she would check them with a lamp in one hand and a gun in the other. Despite failing eyesight, she never missed a shot.

Annie’s cougar hunting was a profitable business— cougars earned bounties until the late ‘70s, plus there was always demand for hides. Annie was never one to miss a chance to make money—she also sold bulbs and plants from her garden and tended a store and post office. The exotic shrubs, bulbs, fruit trees and flowers Annie culti- vated were not adapted to this rainforest climate, yet her plants flourished and found buyers as far away as Manitoba.

The next stage of my journey took me around the headland of Estevan Point into the protected waters of Hesquiat Harbour and Boat Basin, Cougar Annie’s home. Estevan Point sticks out of Vancouver Island’s western profile like a pimple on a teenager’s face, bearing the brunt of every storm. It also bore the brunt of the only military attack on Canadian soil in recent history. One day during World War II, Annie spotted a submarine in Boat Basin. That night it opened fire on the Estevan Point Lighthouse. Shells were found all over the area for 30 years. Canadian military officials played down the attack, but everyone assumed it was a Japanese submarine.

Puzzling to many was, and is, why the Japanese would sail across the Pacific to attack a lighthouse in the middle of nowhere. Conspiracy theorists argued that it was actually an American submarine, that the States bombed their ally to keep Canada’s resolve firmly in the war.

Luckily I had calm conditions for paddling around this proboscis-shaped war zone into Hesquiat Harbour. Boat Basin lies at the harbour’s far end. I camped on a long, curving stretch of sand scooped out of the backside of Estevan Point, one hour’s paddle from the garden. I fell asleep that night trying to picture the garden and imagine what I would find the following day. I woke early with a nervous anticipation usually reserved for competitions and first dates. I packed, and tore up the four knots to Cougar Annie’s in record time.

A new boardwalk leads from tidal water through a cedar swamp and up a short hill to the garden. Once only a rare few stopped here, but the garden is becoming famous. Float planes and sightseeing boats now drop in with tourists. But I was the only one around in the early morning hours this day.

I marvelled at the small room that was a post office and store. I walked down plant-lined boardwalks that beckoned me farther into the garden. I gazed in awe at the size of some of the old-growth beams and boards used for building. My eyes were distracted by the hundreds of exotic shrubs, trees and flowers blooming in pocket gardens. Wind whispered in the trees and bugs and birds hummed their tunes. And I was reminded of Annie’s reputation by the rusty traps hanging from trees.

One building, sinking into the ground, was obviously Annie’s home. I looked inside the one-room house. “Eleven kids,” I whispered. Over 70 years Annie raised 11 children and had four husbands come and go—either by death or desertion. After Willie died, Annie advertised for a husband alongside her nursery ads in two western- Canadian newspapers. George Campbell was one of those who replied and came to live at Boat Basin. Evidence suggests he beat Annie, and, not long after arriving, Campbell died suspiciously of a gunshot wound. Annie’s explanations varied between “it went off accidentally while he was cleaning it” to “it went off accidentally when he threatened to kill me.”

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In Annie’s early days the area was busy with a thriving aboriginal, missionary and immigrant pioneer com- munity—enough to make a store and post office viable. Later on, Annie’s only customer was herself. Somehow she was impervious to the multiple forces that drew everyone else away. Today the only residents are a few Mowachaht at the remote reserve on Hesquiat Harbour’s northwest shore and Peter Buckland, who lives full-time at the garden.

Buckland was no stranger to life on the West Coast. He built a small prospector cabin close to Nootka Sound and spent his share of alone time there, whenever he could get away from his law profession in Vancouver. In Annie’s later years, he visited the garden to help out. He stayed for as long as he could spare before returning to his practice in the city.

In 1987, after Annie’s death, Buckland bought her homestead, moved in and began rescuing the garden from the encroaching forest. Partway through my visit I bumped into Buckland, a handsome grey-haired man of the woods. He was friendly and welcoming but not in a “tell all your friends to come here too” kind of way. He just seemed glad to have someone to chat with for a few minutes while pointing out the sights with his work- worn hands. I complimented him on the state of the gar- den, the flowers blooming, the orderly paths and under- control shrubs and trees.

“I practice what I call chainsaw gardening,” he said. Using a chainsaw, axe and machete as gardening tools, he has been reclaiming the former garden. Under the salmonberry and salal, he found the garden struggling to survive. He discovered the fruit trees still bore fruit and most of the shrubs, perennials and other flowers still bloomed despite the heavy cloak of the intruding forest. After 15 years of hard work he still turns up forgotten sections of garden and the plants hidden in them.

Buckland has built himself an incredible abode from the surrounding forest and he plans on being here for many years to come. He has built new cabins, constructed two kilometres of boardwalk and opened the garden to the public. He recently turned the garden over to the not-for-profit Boat Basin Society to ensure its preservation. For the cost of a $50 Society membership, anyone can come to the garden, wander through the oasis protected by towering stands of fir and cedar, and contemplate the tenacity of two modern-day pioneers.

What Cougar Annie and Peter Buckland had done inspired me. I had commitments back home and packed up to head for Tofino, but I was already working out a plan to come back and carve a living for myself out of the coastal rainforest. I paddled south and pulled up on a pocket beach for the last night of my trip, eyeing the forest for a spot to build a cabin and set up a garden as I unrolled my sleeping bag on the sand.

Sleep came easily but during the night I woke to the breaking-twig sounds of an animal hunting in the dark. I stayed awake nervously waiting for a cougar to pounce and shred the few layers of nylon that encased its next meal. A quote from Horsfield came to mind: “When you shoot a cougar, sight fast and aim for its chest. That way you’ll hit the giant cat’s heart,” Annie advised a newspaper reporter in 1957.

I didn’t have a gun but I did have a knife. In a sleep-deprived lunacy, I grabbed my headlamp and the knife, took a deep breath, and turned to face the cougar. Two red eyes flashed in the bush, then turned and ran. With a sharp dose of reality my fears dissolved, but so did my dreams of a life in the bush. Like many before me I realized that it takes a rare type of person to make it out here. I woke the next morning and, like the mouse that had disturbed my slumber, high-tailed it home.

When he’s not exploring the mountains and shores of Vancouver Island, Ryan Stuart lives, writes and enjoys human company in Courtenay, B.C.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Editorial: Stand Up and Save Our Rivers

Stories

Scott MacGregor

June 1, 2003

On my way home after a surprising low-water spring run on Ontario’s Upper Black, I stopped at the Sandman Inn and Restaurant for coffee. The only thing keeping me awake was thinking about how I was going to explain the fist-sized dent I put in the bow of Andrew’s new open boat. I suppose I could have been more to the right going over the drop, but where was the spring run-off that usually makes this class IV falls a clean run?

We ran out of water at our house this past winter. A dry fall and no mid-winter melt must have lowered the water table below the reach of our drilled well. Melting snow on the wood stove for tea is romantic at first, but after months of lugging around five-gallon jugs, the Little House on the Prairie feeling quickly dries up.

In North America we use an average of 1,400 gallons of water per capita per day. Industry and agriculture suck 90 percent of this, but still, each person carries 28 five-gallon jugs of river into their home each day. We didn’t require this many jugs of course because in Quadeville you can still slip into your Sorels and piss off your front porch. Not everyone is so lucky.

Back behind the wheel, coffee in one hand and dicta-phone in the other, I began brainstorming the framework for the next national environmental campaign: Stand Up and Save Our Rivers—the instal- lation of urinals in every household.

It might be slow to catch on, like Blue Box and composting, but soon urinals would make it into every home.

It would become a political issue of course and one sure to pass—what man would vote against mandatory urinal use?

My favourite: If “urinal” not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

No more “leave it up or down” domestics, and think of the water we’d save. Water that would flow in our rivers. Water that would have cushioned my landing and saved the bow of my borrowed boat. I was sure that I was onto something, but like all credible green movements I needed some statistical research to support my campaign.

There are roughly 330 million flushers in the United States and Canada and 50 percent of those are men using, on average, five gallons per flush and five flushes per day. North American men flush a grand total of 4.1 billion gallons per day. Now, let’s say that four out of five of these 4.1 billion gallons could be urinal-based. Using only one gallon per pull of the stainless handle, men alone would save 3.3 billion gallons of water per day.

Dividing per-day use by hours, minutes, seconds and converting gallons to cubic feet, it works out that by installing urinals in every home in North America we’d prevent a staggering 5,812 cubic feet of water per second from flushing into our sewers. That’s the equivalent of five Ocoees, one and half Frasers and six raging Upper Black Rivers flowing day and night, 365 days a year.

So you see Andrew, it’s not really my fault. If this urinal thing had caught on five years ago, there would have been plenty of water that day and I wouldn’t have dented your boat.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Big Tips for Big Drops

Skills

Scott Feindel

June 1, 2003

Your goal when running big drops is to find the entry angle that will keep your back and body safe from impact but not hit any submerged rocks or the river bottom. The best way to learn to run waterfalls is to start off on smaller, relatively safe drops and work up to harder and bigger. The higher the drop, the more likely you are to want to pencil.

Pencilling is when your boat pitch matches that of the falling curtain of water and you drop into the pool vertically, rather than flat like a boof. It will take time and practice to confidently line up, launch and safely land big drops, but what feels at first like a big blur will soon become familiar and slower. You’ll develop the consciousness to open your eyes, make fine adjustments and enjoy the ride.

SCOUTING THE DROP

You should be scouting and running safety for all big drops. Look through the whole drop to see if there is any one part that is obviously unrunnable. If this is the case, begin hiking around or decide if you can either put in just below or get out just above the nastiness.

Be sure of your landing zone and that you can hit it. A safe landing zone is often the reason a drop is runnable or not.

Generally, the more aerated the water the higher you can get away with landing flat. Is your landing big, foamy and soft or is flat, green and hard? Is it too high to boof?

How deep is the pool? Is it deep enough to pencil? The best way to find out is to actually go down and check with a pole or a big stick, or even get into the water and look around. However, this is not always realistic and is rarely necessary. With practice and experience you will be able to roughly gauge the pool depth and location of rocks by looking at the foam pile and boils. Another good way to know for sure is to check when the water’s not flowing and return the next season or, in some cases, the next day when the dam releases.

What other dangers are there? Often wood and other debris will collect in the pool below large waterfalls. On sheer drops the river may not only pound away and erode the base of the falls but also the wall behind it creating a cave hazard. Be sure that you can

either get out from behind the falls or be positive you will finish on the downstream side.

Consider the water depth at the lip of a drop. If you barely scrape over the lip of a sheer drop, it is very easy to get hung up and go over vertical, not so gracefully flopping your 30 footers onto your head.

Be sure you’ll see your intended line from your boat at river level. Use whatever landmarks are avail- able: bridge pilings, tiny breaking waves or even a friend standing by running safety. Many paddlers (even good ones) have, in the excitement, quickly scouted a drop from shore, hopped in their boat and totally lost sight of a perfect and relatively simple line.

OFF THE LIP

To pencil off a big drop, go off at roughly the same speed as the water using only smooth correction strokes to keep the boat on line. Carrying a lot of speed off a drop may launch you ahead of the water and free of the falls, and maybe over the hole or a rock at the bottom, but it makes setting your pitch far more difficult. You want your boat to fall off the brink,

match the pitch of the water and enter the pool at the same angle as the falls.

For the most part, your body position at the brink of the drop sets your angle for the rest of the ride. Keep your body relatively neutral, leaning neither too far forward or back. On the way down, pulling your legs to your chest will cause the bow to rise and your boat to flatten. Conversely, pushing your legs away will drop the bow or cause the boat’s pitch to steepen—become more vertical.

These sound like great tricks but in reality are very difficult and take lots of practice.

What to do with your paddle? You do not want your paddle at the same level as your face or neck when hitting the water. Some boaters put their paddles to the side, parallel to the boat, and tuck their heads at the last minute. Others simply keep their blades low around their hips. Avoid the ever-popular and danger- ous skull and crossbones. Throwing your arms above your head leads to: losing at least one hand from the paddle; getting slammed to the back deck; and likely damaging a shoulder.

TOUCHDOWN

Where there is even the slightest chance of hitting rock, using anything other than a creek boat is asking for trouble. Creek boats will by no means make you invincible but are far better equipped to protect you and make the lines you choose easier to hit.

Lean forward as you pencil into the pool. This helps stop the boat from back looping and sheds some of the impact of the fall from your body.

Accidentally landing too flat? Lean forward to help protect your back. And reach for a stroke upon landing to help you move downstream away from the curtain. When landing inadvertent big boofs, turn your head to help you steer clear of a broken nose compliments of your cockpit rim.

Be comfortable surfing in holes. Playing and practicing in holes makes for a fast and bomber roll, teaches you how to manoeuvre and more importantly how to get out if that’s where you end up.

PRACTICE AND JUDGEMENT

Running big drops is a lot of fun but takes practice and good judgement. There are as many ways to get into trouble as there are ways to run waterfalls. Take rescue courses and always paddle with like-minded boaters whom you trust.

If you cannot set up adequate safety for a big drop, don’t run it. Remember, there is no hurry. The waterfall you are so intent on running today will be there to run next season, or the next.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Northwest Territories’ Highway of Waterfalls

Stories

Keith Morrison

June 1, 2003

Open a northern tourism brochure and there they are, along with pictures, heights and distances to the nearest city hall. Eleven waterfalls just sitting by the road in the Northwest Territories. All within a five-hour drive of each other, complete with parking, camping, toilets and boardwalks to scenic overlooks. Drops ranging from three metres to 33 metres. And only three had ever been run.

That left eight first descents, something that my pal Stu and I were determined to change. Out of money and with nothing to paddle all winter, we hatched a plan: Run them all, smallest to largest, with me learning as we went. We would get famous bagging the first descents, maybe even make some money. It was a plan bred of desperation and boredom. By the time it collapsed around us, my good friend Stu would be forever one centimetre shorter.

I’d learned to paddle on the Slave and the Ottawa Rivers and was pretty comfortable with churning masses of foam and two-storey waves. My “local river hero” mentality got a bit of a shock, however, when I went to B.C. and paddled rapids that didn’t have ten-metre-wide lines down the middle or monster eddies at the bottom. It was then that I realized I couldn’t creek for balls and, much to my regret, had never run a waterfall. Fortunately, Stu was quite the opposite, a true B.C. paddler. He knew steep and he knew continuous and he was willing to teach me.

By June the water was running and we were on our way up north. Stu took the opportunity to bring me up to speed on the fundamentals. He explained that you can go at drops in two ways: boof them or pin-drop them. Boofing involves landing your kayak flat or at a slight angle to the water. The term “boof” comes from the sound that the bottom of your boat makes when it hits the water: “BOOF.” Pin dropping is just that, Stu said. Dropping over the edge bow-first and falling…just like a dropped pin.

What dictates which way you go is a combination of waterfall height and water depth at the bottom. “You don’t want to land anything flat that’s over nine metres high. Imagine strapping a door to your ass, jumping off the high board at the local pool and landing flat on the door. Vertebrae compress, disks pop, things twist, other things snap, crackle and pop—not a pretty thought!” Stu noted that one may even want to reduce that nine- metre rule of thumb if getting on in years or feeling particularly brittle that day.

So why boof at all, I wondered. Well, I learned that boofing requires a lot less bottom depth than does pin dropping. I also found out that it allows you to retain some of your forward speed and gives you more con- trol over where you wind up at the bottom—a good thing if there’s a nasty hole or some obstacle below that you want to avoid.

The first two waterfalls on our list were close to Fort Smith on the Slave River and a logical place to start. While the Slave is renowned for its big water, the east side of the river is laced with small channels and two three-metre waterfalls of note: Slop Drop and Patrice’s Falls. There are smaller falls on the Slave but, to paraphrase Nealy, a waterfall is defined as a vertical fall over 2.5 metres in height. Anything smaller is just a ledge.

Slop Drop and Patrice’s Falls provided a good training ground for Stu to teach me how to boof. I learned how in order to get your kayak to ramp off a waterfall, you need to throw in a strong forward stroke just as you reach the lip. This boof stroke, combined with an upward pull by your knees and a slight forward movement of your torso, causes your bow to leap for- ward and up and initiate the boof. I practiced this stroke on flat water and perfected it on small ledges before hitting the bigger stuff. I learned that the tendency of water to accelerate as it nears the lip of a waterfall will affect the timing of the stroke, and to be ready for this or be doomed to screw up.

BOUND FOR FIRST DESCENTS

After our successful practice runs on the Slave we set off from Fort Smith on a three-hour drive bound for some first descents. In the process we drove past Little Buffalo Falls on Highway 5, a 12-metre ogre that required technical expertise that I didn’t have, at least not yet.

The highways of southern N.W.T. traverse vast dis- tances between the minute enclaves of iconoclasts that comprise the culture of the North. In this otherwise tedious landscape of tortured spruce trees and mosquitoes, ancient glacial action has created a huge escarpment over which pretty much all the region’s water tumbles. Government engineers bulldozed Highway 1 along the escarpment’s periphery. Tourism marketers named it the Waterfall Route. The road provides easy access to six waterfalls: Louise Falls at 15 metres, Alexandra Falls at 33 metres, the twin falls of Escarpment Creek at eight metres and 12 metres, Lady Evelyn Falls at 15 metres, and McNally Creek. Only Lady Evelyn Falls had ever been run.

Mileposts every two kilometres along Highway 1 mark off the kilometres from the Alberta border. McNally Creek Falls, at kilometre 120, is a seven-metre straight shot only 100 metres from the road. McNally Creek had a lot less water in it than when we had looked at it a few months earlier, but after a dummy run with an empty kayak we deemed it safe and Stu took the first shot. Unfortunately, Stu didn’t take as nice a line as did the empty kayak. He wound up hitting the large flake of rock that dominates the lip of this waterfall and was kicked to the right and rotated onto his side. The landing was brutal and the impact of the water onto the side of his head knocked all the foam out of his helmet.

It was here in my short but dynamic waterfall running career that I learned it is sometimes harder to go second. Assembling all the nerve I could, I charged straight ahead and hit a perfect boof, landing flat on non-aerated water seven metres below. It was also at this point that I coined the term “nut slap” and added it to the list of reasons not to boof, somewhere between compressed vertebrae and popped disks. Insulted ‘nads aside, I was chuffed at having bagged the first in what we were determined was to be a long series of first descents.

We chose to leave the other, more intimidating falls of the Waterfall Route for the end of our tour and explored up Highway 1 toward the Trout River, which crosses the highway at a place called Somba Deh, a territorial campground at kilometre 320. Armed only with a handful of tourism pamphlets, we went in search of Coral Falls, Whittaker Falls and Wallace Creek.

Whittaker Falls is an ungodly maelstrom that unleashes all of its fury right below the highway bridge and makes one never want to enter the water again. This evil beast is more of a monster slide than a falls and is pumping into a hole at the bottom so big that it ejects jets of water vapour 15 metres into the air. Petrified, we scratched Whittaker off our list.

Fortunately, one kilometre upstream from the campground on a well-worn river-right trail is Coral Falls, a beautiful four-metre drop into a nice deep pool. We ran that puppy ever which way from Sunday, if only to purge our fear of Whittaker Falls by excessively boofing everything in sight.

DARK AND INTIMIDATING

Drunk on the victory of our second first descent, we headed to Wallace Creek at kilometre 290, parking at a small rest area located by the creek’s bridge. A trail on river left leads to the falls, but we opted to paddle the two kilometres downstream, a pleasant class II with two two-metre boofs along the way.

When we got to Wallace Creek Falls we were a little taken aback. On the surface it looked to be no problem, about an eight-metre drop into a deep pool below. But it was hard to judge the height, as the creek dropped from an 18-metre-deep canyon into a 30-metre-deep canyon with overhung walls. Dropped might not be the right word; dribbled was more appropriate. There was hardly any water in the creek and I was reminded of the Bugs Bunny episode with the intrepid cartoon hero jumping off an impossibly tall tower into a tiny bucket of water.

We fixed a rope into the canyon above and rappelled in with a throwbag to measure the height. Turns out that the falls were more like 12 metres high. Standing at the lip, that glassy, non-aerated water far below looked pretty dark and intimidating.

It’s after these pivotal moments of your life that you look back and wish that you’d properly answered the question, “Am I more afraid of the waterfall or of my friends thinking I’m chicken?” Beside me, Stu’s mind was churning through the same testosterone-laden thought process. We looked at each other. “I’ll go first,” I heard myself say. The idiocy had begun.

NOT AS FAMOUS AS PLANNED

We fixed a rope below the falls and Stu rappelled down to provide safety and take pic- tures. I gathered my courage, drove myself over the lip and hucked my weight forward, putting myself into the kayaking fetal position with my paddle at my side. I knew that I didn’t want to land this one flat and that not too much could go wrong as long as I went in pointy end first. Eyes closed, I hit the water slightly over-vertical and got immediately ejected from my craft when my boat slapped into the water upside down. I bobbed to the surface with my stomach in my throat, a roaring in my ears and the faint echoes of Stu’s laughter reverberating off the canyon walls. Later, when Stu got the film developed, there must have been ten shots of me swimming around the base of the falls, looking pissed off.

Now it was Stu’s turn. Not wanting to hang up at the lip or over-rotate like me, he put in a bit of a boof stroke at the top. In my slow-motion, frame-by-frame recollection of the carnage, his kayak floated off the lip of the falls, flattened out, turned sideways and proceeded to flutter 12 metres down to the base of the falls. The hull made a hollow “boof” sound when it landed, flat as a pancake onto the black water.

Two kilometres from the road, 250 kilometres from the nearest hospital, at the base of a 30-metre-deep, overhung canyon, Stu was floating around in his boat with a broken back. We would later learn that it was a compression fracture of the T-12 vertebra, but to Stu at this moment it was a world of hurt. Fortunately, very fortunately, the only damage was to the bone and not to the spinal cord inside.

Stu would have nothing to do with my intricate plans for spinal boards improvised from paddles and kayak bottoms, let alone let me haul him up a 30- metre cliff with jury-rigged harnesses and mechanical advantage systems. In fact, Stu was able to ascend up the rope 30 metres, walk the two kilometres to the truck and rattle down two and half hours of dirt road to the hospital in Hay River.

And to such ignoble ends come the dreams of men. We are not famous as planned (although perhaps infamous in some circles, especially with our girl- friends) and certainly not rich. But I know a lot more about waterfalls. Stu, although forevermore a little less than his original 6’ 8″, was leading 5.10c rock climbs on gear by October. And there are still five first descents to be bagged in the Northwest Territories, just sitting by the road.

Keith Morrison runs the Slave Kayak Lodge on the Slave River in Canada’s Northwest Territories and has spent the past 10 years exploring the nooks and crannies of the Far North.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Beating the Blue Funk

Stories

Dianna Townsend

June 1, 2003

“Fearfulness is one of the most basic physiological and behavioral responses we have,” says University of Wisconsin psychology professor Ned Kalin. Although we all have different fear thresholds, fear is a natural, evolved response to danger. Face it. We were born to be afraid of whitewater.

Good paddlers, however, have long distinguished between good fear and bad fear. Good fear tells you when you’re in over your head. Bad fear—debilitating, self-doubting fear— is the irrational funk that psyches you out before a drop when your paddling skills, experience and fitness are otherwise up to the challenge.

Psychologists say that these fear responses are ingrained through experience. Any negative or traumatic experiences that we have in whitewater are etched into the brain’s biochemical hard-drive to replay next time we face a similar situation.

Does this mean that we are all confined to a fixed level of mental comfort in paddling? Absolutely not! Through physical preparation and visualization, we can “reprogram” our fear response to match our paddling abilities and aspirations.

TAKE IT EASY

Physical reprogramming is the first step. Consistent time on the water is one of the best fear antidotes. Drop down to a grade of whitewater that’s comfortable for you or go back to flatwater to hone your technique and fitness. Take a course, invest in an instructional book or video, or go out with a friend who is technically better than you. Work on your bal- ance and your roll…on both sides. Create “class V moves” on class I and II. Creek boater Ed Poropat advises, “Above all, don’t be satisfied with ‘I got down OK.’ Strive for grace and excellence when practicing on the easy stuff. Soon, these difficult lines will seem easier, your confidence will soar, and you will know you can hit similar lines on tougher rivers when it really counts.”

GO TO YOUR HAPPY PLACE

The next stage of your transformation is mental reprogramming through visualization, a technique used by top athletes in all sports. Quebec open boater and creeker Gigi Rioux and big-drop performer Tao Berman both routinely use visualization. Visualization can actually change nerve pathways in your brain, altering your brain’s biochemical programming to produce new fear responses.

One of the best visualization techniques, developed for alpine skiers by Dr. Richard Suinn, is called Visual Motor Behavior Rehearsal (VMBR). Suinn says, “The VMBR technique combines relaxation and imagery in a format that allows individuals to desensitize themselves to a stressful situation.”

To conduct VMBR, find a quiet place and breathe deeply, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Calm and quiet your mind and body. Go to a scene in your mind that represents calm, and focus on that scene in full detail. Spend some time switching back and forth between an empty mind and the calming scene.

Next, imagine yourself getting ready to paddle the river, drop or hole that would normally inspire fear. Visualize every detail, from what you are wearing, to the temperature of the water, to every stroke you place. Visualize in real time or even slow motion—don’t skip a step. Keep breathing deeply. If fearful or self-doubting thoughts creep in, switch back to your calming scene and then start over. Intense fear may call for several visual- izations a day; mild fear may only require a visualization before you paddle.

AND WHEN I SNAP MY FINGERS…

Finally, introduce a verbal or physical cue to match the visualization of success. For example, choose a word that inspires strength and confidence and recite it several times after each visualization. Or hold your hands in a certain position while you are visualizing. I used to create a circle with my thumb and forefinger—a gesture easy to do while holding a paddle. As you visualize more using these cues, your brain will associate your word or hand position with images of confidence and success.

When it’s time to paddle the river or rapid that used to inspire fear, try your focused breathing and your verbal or physical cue. As you are scouting or contemplating the run, repeat your visualization. You will likely experience some of the physical aspects of a fear response, and you should—you want your body to be alert and responsive in a challenging situation—but you will also feel confident and focused.

If you’re still gripped, don’t be discouraged. You may need to take more time for physical and mental preparation. Eventually, you’ll get where you want to be, or you may decide that you can have a great paddling career without ever running that drop or going into that hole. Move on and have a good day on the water. In the big picture, being healthy and on the river with your friends is pretty much as good as it gets!

Dianna Townsend, a boater of 10 years, paddles in the Southern Sierra Nevada, visualizing and breathing deeply on every drop.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Editorial: My Friend Keeps His Paddle in a Sock

Stories

Scott MacGregor

May 1, 2003

Photo: Gaertringen @ Pixabay — Editorial: My Friend Keeps His Paddle in a Sock

Hiding behind my truck’s lowered tailgate and pretending to be tying my shoes, I watched in utter amazement as Rich slowly reached into the Thule box above his ’84 Volvo wagon and lifted out a 58-inch, multi-coloured wool stocking. He undid the red ribbon tied neatly in a bow around the woolly sheath and reached inside to draw his cherry ottertail sword. Sir Lancelot ran his finger- tips down the blade, gingerly like he was touching the face of a lover before engaging her in a romantic kiss. He held it above his head looking up his arm and along the shaft. Sun glistened off the tip. What the hell was this guy doing with his paddle?

While he folded his specially knit paddle cozy I thought about my paddle’s trip to the river. Tossed in the back of my pickup like a carpenter’s hammer, it rattled and shook off the last of its varnish. It lay next to the spare gas can covered in 67 kilometres of late-summer logging-road dust. Once they were on the water our paddles would be equal, but Rich clearly held his Excalibur in a higher place.

Paddles are hung above mantels in cottages, rested against desks in university dorm rooms and displayed in homes in prominent places once reserved for straight-faced portraits of ancestors. Miniature canoe paddles are crafted into coat racks and I’m sure paddles are the most popular canvas for aspiring wood carvers and painters of snowy chickadee scenes. Putting together the new Paddle Buyer’s Guide for the Summer 2003 of Canoeroots, I wondered how the paddle became a symbol worthy of a spot on the livingroom wall or a knitted carrying case.

NOT JUST TOOLS TO GET DOWN THE RIVER

I called Jeremy Ward at the Canadian Canoe Museum and asked him whether the voyageurs lovingly cherished their paddles. Jeremy said nobody’s entirely sure, but he suspects that the men who opened the country didn’t knit themselves paddle socks. In official documents and journals, references to paddles are conspicuously missing. When a new voyageur signed on with the Northwest Company he was issued blankets, tumpline, sometimes clothing and often an advance on his wages.The equipment inventories contain no mention of paddles. It seems that François, Amable, Joseph and the boys had to supply their own paddles and in those days that meant making their own. Likely, paddles were chopped from a nearby tree, another chore in the daily 15-hour grind of moving furs. Jeremy and I agreed that tracing the origin of paddle nostalgia was worthy of a larger study, a doctoral thesis perhaps.

Canoe paddles are not only tools to propel us across lakes and down rivers. Hanging on walls they float us on memories—summer camp, grandmother’s cottage or a campsite shared with a close friend.

In university a friend of mine designed a simple tattoo with two paddles crossed, like the bats on a little league baseball cap, and under the crossed paddles were three words. I don’t know if he ever got the tattoo, but the words are burned into the hearts of every canoeist who hangs her paddle on the wall or carries his paddle in a sheath:

Swords of Freedom.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

A Canoe in the Family

Stories
Family

Frank Wolf

May 1, 2003

Photo: Manfred Wolf — A Canoe in the Family

My dad was fresh off the boat from Germany, arriving in a Canada that was famous back in his birth country for hunting, fishing, logging and most importantly, canoeing. He yearned to seek out the wilderness and carve a little niche for himself and his family in “wild, rugged” Canada. Manfred Wolf intended to carry on his proud Teutonic heritage by blindly throwing himself into nature’s unforgiving clenches with little experience but plenty of determination, efficiency, and an eternally stoic poker face.

Every journey begins with a single crucial step. Dad’s first step took him through the doors of a Canadian Tire in search of a canoe. Browsing the aisles wearing his rainbow-striped polyester pants with flared bottoms and white stitching, Manfred spotted it hanging seemingly in midair, suspended by fishing line above a Coleman stove display. It was love at first sight.

The sheet-aluminum hull was painted to look like birch bark and accented with black foam lining held in place by aluminum ribs. A burly outrigger of exterior black foam flotation ran from bow to stern just below the gunwales; the foam seats were removable. It measured a stout 10 feet long and a generous 39 inches at the beam. The clincher was the profile of a proud Indian chief painted in black at the side of the bow. He looks forever unflinchingly ahead with the word ‘Sportspal’ emblazoned behind the flowing feathers of his headdress.

To a 29-year-old father looking for adventure, the Sportspal embodied his romantic ideal of the great Canadian outdoors. After a couple of thoughtful strokes of his muttonchop sideburns, the decision was made. On July 14, 1970, exactly one week before I was born, Sportspal became a member of our family. My sister Christina was the first born but Sportspal was Manfred’s first son. I straggled in as the third child of the clan and spent years trying to measure up to my older brother.

RELIABLE, STABLE, AND LOYAL

My brother Sportspal was an important part of our family’s camping trips in Northern Ontario throughout the ‘70s. Faded airbrushed pictures show me on a day trip with Sportspal in Georgian Bay when I was six weeks old. The Pal may have been slow, but he was stable enough to transport the whole family and was as reliable as coffee in the morning. He didn’t argue, was always ready to play, and taught me to love the lakes and rivers he floated over whenever called upon.

At the cottage, I spent my formative early teen summers with my older brother. Sportspal and I gunwale-bobbed on hot August afternoons and fished for lunker largemouth bass in the calm pink of dusk. I often fell asleep in the cavern of his plush hull as crystal clear water lapped against his faux birch bark and the afternoon sun beat down on my face.

As the years passed, Sportspal established himself as the loyal son, heir to the estate, staying home to watch over the cottage and our parents, while I could never quite settle. I ran off here and there to explore and experience the world, while he lounged contentedly in his little piece of freshwater and Canadian Shield granite. I was disciplined for missing curfew or slacking off on my studies—a natural rite of passage for any young person…unless your name happened to be Sportspal. He was always perfect; he was born an adult.

Inevitably, time wore on and we went our separate ways. University, canoe tripping, travelling, and a move out West took me away from Sportspal for several years. Despite my absence, reminders of him were everywhere. On one canoe trip down the Rideau Canal I counted 14 other Sportspals sitting under the decks of cottages along the waterway. Often, I would see Sportspals cruising comfortably on the tops of Winnebagos and loosely tied to wood-panelled station wagons travelling across the country. I missed my family.

On my first visit to the cottage in quite some time, I spot him in his usual spot under the deck. Like me, he’s a little worse for wear. Some of the birch bark on his hull has peeled off, revealing specks of shiny alloy beneath. A couple of the aluminum ribs are missing, allowing the foam lining to bulge out. The Indian chief on the bow has faded slightly from years in the sunshine, though his gaze remains steady.

I’ve spent the better part of a decade travelling the world trying to fulfil my wanderlust and quell youthful angst while he’s remained content in his cottage paradise. During the summer, Sportspal takes my father—in his sixties now—for a paddle every morning. After 32 years, the diminutive canoe still spends more time with my dad than I do. Sportspal is as reliable and stable as ever.

Frank Wolf is an adventurer, freelance writer and retail sales slave based in North Vancouver, B.C. In 1995 he canoed 8,000 km from the Bay of Fundy to Vancouver with his partner to become the first to paddle across Canada in a single season.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Of Fishing and Marriage: An Engaging Paddle

Stories

James Smedley

May 1, 2003

In honour of our recent engagement, Francine and I decide to celebrate with a canoe trip down the Shikwampkwa River. I tell Francine that I chose this gorgeous Northern Ontario flow because it reflects her purity and beauty. She accepts this explanation but I suspect she knows I chose it more for the deep swirling pools of walleye than for the swift riffles and easy rapids squeezed between its pine-studded rock and gravel shores.We’ve been on several river excursions together and Francine is well aware that my paddling trips are actually thinly veiled fishing trips. But with this being our first trip since becoming formally engaged, compatibility issues are now in sharp focus.

You see we come at angling from different angles. I revel in every aspect: finding fish, selecting the right lure, bait, and presentation. I like photographing fish, admiring fish and I enjoy releasing them unharmed. Francine’s relationship with fishing is a bit more practical. She sees it as a means of procuring flesh for the table. I know from previous experience that any fish unfortunate enough to bite her lure is destined for great things, like floating around in a pan of hot oil.

It’s mid-afternoon by the time we slide our canoe into the Shikwampkwa. We’re prepared for foul weather but the overcast day and the onset of driving rain begin to grate on our spirits as we wend our way down gentle rapids and swifts. Time glides by as swiftly as the current but as the day wears on our perpetual dampness is punctuated by pangs of hunger.

Luckily, we’re within sight of the island where we’ll camp, but the alluring prospect of shelter and food is suddenly diminished by the need to angle.Ahead lies all the warmth and nourishment I need in the form of a deep walleye pool. Here a short riffle eddies out into the slack water sequestered behind a spit of rock. To paddle past such a spot would be like ordering a cold beer and not drinking it. I lower the anchor and we pull our fishing gear from wet packs.

The walleye are holding near bottom where the current and slack water meet. I cast and let my lure sink before deftly bouncing a small jighead and white soft-plas- tic grub along bottom. I have the walleye dialed in and a precise presentation means hooking a fish every few casts. I catch and release the fat green-and-gold river dwellers in quick succession and, with the fish giving such an enthusiastic endorsement of my angling skill, the hours slip by like minutes.

I glance at Francine. Her rod is resting across the gunwales of the canoe—a sure sign of waning interest. Although she is catching her share, rain soaking through her jacket has dampened her angling zeal.

“I’m tired of fishing, let’s just keep a few for supper and head in,” she says.

Rain trickling down my back only lubricates the angling machine within and I’m shocked at the suggestion of quitting. Anything less than four or five hours is a bit of a letdown, especially when the fish are biting. Francine points out that, without fish, our evening meal will consist of a well-travelled package of freeze-dried chili. I tell her I’ll keep a few fish closer to dinner, “they’ll be fresher that way.” Francine knows this is simply an excuse to fish all evening.

“I think you like fishing more than sex,” she sighs. Luckily I am anticipating this statement. It’s the inevitable accusation from the partners of passionate anglers. I laugh and quickly reply, “Of course not my dear, don’t be ridiculous.” Thankfully, fishing from a canoe, I don’t have to look her straight in the eye.

While contemplating the pros and cons of the two activities, I’m jolted from my musings by a double-header. We both have a fish on. Although Francine obviously has the bigger of the two, she is too worried I’m going to let mine go to enjoy the battle waged by her walleye. She twists around to face me.

“Keep it!” she commands as I’m pulling the jig from a 16-inch walleye. As I lower it to the water she makes one last desperate plea as she reels. “Wait, we’ll stuff it with rice and bake it by the fire.” But even in the face of this last fervent appeal, I loosen my grip and the walleye swims away. Francine’s wrath falls squarely on her fish, although she looks directly at me as she snaps the walleye’s neck. “We’re heading in,” she states.

Vivid hallucinations of lines forming on my fiancée, dividing her into shank, ribs and loin convince me of the need to eat. We pull anchor and make for shore. I get to work reconstituting the chili while Francine prepares the walleye. Although I’m quite willing to share my chili, I’m not sure how Francine feels about sharing her fish. But when we sit down to our respective feasts, Francine slides a large fillet onto my plate and garnishes it with a kiss.

Freelance writer/photographer James Smedley lives in Northern Ontario. He has earned nine national writing awards, his most recent from the Outdoor Writers of Canada National Communication Awards for 2002.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Classic Solo: a Dance of Freedom

Stories

Becky Mason

May 1, 2003

Photo: Reid McLachlan — Classic Solo: a Dance of Freedom

Most of what I know about canoeing, I learned from my dad. He is the inspiration behind my passion for solo paddling. As a filmmaker, Dad was always looking for an excuse to make another film involving canoes. In the late ‘70s, he explored the possibility of making a short film on what he called “canoe ballet.” Canoe ballet is a flashy style of solo paddling popularized in the ‘50s by camp instructors like Omer Stringer. In canoe ballet, the canoe is heeled over so the gunwale almost touches the water and the paddler fluidly connects various manoeuvres together with as little splashing as possible.

I was to be the principal paddler in his new film. To prepare for the shoot I had to learn, practice and perfect many different strokes. Perhaps the hardest of these was the dreaded one-hand pry—a showy way to turn 360 degrees on a dime by inserting, with one hand, a pry stroke at the bow. To practice, I would pick up steam, skim the paddle blade along the surface of the water toward the bow and wedge it into place alongside the hull. If I cut the blade in too late I would miss the turn and ram the dock, rattling my teeth in the process. Too early and I’d catapult myself right out of the boat!

After about a year of training, I was ready. Dad shot the pilot with the working title The Magic Paddle, but before the film was brought to final production Dad retired from filmmaking. It seemed a shame after all my training that nobody would see the film. Dad encouraged me to teach a course so I might pass on the skills I’d perfected. Over tea one day in 1987, we came up with the term “classic solo” to describe the style of canoeing that became the basis for my courses.

Classic solo canoeing is a great way to develop basic canoeing skills because it allows you to see an immediate cause and effect of your actions more clearly than in tandem paddling.You end up with a versatile package of flatwater solo skills that allows you to paddle a canoe comfortably, efficiently, with grace and confidence in all conditions. Whether I go for a week-long wilderness adventure, a canoe ballet spin at sunset, or an afternoon exploring a breezy lake, I utilize much of the classic solo stroke repertoire.This versatility is a rare thing for our times when most sporting activity is compartmental- ized and specialized to the extreme.The real plus of going solo, however, is that it allows you to journey at your own pace and it gives you the freedom to follow your whims and your dreams.

When I was 10, my very first solo adventure was inspired by a desire to explore the shoreline near our dock. My dad encouraged me by giving me an 11-foot birch bark canoe. I was thrilled with the idea of my first solo voyage, but I worried about the possibility of not being able to return safely. Dad tied a 100-foot length of yellow floating rope from the dock to the stern of my little canoe. I had a great time that summer revelling in my 100 feet of freedom, happy in the knowledge that I was secure. Even if a gusty wind tried to take me away, I would feel the reassuring tug of the line when I reached the end. Before long, however, the mysteries of the distant shores beckoned and I wanted to explore beyond the safety of my tether. With my Dad’s permission I untied the line and set off with my newfound skills. This childhood memory of freedom is my touchstone and the feeling that I believe classic solo canoeing can instil in everyone.

Becky Mason is a canoeist, visual artist and filmmaker. She keeps busy with teaching, work- shops, demonstrations and slide shows as well as championing environmental issues. Her award winning video, Classic Solo Canoeing, was released in 2000.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2003 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

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