Looking for an adventure this summer? Georgian Bay provides unlimited kayaking opportunties. Learn more here.
This photo was taken on Georgian Bay and is courtesy Ontario Tourism. Want to see your photo here? Send to [email protected] with subject line Daily Photo.
What are you doing today to beat the heat?
This photo was taken on Georgian Bay and is courtesy Ontario Tourism. Want to see your photo here? Send to [email protected] with subject line Daily Photo.
The back pan am is essentially a tricky back blunt, where your boat goes inverted during the rotation.
1. Find a nice, big wave and set up backwards at the top. The easiest way to do this is to move to the top of the wave in a front surf, then spin 180 degrees.
2. Shoot stern-first down the face—a back stroke on the right will help you get enough speed to bounce.
3. Bounce on the green water and load your bow by staying forward and stomping hard on your feet. At the same time, turn your head and look over your right shoulder. This winds up your body for the rotation.
4. Pull the boat over top of you by throwing your body back and pulling your knees toward your chest. Unwinding your body during this step helps pull the boat over your shoulders and begin its rotation. Take a powerful forward stroke by your left foot at the same time to assist a quick rotation.
5. Land on your stern and immediately take a forward recovery stroke with your right blade. The sooner you pull the recovery, the better. Sit forward and maintain a controlled front surf.
Having trouble? It’s super critical to unwind your body through the trick. Start cranked up to the right to throw, un-crank during the middle of the trick and, as you land, crank to the left to get a powerful recovery stroke.
This article originally appeared in Rapid, Early Summer 2011. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.
Celebrating its five-year anniversary, the Great Canadian Kayak Challenge and Festival returns to Timmins from August 24–25 this summer. Where? You can be forgiven if you’ve never heard of this mining town in northeastern Ontario. Even if you have heard of Timmins, you’re probably thinking flannel shirts and Shania Twain, not sea kayaking.
Every August since 2009, however, the city undergoes a remarkable transformation, as some 300 hundred paddlers and thousands of festivalgoers descend on the Mattagami River, which meanders a lazy course through the town center. For the second year in a row, Festivals and Events Ontario has named the event one of the top 100 festivals in the province.
“The demographic ranges from six to 70 years old,” says event co-chair, Guy Lamarche. “The event has grown exponentially every year. Last year we had upwards of 10,000 people attend.” Off-the-beaten-path festivals offer something altogether different from the elite BCU training and expedition tale swapping of more iconic symposium destinations like San Francisco, Lake Superior’s Apostle Islands or Anglesey. “It’s as much about community as racing,” Lamarche says.
Timmins Councilor Michael Doody agrees, “It’s not just a kayak challenge; the art community is stepping forward to take advantage, and it’s an opportunity to spotlight many of the best musicians in the area.” Boaters attend as much for the exhibits, fireworks and evening concert as they do for the main event—a series of nine paddle challenges ranging from three to 35 kilometers, with up to $15,000 in prize money.
“Some people are definitely here for the money, but most are here for the fun,” says Lamarche. “We’ve got categories that appeal to the more serious racers, and then we have non-competitive, recreational paddles.”
“People from far away places are already asking about how they can participate,” Doody told Timminspress.com in April. “It’s just going to get bigger and better.”
Events in unlikely venues like Timmins can be found all over North America, proving that you don’t need an ocean, Great Lake or tide race to draw paddlers from far and wide.
While some women slow down towards the end of their pregnancy, others stay on the fast track, refusing to let pregnancy slow them down.
Such is the case with 23-year-old Emily Jackson, who has been continuing to tear up the freestyle circuit over the last nine months. Jackson, who has spent a lifetime kayaking and competing under the watchful eye of father, and founder of Jackson Kayaks, Eric Jackson, said the decision to continue paddling while pregnant was a no-brainer.
“Kayaking while pregnant gave me such a break from walking around being hot, sweaty and sore on my feet,” Jackson says. “It’s fun, it’s active and it’s addicting. It was my break during the day that I looked forward to.”
While some may think that playboating while pregnant poses a serious risk to mother and baby, in Jackson’s case it was just the opposite. By paddling almost daily throughout her entire pregnancy, she was able to keep active, as well as keep her body and muscles conditioned.
“Doctors say not to stop something and start back up during pregnancy, that’s when you can injure yourself,” she says. “I was very careful and conscious of everything I did when I paddled pregnant. I never paddled fatigued and only trained for an hour at the very most”.
Even though her body changed as her pregnancy progressed, Jackson says her paddling style and combat roll essentially stayed the same, which she attributes to the fact that she has always used a back deck roll. Setting up for combinations on the wave, and trying to quash her competitive nature, however, proved to be slightly more difficult.
“Mentally, it was hard as I am a competitive person,” she claims. “Unless I was set up just right, I couldn’t jerk my body around to make it do what I wanted. So I took a lot of time setting up a few easy moves and just focused on being fluid and smooth from move to move.” With the goal of not having any goals, Jackson found herself happy just to be on the water, regardless of whether she was able to throw a trick or not, and had no real intention of placing well at events. Regardless, she found herself at the top of the podium when she competed at the Payette River Games in late June.
“I was eight months pregnant, I didn’t care what the results were,” says Jackson. “I think a big part of the win has to do with having relaxing, stress-free and super-happy sessions on the water.”
With her baby due in mid July, Emily doesn’t see herself or husband, Nick Troutman, slowing down anytime soon. Having grown up in a unique environment, it’s not surprising to hear what she’s most looking forward to about being a mom.
“If anything, my life is about to get even crazier,” she says. “I grew up with so many unique life experiences that what I look forward to the most is doing the same with my kid.”
“Expectation, consequence and normal seem to have been—or are being—redefined,” I wrote in a recent column (“The New Normal,” Alchemy, Rapid Summer/Fall 2011). I was attempting to articulate a change in perspective in the paddling world: New rungs have been added to the paddling ladder.
“Right on, bro,” was the tone of the feedback I heard, typically through aspiring paddlers’ helmet cam footage. If I came off as self-congratulatory, it was accidental. What I left unsaid is that this is not the first time this has happened. We need to learn from the past.
PART 1: Rewind to 1975. Kayaking was climbing out of infancy and the fiberglass, club-based, slalom scene was booming. And then, in the midst of a New England class II slalom event, a dumped paddler attempted to stand up in the current. The paddler drowned in front of hundreds of bewildered spectators. It is recognized as the first foot entrapment in our sport and more followed within months. But it took the drowning of expert paddler Bob Taylor in 1978 (rock sieve, Gauley) and the famous Walt Blackadar in 1979 (strainer, S. Fork Payette) to really shake up the then small paddling community. Even good paddlers, it turns out, can be killed.
PART 2: 1997. Kayaking was hardly recognizable compared to its ‘70s roots. Flat hulls were the new big thing, cartwheels ruled, the Perception 3D and Wave Sport Godzilla were radical. Paddling was expanding outwards in all directions. There was a sense of euphoria and invincibility. And then, within weeks of each other, Chuck Kern and Rich Weiss were killed running class V+ drops. They were giants of the sport. The wind was knocked out the sails of paddling’s top end, and that year’s World Rodeo Championships on the Ottawa River was a subdued affair. For the first time—but not the last—it included a memorial service.
PART 3: 2011. Young ripper Steve Forster and elder statesman (and Liquidlogic Kayaks investor) Boyce Greer both drown after taking beatings in serious holes. No collective gasp. An abnormally long list of whitewater fatalities piles up over the summer. Dozens and dozens of close calls involve people paddling way over their heads. No reaction. I count nine spinal injuries or large bone fractures. Nothing.
Is this collective non-reaction because we don’t know how to respond, some kind of groupthink, or have we sadly become immune to the risk in our sport? Is this part of the new normal?
You see, the 1970s entrapments spawned the river rescue movement, which created throw bags and a philosophy of group safety. In 1997, a philosophical discussion ensued among the entire paddling community. Up to that point, “real” paddlers believed they needed to use their playboats to run everything. The discussion re-focused creek boating as a separate discipline.
So how should we react this time?
Normal is redefined on a cyclical basis and each time there is a rebound effect. When rungs are added to the ladder, everyone feels obligated to move up a couple of steps. By following their role models, paddlers are pulled into more risk simply because it seems like the thing to do. Eventually, people realize they have strayed beyond their limits and give up trying to follow the leaders on the bleeding edge of the sport. This is a positive thing.
Maybe I was wrong. Perhaps the tragic events of 2011 will make 2012 the year we realize the top end of our sport has become something else, and that this is not normal.
Perhaps new rungs have not been added. Perhaps there is a new ladder all together. I’m going to break the news to you: helmet cams do not prepare you to climb it, they only capture your poor judgment in high definition.
Jeff Jackson is a professor of Outdoor Adventure at Algonquin College in Pembroke, Ontario, and is the co-author of Managing Risk: Systems Planning for Outdoor Adventure Programs, published by Direct Bearing Inc.
This article originally appeared in Rapid, Spring 2012. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.
Robert Kennedy, Jr. and his family are set to travel to the Yukon later this summer to paddle the Alsek River.
The Alsek flows through Kluane National Park, which contains the world’s largest non-polar ice cap and is home to Mount Kennedy—named for the former president, John F. Kennedy.
In 1965 the president’s brother (Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s father) climbed the 4,300-meter (14,000’) summit. The Kennedy family’s weeklong rafting expedition on the Aslek is the first visit to the Yukon by the Kennedys since 1965. The trip will be run by local outfitter Neil Hartling of Nahanni River Adventures and Canadian River Expeditions.
Kennedy is an environmental lawyer and founder of the Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental group that monitors and defends rivers in the U.S., Canada and other countries around the world.
Prior to embarking on his river trip, Kennedy will give public presentation at the Yukon Arts Centre in Whitehorse on Wednesday, August 7 at 8 p.m., titled “Our Environmental Destiny.”
Kennedy is known for his powerful and eloquent presentations that call for increased commitment to preserving the integrity of our environment.
Tickets available through all YAC outlets and tickets are $20.
Visit Canadian River Expedition’s blog for more information.
“This great artwork is in front of Vdara at City Center, Las Vegas. It looks like a Bird of Paradise flower, but is made of old canoes! Entrancing!” says the photographer.
This photo is was taken by Flickr user bcgrote and licensed under Creative Commons. Want to see your photo here? Send to [email protected] with subject line Daily Photo.
What’s your favorite time of day to get on the water?
This photo is was taken by Flickr user sybarite48 and licensed under Creative Commons. Want to see your photo here? Send to [email protected] with subject line Daily Photo.
A lovely, quiet canoe camp at south end of Loch Suaineabhal—but infested with sheep ticks!
This photo is was taken by Calum McRoberts and licensed under Creative Commons. Want to see your photo here? Send to [email protected] with subject line Daily Photo.
