Have your doubts that sea kayak rescues can be fun? Witness this image sent to us from James Roberts at Ontario Sea Kayak Centre near Georgian Bay. If you’re finding the idea of practicing rescues daunting, “take yourself out on a warm day in inviting waters and think of the kayak like an overgrown pool toy,” advises Roberts.
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“I hope your readers will find this inspiring,” writes JF Marleau, a senior instructor and guide trainer at SKILS kayak school in Victoria, British Columbia. Marleau shared this video of his 11-year-old stepdaughter, Sammy, norsaq-, angel- and hand-rolling a sea kayak at her local pool. “Enjoy this activity with the whole family!” JF enthuses, “it’s fun and rewarding.”
Consider the evolution of climbing. Once upon a time there was only mountaineering. Then along came rock climbing. Now there’s indoor sport climbing. It reminds me of the Darwinian t-shirts we wore in college with the six stages of evolution from prehistoric ape to Homo sapiens. All still involve ropes (usually) and going uphill. Are they really the same sport? i doubt if climbing gyms feed Mount McKinley.
It was difficult for equitable journalist Conor Mihell to find anyone to go on record saying that whitewater parks are bad for the sport. No one in the industry is going to speak up and give municipal officials any reason to stop urban paddling developments. No one is going to bash a nationwide trend that’s reverting old dams into rivers, opening green spaces and putting butts in boats.
So are whitewater parks good for the sport?
If you only paddle in whitewater parks you’ve never considered death as an option. And why would you? If your boat gets pinned in a park, a lifeguard blows his whistle and an engineer inflates a baffle or dewaters the course. A mild annoyance to the guy downstream setting up for a pistol flip, but he’s come to expect it and he too doesn’t know any different.
Maybe I shouldn’t care, I’m past pushing myself to the edge. With a young family, death is not an option for me either. There is too much about paddling (and life) I want to share with my kids. Like, for example, adventure.
Whitewater parks offer leisure, a freedom academics say is intrinsically motivating in and of its own merits. For true adventure, however, the outcome must be uncertain. Information to complete a task (like getting to the bottom of the river) must be missing, vague or unknown. Think about changing water levels, leadership, morale, weather, unknown access and times when your own skill and confidence (or the group’s) may be challenged.
For real adventure you need real rivers. Riding a conveyor belt to the top of the rapids or locking your keys in your truck at the clubhouse is not adventure.
Whitewater parks are neither good nor bad for our sport, they are simply creating a new leisure-based paddlesport—a name for those who paddle only in parks will evolve over time.
I’ve paddled at parks and had a great time. However the soul of whitewater, like that of mountaineering and backcountry skiing, lives inside those of us who paddle where we are not quite sure how the day will end.
Scott MacGregor is the founder and publisher of Rapid and host of Rapid Media TV.
This article originally appeared in Rapid, Early Summer 2010. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read it here.
Every adventurous waterman and waterwoman has known a local rope swing; kept its location top secret, to be shared only with close friends. This is Adventure Kayak editor Virginia Marshall’s secret swing… and she’s not telling where!
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Pick up a copy of Adventure Kayak and chat with publisher Scott MacGregor and cameraman/film festival coordinator Dan Caldwell at the East Coast Paddlesports and Outdoor Festival this weekend. Scott and Dan will be filming the festival action, talking to participants and coordinators, and screening the 2013 Reel Paddling Film Festival World Tour. Friday through Sunday, take part in a huge variety of on- and off-water sessions, from rigging your kayak for fishing, to hand rolling and other tricks with Greenland-style guru, Dubside. Check out the schedule here, and make your way to South Carolina this weekend.
Hayward, Wisconsin, will hold the annual Backroads Banderdinker festival for charity June 8, 2013, on Nelson Lake. Featuring a five-mile loop around Big Island, the event is appropriate for paddlers of all ages and skill levels. The grassroots festival will raise funds for the local Boy Scouts troop, amateur sports leagues and the area Lion’s Club, as well as help promote the Hayward region’s 125 miles of rivers and 200 lakes. Registration for the festival is now available online.
At least some Asian carp probably have found their way into the Great Lakes, but there’s still time to stop the invaders from becoming established and unraveling food chains, according to a scientific report released earlier this month.
“I would say there’s at least some evidence for Asian carp being present in southern Lake Michigan,” Christopher Jerde of the University of Notre Dame, the lead author, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “”The question is how many. We can be cautiously optimistic … that we’re not at the point where they’ll start reproducing, spreading further and doing serious damage.”
The paper summarizes findings by Jerde and other scientists from Notre Dame, The Nature Conservancy and Central Michigan University during two years of searching the Great Lakes basin for Asian carp. The fish have migrated northward in the Mississippi River and many tributaries since escaping from Deep South ponds in the 1970s. Scientists fear they will out-compete prized sport and commercial species. Via Yahoo! News.
This week in whitewater news: The Colorado is ranked America’s most endangered river, the East Coast Paddlesports & Outdoor Festival runs all weekend in South Carolina and a Nebraska group tries to turn flatwater into whitewater.
On Wednesday American Rivers announced their list of America’s Most Endangered Rivers of 2013. The Colorado River ranked at the top of the list. They reported that outdated water management is putting the water supply in danger, impacting fish, wildlife and the river’s recreational uses. Others on the list include Montana’s Kootenai River, Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, Georgia’s Flint River and North and South Carolina’s Catawaba Rover.
See the full, detailed list of endangered rivers and help take action to protect The Colorado here.
(Photo courtesy of American Rivers)
The East Coast Paddlesports & Outdoor Festival is coming up this weekend in Charleston, South Carolina. Join paddlers and other outdoor enthusiasts—the festival has expanded to include mountain biking, slack lining, climbing and more—for paddling classes that bombproof your brace, refine your rescues and strengthen your strokes. Also, there’s a beer tent and live bands—need we say more?
Check out their website for more information.
(Photo courtesy of Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission)
A group of volunteers are trying to turn Kearney, Nebraska into a whitewater hotspot. The Kearney Whitewater Association wants to turn a stretch of flatwater on the Kearney canal into a whitewater park for canoeing, rafting, kayaking, SUPing and tubing, and hopes to draw national competition-level kayaking to the area. The first step is to clean the canal—this week a group of volunteers collected a 3.5-ton haul of garbage out of a half-mile stretch of water.
Read more about the project here.
(Photo courtesy of Kearney Whitewater Park)
Have a whitewater news story you’d like to share? Email it to [email protected].
A few years ago while at a canoeing symposium I took a break to go for a solo paddle. As I passed the beach a stranger launched his canoe and joined me. We continued along the breakwater chatting and paddling until he pointed with obvious pride at two buoys spaced a few feet apart and asked what I thought of his English gate.
I didn’t know what to say, because I didn’t know what it was.
It turns out it’s a simple but wildly effective skill-testing drill for flatwater and whitewater canoeists. He insisted he demonstrate it and I watched bewildered as he blazed through the gate.
His canoe slid forward and back, backward and sideways in precise movements close to, but not touching, the buoys. The English gate, I learned, is a routine, made up of four phases or patterns that you follow through the buoys. By seeing how quickly and cleanly you can put the canoe through the phases you will get an immediate assessment of your skill as a paddler. Not only does it demonstrate your weaknesses and strengths, but it rewards you with evidence of quicker and cleaner paddling as you repeat the drill and improve.
After a few botched runs I had it figured out and realized that it’s really a fancy figure-eight with a few flourishes thrown in to keep you honest. Sometimes when you pass a buoy you stop and paddle backwards, sometimes you spin the canoe and continue. The diagrams explain the patterns to follow. They seem a little simpler when you realize the fourth phase is the same as the second, just reversed.
You’ll need strong, quick strokes on the straights to build momentum to carry you through the turns.
Before each pivot, shift your weight toward your paddling side for snappy turns. By keeping your speed up and paddling as close to the buoys as possible without touching, you will hone your control and efficiency. Paddle the gate often and you’ll notice yourself becoming more graceful and powerful in all your paddling.
This article was first published in Canoeroots & Family Camping’s spring 2009 issue. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions here , or browse the archives here.
Becky Mason is a canoeing instructor based in Chelsea, Quebec. She has contributed to several books, produced an award-winning video entitled “Classic Solo Canoeing,” and presents at canoe symposiums across North America.
Practice makes perfect. | Illustration by: Paul Mason
