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Catching the Bug

Photo: Larry Rice
Catching the Bug

I really don’t know what made me want to explore the world, let alone in a canoe.

I grew up in a Chicago suburb where Wisconsin was considered somewhere far-off and foreign. Maybe it was my inexplicable interest in African wildlife; I visited Chicago’s stately Field Museum of Natural History, with its immense African Hall, every chance I got. Or maybe it was my penchant to devour classics like Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Even the Mississippi River was exotic and enthralling to a city kid.

But, digging deeper, I believe it was my discovery of canoeing that helped rock my sheltered world. Seeking a means to commune with nature somewhere closer to home than Africa, I purchased an Old Town Tripper and ventured—often blundered—through places I had only imagined up to then: the Florida Everglades, Missouri Ozark rivers, spectacular canyons of the Rio Grande. My horizons quickly expanded far beyond the urban jungles and cornfields of Illinois.

Since then, I’ve been fortunate to canoe in 25 countries and on all seven continents, but I’m still humbled by how big our planet is and how precious little of it I have visited. Running my index finger over the smooth curve of a globe in my living room in central Colorado, my mind begins to wander. I dream about canoeing far-flung places with challenging waters, unfamiliar cultures and more unknowns than knowns: Botswana, Tasmania, Peru, Ellesmere Island, Vietnam, Moldova. The list goes on and on.

It’s impossible to see around the bend, which only raises the possibilities.

I like that about traveling, about paddling. Once you slip your bow into the current and let it usher you downstream, everything is possible, or seems to be.

When everything clicks on a paddling trip, I find not only the rugged wilderness I am seeking, but also a new way of appreciating the world. An appreciation of the unique qualities of the country I am visiting—its history, culture and the people I reach out to and meet along the way. Traveling by canoe allows me to discover my internal compass as well as be guided by an external one. By going with the flow, not fighting it, I find myself floating through life and oftentimes laughing along the way.

Following the path of the paddle these past 35 years, my passion for travel still burns as bright today as when I was that youngster fantasizing about tripping down Ol’ Man River. 

This article on exploring the world by canoe was published in the Spring 2012 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

 

The Art of Trip

Photo: Frank Wolf
The Art of Trip

Wading through my gear stash last spring, my eyes eventually settled on the protective case that contains my video camera.

As an outdoor filmmaker, I feel a certain obligation to bring the camera along on any extended trip and attempt to craft a work of engaging cinema. Creating art from the wilderness experience is a Canadian tradition made internationally famous by emissaries like Emily Carr and Bill Mason. Inspired by these icons, I’ve done my small part through the medium of film by sharing stories set within the context of remote self-propelled expeditions.

More often than not, I travel by canoe. This summer, the plan was for my friend Todd McGowan and I to paddle through the deepest heart of Ontario’s Boreal forest via an 1,120-kilometer route that would span the length of Wabakimi Provincial Park and then continue north, eventually ending at the mouth of the Winisk River on Hudson Bay. But this trip would have one important difference: for only the second year in about a decade, I said no to filming.

Once committed to making a film, any situation on trip that is hard, beautiful, interesting or relevant demands that I pull out the camera and start recording—an all-encompassing task that inevitably changes the personal experience within the journey. After making back-to-back documentaries, it was time to let my artistic outlet lie fallow and rejuvenate. This summer the canoe trip itself—not the filming of it—would be front and center. 

If art is the expression of individual freedom, emotion and creativity, says Frank Wolf, then the canoe trip must be its highest form

I grovel up a side gully to reach the top. Peering over the edge, the looming gap between my precarious perch and the distant water takes my breath away. I inhale, step into space and let out a hoot before exploding into the liquid below. Under the surface, I look up through rising bubbles at the cliff as it bends like a Dali painting in the expanding ripples.

Experiences like this accumulate like dirt and calluses over the course of a canoe trip, eroding the thin veneer of a modern, vicarious iPhone life to reveal a basic, animal core that exists in each of us. They are moments of pure freedom. 

Painters are naturally drawn to certain processes and mediums—some choose oil, some acrylic, others go for watercolor. The key for the artist is to find something that feels right, the method and result that satisfies the creative self.

Similarly, individual canoe trippers approach the wilderness journey in their own unique ways. Some like to paddle to an island and chill out for a week. Others linger in camp, put in a few hours on the water and then linger in camp again. The beauty of canoe tripping is that it reflects the style of the individual and no matter how you go about it, the rewards are rich.

If a film or painting is considered to be art then canoe tripping is, in every sense, art.

Typical days on this journey have been 10 hours long with perhaps a half-hour break for lunch. We average almost 47 kilometers daily for the 24-day trip, including upstream, downstream, portages and dragging. I only sleep five hours a night because I’m so energized by every paddle stroke and aspect of this fresh environment that I want to jam as much action as possible into each moment. 

Todd is setting up camp when I double-back along a rough 1,100-meter portage on the Witchwood River. I hop fallen logs and zigzag through the forest as fast as I possibly can. It’s a game to test my speed and agility and see how quickly I can retrieve the last pack. Turning a corner, a knobby spruce branch wedges perfectly between my front and back leg, catapulting me headfirst into the moss. I curse the branch and look down to see a long, deep laceration on the calf of my left leg and an ugly gouge on the shin of my right. Blood pours instantly from both wounds.

I get up and continue to run, first at a hobble and then at a steady, rhythmic clip. My clenched teeth relax into a smile and everything clarifies. Blood, moss, spruce and movement in the heart of the Little North. Life is simple and I am extremely happy.

I’ve been affected by a strain of madness perhaps, but on reflection it makes perfect sense. People are hardwired for this—to physically struggle and push our bodies in nature for extended periods of time. Our ancestors ran down prey and traveled under their own power for most of the million years or so of human existence. If time is a gauge, we are only a blip apart from that way of life—a blip filled with La-Z-Boy chairs and cheesecake, but a blip nonetheless. Much like the artist whose need to create is passed to them from the DNA of prehistoric cave painters, our genetics retain that need to move. Canoe tripping is a portal that allows us to tap into this tribal call. 

Todd and I are in the Cree village of Peawanuck waiting for our plane to come and return us to urbana. In the meantime we’re hanging out at the house of the local Northern store manager, who generously offered us accommodation. I’m in the dining room hunched over a detailed map of Ontario, tracing a line over the blue veins and blotches of our completed route. I step back and admire the curves of the fresh line with a visual record of every campsite, lake and river etched in my mind.

I love making films about canoe journeys, but I realize now that making a film is simply adding another artistic layer to a thing that is itself utterly original and creative. Like an artist who is compelled to produce a painting on a blank canvas, the canoe tripper is compelled to step into a blank landscape, emerging at the end with the ultimate experience of a vision realized. If a film or painting is considered to be art then canoe tripping is, in every sense, art.

This article on art was published in the Spring 2012 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

 

A Fireside Chat with Becky Mason

Photo: Scott MacGregor
A Fireside Chat with Becky Mason

In 2011, Becky Mason toured Europe for six weeks celebrating the release of her third film, Advanced Classic Solo Canoeing. Bridging the cultural gap with canoes was an enlightening experience 11 years in the making.

Mason’s ongoing work with the global canoeing community is founded on a passion for teaching and her father’s legacy. 

Q: It’s been 11 years since you released your last film, but this one feels like it’s built on a lifetime of experiences. Tell us more about the person in the famous red cedar-canvas prospector. 

A: I’m a creative artist. That’s what i say when people ask me what I am. But there are lots of other hats that I wear in life. I’m a watercolorist. I love the creative side of canoeing, just doing all those gorgeous strokes. and, now, filmmaking—I’ve done three films. I do what makes me tick. 

Q: Instructing must make you tick, then.

A: I love teaching. I love sharing knowledge with people—how to go canoeing and how to go canoeing efficiently. People’s eyes light up when they see that they can make the canoe move more efficiently without much effort.

Q: Your path is similar to your father Bill Mason’s career in canoeing, filmmaking and fine art. Do you feel overshadowed by his legacy?

A: I miss my dad. People ask if it’s hard following in his footsteps and I say no because it’s really special. I have some characteristics of his and I’m good with that. When I was 18, I found it a bit difficult handling the whole fame thing. He was having dinner with the Queen, he was traveling, the phone was always ringing. People would come up to me and say, “You’re Bill Mason’s daughter, I can’t believe I’m meeting you.” I always thought to myself, “Yeah, but I’m a person too, in my own right.”

When I turned 19, I came into my own and realized that I could either divorce myself from his legacy or accept it and build on it. And that’s what I do. I’m building on his skills that he taught me.

Q: You share some of those skills in your new DVD.

A: Since I completed my last film, I’ve been building on that knowledge and my teaching technique has changed and improved because I’ve had a lot of interaction with people.

Every stroke covered—all 18 of them—I broke down into parts: first, an introduction covering why people need the strokes; then, I break them down in detail; the last part includes additional information like why I love the stroke and why people think it’s special. It is a neat way to cover the strokes. You’re getting a lot of information but it’s also enjoyable to hear the stories behind them.

You also get to see the thread of the stroke. It’s very important in advanced paddling to see the continuation of where you’re going and how the movement of your body and the blade are interacting.

Q: Not only do you package each stroke and present it well, the images are extremely pleasing to watch. How has your filmmaking evolved?

A: I really wanted to shoot my last film in 16mm, but it was too expensive in 2000. For this one, the digital age is upon us, so it was cheap. I filmed in high definition with a camera I rented. The color was beautiful, and I was able to pick the light levels. I’m a traditional filmmaker. I love picking light levels and letting the scenes breathe.

Location is the most important thing for a movie. I really felt strongly that i wanted to go up to Lac Vert in Quebec. When you look down, you can see up to 60 feet deep, clear as a bell. I wanted to capture that in underwater shots. It was amazing to pick a location that inspired me to get the underwater shots.

I tried underwater shots in my first movie. I dragged Jerry, my editor, around Meech Lake on a rope with a SCUBA diving apparatus and it just didn’t work. The camera blew up right when I was about to edit. This time around, I was bound and determined to get underwater shots. It’s just so beautiful to see underneath and above. 

Q: Does that enhance your ability to teach the stroke?

A: I’ve had so many comments from people who now understand what the blade is doing because they get to see it from below.

I also wanted to inset the canoeing in nature. With the underwater shots you see the beautiful white-bottomed lake. The calcium carbonate just shimmers. And then you have all the fish swimming in the lake. It’s great to show nature interacting with the strokes.

Q: This time around, you chose to launch your film in Europe first. How did that come about?

A: When I’m out canoeing, I dream a lot. It’s really beautiful canoeing at home on Meech Lake, but I like to share my skill, my love of canoeing. I get lots of requests from around the world asking me to come and teach. So, I went online to a European paddling forum and said I’d like to come to five countries and welcomed paddling clubs to invite me. Within a day, five paddling clubs piped up from the netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany and italy.

Q: Your reputation preceded you. Is there an established canoeing scene in those countries?

A: It was great! We were concerned there wouldn’t be enough paddlers in the netherlands, but I planned two classes during the day and a presentation at night, and we were able to go and teach in their beautiful country.

The Italians all knew Bill Mason’s Path of the Paddle. I teach a lot of people who have only learned from my dad’s books and it’s quite charming because some of the interpretations get a little interesting. They were so fixated. They thought the only canoe in the world was a prospector because Bill Mason said so. They followed his words to a T.

Q: Not too much culture shock then?

A: It was a good stretch. I learned to use pantomiming to teach canoeing. Canoeing is a universal language. I really learned that on the European trip because I was going through all the languages—Flemish, French, Italian, German.

The whole of Europe was so generous and kind to us. In France they laid out a huge long table with white tablecloths and champagne flutes. We were drinking champagne and eating paté all afternoon. It was great. 

Q: A far cry from a bagel with cream cheese and a bag of GORP. So what’s next?

A: My husband Reid, who coproduced the DVD with me, doesn’t know this yet but I’m going to go across North America this summer. I did it in 2006 and it’s about time I go again. I’ll take my DVD and do what I did in Europe, buzzing along the border between the U.S. and Canada, visiting all the clubs. I don’t know when I’m going to tell Reid. I’ll spring it on him; he tends to do better that way.

Interview by Scott MacGregor. Edited by Michael Mechan. 

Becky Mason’s Advanced Classic Solo Canoeing

The 43-minute film builds on Mason’s wildly successful instructional film Classic Solo Canoeing, taking paddlers for a spin in her cedar-canvas canoe on the crystal clear waters of Lac Vert, Quebec. She shares 18 expert strokes and maneuvers along with stories of nature, heritage and her past. Stunning underwater camera angles provide a unique view of techniques like the Canadian stroke, the Indian stroke and the Northwood—a stroke not covered in depth on video until now.

Special features include a six-minute bonus musical paddling video with folk artist Ian Tamblyn, outtakes from the main production and Mason’s complete original film, Classic Solo Canoeing.

Advanced Classic Solo Canoeing won the Best Instructional Paddling Film award at the 2012 Reel Paddling Film Festival.

Purchase the DVD online from redcanoes.ca 

 

This interview with Becky Mason was published in the Spring 2012 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

 

Tumblehome: Life After Death

A fabulous new book called The Canadian Canoe Company and the Early Peterborough Canoe Factories (Cover to Cover Press, 2011) has got me thinking about reincarnation.

According to author Ken Brown, canoe building in Peterborough, Ontario, effectively died in the early 1960s with the Canadian Canoe Company ceasing operations in October 1961 and the Peterborough Canoe Company declaring bankruptcy soon after. But the presence of this book and a quick cruise on the World Wide Web indicates that the products of these venerable canoe companies are still very much on people’s minds.

The demise of industrial canoe building in Peterborough was real enough.

Companies that had skillfully grown from an emerging 19th century cottage and craft activity into seven or eight canoe-building factories with robust domestic and international markets, struggled after WWII. Aluminum and fiberglass building techniques—innovations honed in wartime aircraft manufacturing— lent themselves naturally to canoe building. But tooling up for new materials and new

Building techniques was expensive. And training or retraining a skilled woodworking labor force to make canoes out of plastic or metal was also costly. It was only a matter of time before the wooden canoe companies floundered.

Yet Peterborough thrived through nearly a hundred years of uncommon industrial success. Ken Brown tells us that in a country bordering three oceans, in 1930 a quarter of the 778 Canadians involved in the building of small boats were employed in the landlocked center of the continent by Peterbor- ough area firms, generating a third of the annual $2 million sales in this area of the economy.

After WWII, this tapered back and, after the closure of the Peterborough companies, passed to the skilled hands of later genera- tions of small builders and hobbyists who continue to keep the tradition vibrant.

Today, you can buy Peterborough canoes at auction.

Reprints of old catalogues are available for sale in hard and soft cover. The iconic company logos are available as decals for the growing corps of builders and rebuilders from Pacific to Atlantic and Arctic to Caribbean who still love Peterborough shapes in their shops.

And then there are the T-shirts and calendars, and the advertisers who for the past 50 years have freely employed canoe imagery. Selling charcoal, beer, milk or maxipads with canoe imagery cashes in on the fact that from explorers, surveyors, itinerant clergy, police and fur traders to modern day hunters, anglers and recreational paddlers, Peterborough canoes have been involved in just about every aspect of life beyond the fringe in North America. They are part of Canada’s heritage and, as Ken Brown reminds us, part of the history of the U.S., U.K. and countries even farther afield. Advertisers know that consumers are drawn to canoe imagery because this vessel—the Peterborough canoe in particular—is part of who we are.

James Raffan is thinking of coming back as an explorer, writer and executive director of The Canadian Canoe Museum. 

This article on the Canadian Canoe Company was published in the Spring 2012 issue of Canoeroots magazine.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

 

Easy Green

All Photos: Scott MacGregor
Easy Green

I’ve become that guy. I realized it last spring when I turned down a paddling trip to stay home and cut my lawn. It wasn’t turning 40 that did it—nothing that abrupt or clearly defined.

It was a gradual transition from the condition I used to call freedom, to a different condition others call middle age. I know I am not alone.

Middle age is not represented by a particular number of birthdays celebrated. It is not about age at all. Middle age happens when life’s responsibilities, urgent or otherwise, start to dictate the amount of time you have to dedicate to paddling. My desire to paddle is stronger than ever; my time to do so, however, has diminished. 

Riding a lawnmower, one lapses into a state of mindfulness. The earmuffs dampen the drone of the Briggs and Stratton engine and slowly there is a separation of body and mind. My foot maintains steady pressure on the hydrostatic pedal and my hands turn the steering wheel in increasingly tighter circles. Meanwhile, my mind drifts to my overflowing bucket list of rivers.

Freedom, I remember, came in bursts between school and seasonal jobs. It came at Christmas holidays and spring break—the large chunks of time before something else important began, time when I used to plan my expeditions and go on road trips to far away places. Freedom meant crossing new rivers off my list. Those large chunks of time are gone.

I’ve wanted to paddle a western canyon river for a long time. I’d heard the Green River in Utah could be run in four days. I reasoned that I had time enough to paddle but not plan. I could travel, but it had to be on my schedule—I couldn’t leave at the drop of a hat, after a phone call from a buddy with an open spot on a permit. I had only a narrow six-day window in August.Screen_Shot_2015-08-13_at_4.19.21_PM.png

O.A.R.S. has been providing guided whitewater rafting trips for more than 40 years.

They’ve won a myriad of travel and tourism awards and are voted best of something by somebody important almost every year. I recognized them from the role they played in the breathtaking IMAX film, Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk. They offered to carry our gear in the rafts, allowing us to paddle our own boats. Most importantly, they had a trip down the Green River through the Gates of Lodore leaving their base camp in Vernal, Utah, on just the right day. 

O.A.R.S. regular clientele, Steve Markle the director of sales and marketing tells me, are everyday folks. They are people with real jobs and busy lives who probably left home with dirty dishes in the sink. O.A.R.S. has taken their share of celebrities down the river, but Markle says most are groups very much like ours.

Busy lives aside, Dan and I are the exception. Both of us are raft guides. I was pushing rubber and flipping rafts when Russell Schubert, our trip leader, was still in grade school. I’d given his pre-trip safety briefing hundreds of times, almost word for word, albeit on a river 2,000 miles away. He didn’t know this of course and I would have been leery about a journalist and his camera man parachuting into one of my trips. Bruce Lavoie is the group’s logistics guy based in Vernal. When I confirmed my booking, he called me up to feel us out. It felt like we were playing a game of go fish. “Have you paddled the Green?” he asked. Go fish. “Have you paddled any canyon runs?” Go fish. “Are you likely to swim?” Now there’s a loaded question. On summer trips down the Green, O.A.R.S. doesn’t run safety kayakers to pick up rafting clients or open boating magazine editors. 

It is a three-hour drive from Vernal to our put-in at a ranger station above the Gates of Lodore. Out the dusty windows of our minibus is ranch country. Junipers, pinion pines and dry grasses look for moisture in the rocky terrain. It is a landscape once loved by outlaws and then western screenwriters. It was a sort of no man’s land straddling the Wyoming, Colorado and Utah state lines. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would only need to cross the nearest border to escape pursuing lawmen. Just after we crossed from Utah into Colorado, we stopped at Christie’s Liquor. It was only 8:30 a.m. and Christie didn’t open until 11 on Sundays, except for busloads of whitewater rafters on their way to hideout for a few days on the Green River. 

Fees and river permits are required for private boating trips on the Green and Yampa rivers within Dinosaur National Monument. In 2011, the National Park Service received 4,780 applications for 300 high-use season launches. Your odds of winning this lottery are better than getting on the Grand Canyon, ranging from a three percent chance in June to 37 percent in late August. All it takes is filling out a one-page form and a 15-dollar non-refundable application fee due the first of February. Screen_Shot_2015-08-13_at_4.18.52_PM.png

“This section of the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument is protected today because of the Antiquities Act of 1906,”

Said Bob Smythe, and he should know. Bob is a retired resource consultant and former presidential advisor from Maryland, along on the trip with his grandson. “The act allowed a president to set aside valuable public land without the bother of getting Congress’ approval.” President Woodrow Wilson used this act in 1915 to establish Dinosaur National Monument to protect paleontologist Earl Douglass’ 350 tons of fossils. We have President Franklin Roosevelt to thank for enlarging the monument in 1938 to include the Green and Yampa River canyons. 

Deep in Lodore Canyon, the coffee call was at seven a.m. The guides had been up inflating rafts and prepping breakfast. It was bright but we couldn’t see the sun. Without a compass, I couldn’t get my bearings. Russell said that deep in the canyon, we wouldn’t feel the sun on us until mid-morning.

At breakfast, 24-year-old Charlie pulled out a smoking jacket and fuzzy bunny ears. This was his last trip of the summer guiding on the Green. As far has he knew, he was off to Whistler to help his brother develop a website for dirtbags. “It’s not corporate or anything, it’s about the things you and I’d want to know,” Charlie said. On the third day of our trip, with the desert sun high in the sky, I traded Charlie a bottle of Crown Royal Reserve whisky for a half-tube of Banana Boat SPF30. The desert, I realized, makes you do funny things. 

Self-supported kayaking trips are better than diet pills. There’s a 100 percent guarantee you’ll lose weight living on oatmeal, Cliff bars and salty noodle packages. Raft support with O.A.R.S., on the other hand, is better than eating at home. Even in my canoe there is little room for watermelons, steaks, shrimp and fresh eggs. The guides bring propane burners, griddles, folding tables and four galvanized wash buckets—yes the kitchen sink. They don’t bother repacking into smaller bags—food goes directly from the grocery cart into aluminum boxes and coolers built into the raft frames. 

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Our second day in Lodore is our big push

The day our guides have been waiting for. We paddle Disaster Falls, Harp Falls, Triple Falls, building up to Hell’s Half Mile. Hell’s is the longest and most challenging rapid on the Green River. Dan and I scramble across the bouldery debris to set up cameras. I choose to eddy hop down the right side, ducking behind smooth red boulders that have rumbled down from the opposing ravines and landed conveniently above Lucifer’s, a left-of-center pour over. The more technical but drier open boat line, I figured, is right to left. The rafts run right for the big hit. Dan dances with the devil and boofs the corner of Lucifer’s. We make short work of Hell’s Half Mile that isn’t really a half-mile at all. 

Skiers in Utah will remember the winter of 2011 for its record-breaking snowfall. Snowbird had a whopping 775 inches. Just 47 miles upstream of the Lodore Canyon, the third largest dam in America struggled to hold back the spring melt. “The engineers were afraid that if we had a warm, wet spring, the Flaming Gorge Reservoir would spill over the top,” Russell tells us, pointing to historic water-lines stained on the canyon walls. The Green peaked at 8,500 CFS with another 26,700 pounding in from the undammed Yampa River at the confluence, known as Echo Park. “I have not seen the river that high and neither had most of the crew. All the big rapids were almost unrecognizable.” The State Park Service had an astounding 162 permit cancellations. In late August, the Green was still running at 2,400 CFS, more than double its normal flow. “It was a good summer to be a raft guide in Dinosaur,” says Russell. “We may not see water like this for a very long time.”

There is little play, short of catch-on-the-fly surfs

For the most part, the Green is wide and always moving. A swim would be a long one. We moved in a loose rolling cover, like a big game of leapfrog down the river. The biggest hazards are the undercut canyon walls, which we don’t need to be anywhere near. On the Green, the paddling is secondary to the scenery and river life. 

On our final day, we stopped for lunch on the sand bar at the entrance to Split Mountain Canyon—the beginning of a seven-mile run of class II–III water and the end of our trip. “You guys are going to love this section,” Russell tells me while making a roast beef on rye sandwich. “You can play just about any thing, just stay off the canyon walls.”

And so, for the first time in four days, we put away the cameras, forgot where we were and we ripped down the last seven miles of the run, 2,000-foot canyon walls and tomorrow’s middle-age obligations be damned. 

This article on the Green River was published in the Spring 2012 issue of Rapid magazine.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of Rapid Magazine.

 

What it Takes to Win

Photo: Michael Neumann
What it Takes to Win

Ken Whiting gave up everything to prepare for the 1997 World Rodeo Championships. He quit his job as a raft guide on the Ottawa River and stopped teaching whitewater kayaking courses on the weekends. For two years, he made ends meet by whittling wooden kayaks and canoes—the sort of kitsch that’s affixed to key chains and sold to tourists at outfitters’ shops. His life was freestyle kayaking, his workout regime consisting of “short, intense sessions combined with a lot of visits to the chiropractor.”

Whiting’s efforts paid off when he slipped his Perception 3-D into Horseshoe hole below McCoy’s Rapid on the Ottawa River and cartwheeled, spun, splitwheeled and blunted his way to a World Championship title.

“When I won I was in the best shape of my life and as confident as I’ve ever been,” says Whiting, who is now the founder and publisher of The Heliconia Press, a paddlesports and outdoors publisher in the Ottawa Valley.

American Jay Kincaid’s trajectory to the top paralleled Whiting’s. After finishing second in the 2002 Pre-World Championships, Kincaid committed himself to spending “an absurd” amount of time on the water, his sights set on winning the next Worlds.

“I paddled approximately 320 days in the year leading up to the World Championships, and on about half of those days I trained specifically for freestyle competition,” says Kincaid, who now lives in Reno, Nevada. “This meant going playboating with a specific plan, much like you would experience at a basketball practice.”

On his training days, Kincaid would write a workout on a piece of paper and carry it with him in his kayak in a Ziploc bag. Training was often a solitary pursuit in which he would “drill moves over and over again, work under the constraints of a stopwatch, work on fundamentals, practice the mental aspect of competition and use repetition to burn specific movements into muscle memory.”

By the time the 2003 Worlds rolled around in Graz, Austria, Kincaid was a machine. He remembers the feature for the competition as being “sticky and nasty,” one that sucked many competitors out of their boats and involved more swimming than any other biannual World Championship event to date. But Kincaid entered the munchy hole and deftly piloted his Dagger Kingpin through choreographed sequences of cartwheels, splitwheels, loops, blunts and tricky woos to victory. Like Whiting, he attributes the win to his obsessive training.

Fast forward to 2011 and the story is repeated, this time at the International Canoe Federation (ICF) World Championships in Plattling, Germany. British kayaker Claire O’Hara topped an increasingly competitive women’s K1 category, upsetting defending champion Emily Jackson and veteran freestyle competitor Ruth Gordon Ebens.

Her secret? Four years of dedicated training with a volunteer support crew that includes two coaches, three video analysis experts, physiotherapists, a masseuse, a sports psychologist, a personal trainer and a strength and conditioning trainer. “It used to be you just had to be a boater,” said O’Hara, 29, in an interview after her gold medal performance. “Now you have to be an athlete.”

But while O’Hara’s comments hint at a tide change in competitive freestyle kayaking, Whiting’s and Kincaid’s experiences suggest that the world’s best have always been more athlete than merely talented or dedicated boater. What’s different is that there are now more top-level athlete-boaters than ever before and the Europeans are applying their mastery of training for Olympic slalom to freestyle.

As a result, O’Hara, her Team Great Britain colleague and men’s K1 winner James Bebbington, Slovakian silver medalist Peter Csonka and a handful of others from across the pond are staking key real estate on ICF freestyle medal podiums.

The field of paddlers is growing deeper, tricks are becoming more refined and the gender gap between men’s and women’s categories is shrinking by the year. The question now is, can the rogue, free-form boaters from North America keep up with the precise, finely tuned Euros? 

Like competitive snowboarders, world-class freestyle kayakers have an identity crisis. On one hand, they’re boaters: The progression of their craft is bereft of rules and training is more about playing on the river than anything else; they meet their friends on the river to goof off, invent new moves and challenge each other. But on the other hand, they’re athletes, supremely dedicated to the sport and achieving feats of strength, agility and mental focus that few people can attain.

The best example of the freestyle dichotomy may be four-time World Champ Eric Jackson, the competitive paddling iron man who has been participating in international freestyle events since 1993. With a background in slalom, EJ brought the disciplined and technical approach of an Olympian to freestyle. He was among the first to capitalize on freestyle’s discrete scoring system, creating elaborate spreadsheets to hash out routines and maximize his point-scoring potential in competitions.

“EJ was the first to push everyone into having a routine,” says Whiting. “He brought an intelligence aspect to what’s essentially a reactionary sport.”

Yet EJ is also willing to have fun, play and experiment—the antithesis of the serious athlete. It was these traits that enabled him to invent some of the bouncing, spinning and twisting moves that dominate today’s ICF freestyle events.

“My father has really taught me that freestyle kayaking is just about getting out on the water as often as possible,” says Emily Jackson. “[Training is] usually all of us fooling around. But we are fooling around a specific goal and we know what that goal is each time we enter the hole.”

The early freestyle events were small and decidedly one-sided affairs. Outside of the United States and Canada, freestyle tended to attract recreational paddlers turned off by the entrenched European tradition of competitive slalom. “Americans always took it seriously, but there was a European contingent that wanted it to be less competitive and more of a festival,” says EJ. “That was mostly because they weren’t very competitive then, so they wanted to downplay that part.”

Meanwhile, the sport progressed, largely due to advancements in kayak design and new tricks that were invented and perfected by freestyle pioneers like Corran Addison, Steve Fisher, Whiting and Kincaid. The Internet and an increasingly global paddling community exported the top playboating moves to all corners of the world, and the sport flourished.

The 2011 World Championships included 225 competitors representing almost 30 nations. The Europeans are catching up.

O’Hara’s rise to the top demonstrates the great strides freestyle kayaking has made, and the immediate threat posed by Europe’s powerhouses of competitive paddling. O’Hara got started in 2006, when she competed in the European Championships in Nottingham, England. She followed this up with a trip to the 2007 World Championships on the Ottawa River, where she finished 11th in K1. 

On the Ottawa, O’Hara learned that “freestyle was quickly becoming professional, an athlete’s game,” she says. “The gap from the top of the pack to the bottom was impressive and the standard of the top paddlers was insane.”

So she started taking things more seriously, working as an instructor and sports coordinator at a British college to fund her other “job”—training to be the world’s best freestyle kayaker.

She paddles on the river and in the pool under the tutelage of British coach Dennis Newton as part of a highly structured, four-year development program, which also includes working out with specialists in the gym and meeting with nutritionists, psychologists and physiotherapists. In short, “everything I do has a focus, an outcome, a goal,” says O’Hara. “My progression has been unbelievable.”

As it happens, Britain is proving to be “a perfect breeding ground for kayaking,” says Bebbington, a 23-year-old video boater and product of the whitewater training facility in Nottingham. A paddlesports scene deeply rooted in slalom has expanded seamlessly to freestyle, with clubs and training centers of- fering up-and-coming athletes like O’Hara and Bebbington well-structured and technical support. Compare this to the free-form approach of the Americans and it’s easy to see why the Brits cleaned up in Plattling.

Two years into her training plan, O’Hara entered the 2011 World Championships as an underdog. On the wave, she surprised everyone by routinely nailing difficult sequences involving felixes, loops, space Godzillas, lunar orbits and mcnastys—high- scoring aerial tricks that were unheard of in women’s playboating only a few years ago— and had the mental fortitude to keep it up through multiple rounds of competition. At the end, she pumped her fists and climbed past Emily Jackson to the top of the podium.

Time will tell if O’Hara, Bebbington and Csonka can once again beat out America’s best at the 2013 World Championships on North Carolina’s Nantahala River. It’s hard to predict the outcome of home-turf advantage—the last time the Worlds were hosted on U.S. waters was 1993, when EJ was vying for his first World Championship title and the event was considered the birth of competitive freestyle as we know it today.

Becoming the world’s best freestyle kayaker still takes Whiting’s willingness to put the rest of your life on hold and Kincaid’s commit- ment to spending day after day on the river. Only now, with the talent pool swelling and a new cohort of youthful paddlers nipping on the veterans’ heels, it’s harder than ever.

It’s telling that the ride put up by 17-year- old Dane Jackson in the junior semi-finals at the 2011 Worlds would’ve been enough to win the men’s division. What’s more, Eric Jackson says he could list off 20 names capable of making the top-five final round of an international freestyle event.

“I think that what the top paddlers did five years ago with regards to training and preparation has not changed,” says Kincaid. “The system is the same, but more people are now training in a smarter and more specific way.” 

Winning today means “knowing the moves really well, being super consistent, being able to go fast and huge, and linking things together on demand,” says EJ. Bebbington attributes his victory in Plattling to focusing on the mental side of competition and being able to perform when it matters.

In short, today’s freestyle paddlers are equal parts boaters and athletes who make the sport their full-time job, set goals and train hard to achieve them.

All this begs the question, where does freestyle go from here?

Seven years ago, at an anticlimactic Worlds in Penrith, Australia, the International Freestyle Committee planted the seed of an Olympic dream. They tweaked the scoring system, launched an off-year World Cup series and handed over white- water freestyle to the International Olympic Committee-recognized ICF. Wannabe Olympians looked forward to freestyle as a demonstration event as early as 2012.

And now, with solid competitors from all over the world and an increasingly tried and true scoring system, the Summer Games seems like a logical next step. While freestyle paddlers won’t share space at the new Lee Valley White Water Centre with slalom boaters this summer in London, the sport’s future appears secure in the hands of an impressive crop of junior paddlers. EJ thinks the move to the Olympics is inevitable.

For her part, O’Hara just wants more recognition and more financial support for what goes into grooming a champion. “I define myself as a freestyle kayaker,” she says. “I would like to see it become fully professional.”

Conor Mihell is an award-winning freelance writer. He reported on the state of feestyle in Rapid Summer/Fall 2009.

This article on what it takes to win the world's was published in the Spring 2012 issue of Rapid magazine.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.

 

Standing Waves: Fatal Attraction

Photo: Robyn Butler
Standing Waves: Fatal Attraction

Hazardous rapid, high risk of injury, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in event of success. 

When a tethered swimmer finally pulled William De Angelis from a sticky hydraulic on New York’s Lower Moose River last October, it was too late. The 62-year-old New Jersey man was already dead, his neck broken by the violently recirculating water.

De Angelis’ death was the tragic finale to a carnage-filled whitewater weekend that witnessed a shocking number of near drownings and more than a dozen hospitalizations each day for injuries ranging from dislocated shoulders and concussions to knocked out teeth and lacerations. All this at an event billed by local outfitter and promoter, Mountainman Outdoor Supply Company, as “New York’s Premier Whitewater Festival.”

The brainchild of New York whitewater pioneer and river advocate Chris Koll, Moose Fest first kicked off in October 1994. The American Whitewater-backed event brought hundreds of boaters to the then little-known Moose River at Old Forge, New York, to enjoy the recreational dam releases for which Koll and others had fought and won. Since then, the numbers have stayed strong, but with the financial realities of declining industry participation, the festival structure has grown more nebulous. There’s no longer an official organizer or venue, not even a website; paddlers simply mark their calendars and show up.

“The event runs itself,” says Koll, who still coordinates the releases and posts flow information on Internet forums.

At typical flows, the Lower and Bottom Moose are challenging class IV–V runs that should give even experienced boaters pause. Yet Juraj Kobzik, an Ottawa-area paddler who attended his first Moose Fest last year, writes on his blog that many newcomers observe a festival tradition of running Agers Falls—a 20-foot drop above a bumpy run-out of holes and slides—blind. He goes on to describe the scene below the falls: “About 20…people ran the drop ducky-style and…they were all pulling their skirts and swimming.”

Former Pyranha rep, Matt Hamilton, has attended the event every year for the past 15 and says, “I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Moose Fest where someone didn’t end up at the hospital. There’s always some sort of carnage.”

It doesn’t take a statistician to figure out that more paddlers on the river equates to greater chances of paddlers getting hurt or even killed. But the higher incidence of injuries at events like Moose Fest is more than just a numbers game—it’s a product of human nature.

In his pivotal 2002 article, Heuristic Traps in Recreational Avalanche Accidents, decision science researcher Ian McCammon identified six com- mon decision-making pitfalls that contributed to the 715 accidents he reviewed. While McCammon was seeking an explanation for why experi- enced backcountry skiers were making really basic mistakes surrounding avalanche safety, the traps he found are just as prevalent on the river.

One in particular—complacency in familiar environments—seems to have played a significant role at last year’s festival. A lightning strike earlier in the season incapacitated the dam and the flow on the Bottom Moose rose to 5’7”—well above the typical 3–4 feet—festival weekend. “We tried to warn people that with the dam off, the river is a different animal,” says Koll, but many paddlers simply didn’t register that an “easy class V” run had become a “full-on class V” monster.

Laurence-Olivier Neron, a Quebec open boater who became trapped in a hydraulic on the Bottom Moose after failing to wait for an all clear signal and colliding with another boat, says he thinks the charged atmosphere of festivals provokes the use of poor judgment. “In my excitement, I disrespected many basic whitewater rules that I knew and usually respected,” he says. Neron was luckier than De Angelis; he lost consciousness, flushed out of the hole, and was rescued by friends downstream.

Is Moose Fest more dangerous than other events? Hamilton doesn’t think so. He cites observing similar injury rates at West Virginia’s Gauley Fest. Koll agrees, “I think [Moose Fest] has more of a reputation for carnage in the bars than on the river.”

Festival crowds mean more learning opportunities and more throw bags and boats to help with rescues, but they also mean more exposure to risk. Koll believes safety will come from respect, “Enough paddlers got spanked [last year] that I think people will approach the river with a little less cavalier attitude.” 

This article on whitewater paddling risks was published in the Spring 2012 issue of Rapid magazine.This article first appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of Rapid Magazine.

 

Profile: He Ain’t Heavy

Photo: Bennett Barthelemy
Profile: He Ain't Heavy

At 19 and 17, respectively, Todd and Brendan Wells may be short on years, but they have no shortage of time on the river.

Geography and genes have delt the trump card. Their hometown, the tiny community of Trout Lake, Washington, rests in the shadow of Mt. Adams, where meltwater from the Cascade Range’s glaciers and winter snows bring class V drops right to their backyard. The brothers’ father, James Wells, is a former Alaska raft guide and outfitter who brought the boys along on multi-day whitewater trips before they could walk.

“My first memory of water is the Kenai River,” recalls Brendan, “Bobbing up and down in a big yellow raft, looking down at hundreds of king salmon swimming up brilliant turquoise water.”

The brothers bought their first whitewater kayak together six years ago. “Since then we’ve been at each other’s sides pushing one another to become better paddlers,” Todd says. Seeing his kids embrace kayaking, James used his business savvy to help resurrect the World Class Kayak Academy (WCKA), a traveling high school now based in Trout Lake. The brothers each spent a semester with the school studying and kayaking abroad.

“Our paddling skills progressed quickly and over the course of a year we went from nervously paddling class III–IV whitewater to charging some of the most difficult class V rivers in our area,” Todd says.

Back home, Brendan adds,

“We paddled every day after school, convincing my parents that we were going to paddle much easier whitewater and waterfalls than we ended up doing.”

Last spring, Brendan skipped his math class to become the youngest person to run 70-foot Out- let Falls. It wasn’t his first big drop; he also holds the world record for tallest waterfall by youngest junior: 82 feet at age 15. But the Wells brothers’ accomplishments aren’t limited to dropping wa- terfalls. Todd is the youngest person to kayak the near mythical rapids of B.C.’s Grand Canyon of the Stikine.

Paddling the cutting edge is risky and the two have had more than a few close calls. Brendan remembers when a descent of the Little White, a backyard creek he has run dozens of times, went sour. Getting worked in a hole above a 10-foot ledge, he says, “I knew I was in a bad situation. Tao Berman pulled me out just before the lip as I watched my brother’s new Nomad go over the drop and into an undercut cave. Todd’s boat finally flushed several months later, in half.”

Two years ago, Todd broke his back on Money Drop, a 50-footer not far from his Washington home. He admits he was “lucky to walk away with only a light break and two to three months of recovery,” but says the experience gave him a hard-earned perspective that has helped him to keep charging.

His sons’ penchant for running huge drops has put James in a “tricky situation.” He explains, “[My wife] Sally and I are dedicated to supporting their individual passions while keeping balance. Lately, I’ve considered starting a crusade to bring more awareness to the dangers and long term physical, emotional and financial consequences of going big.”

Looking ahead, the brothers say they hope to explore Africa, the Pacific NW and Alaska, teach with the WCKA, compete in the Whitewater Grand Prix and keep learning from the river.

“On and off the water, things rarely go exactly as planned,” says Brendan, “Take a breath and try to make the most of the outcome.” 

This article on Todd & Brendan Wells was published in the Spring 2012 issue of Rapid magazine.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of Rapid Magazine.

 

The Rafter’s Lexicon

Photo: Robert Faubert
The Rafter's Lexicon

According to an Outdoor Industry Association report, roughly 20 percent of the 4.5 million Americans who went rafting in 2010 were first-timers. That’s a lot of fresh confetti. But don’t despair; the following is a must-know inventory of rafting idiolect (no, that isn’t an insult—look it up).

Must-know inventory of rafting idiolect

Pushing rubber (v.) Raft guide’s job.

Oar whore (n.) Seasoned raft guide who is reliable and good enough to row for different companies on different rivers, a rare and dying breed.

GORB (n.) Good Old Rafting Buddy.

Get down (v.) Move to a more secure position on the raft floor, typically above a drop where there is a high probability of falling out. If you blow it, you’ll be thankful for the…

Chicken line (n.) Perimeter line on a raft, grab it after falling out. Grab it if you’re chicken.

High side (n. & v.) 1. The tube that is pushed upward when a raft comes up against a rock or hole sideways. 2. The act of crew jumping from the low side of the boat to the high side— when executed in time, this can prevent a flip or wrap.

Taco (v.) When a raft folds around an obstacle. AKA: burrito, wrap.

Dump truck (v.) When everyone except the guide is ejected from the raft. AKA: bus stop.

Clean plate (n.) When everyone including the guide is spilled out but the raft does not flip.

Yard sale (n.) Colorful assortment of swimmers and gear following a flip. AKA: confetti, garage sale.

Sweep boat (n.) 1. The last boat in a group of rafts, the sweep brings up the rear and makes sure no one gets left behind. 2. Large, commercial cargo boat used on the Middle Fork and Main Salmon rivers.

Groover (n.) Metal box that holds solid human waste on a river trip, most often used in the arid Southwest.

Groover duty (n.) Chore typically assigned to the lowest ranking or least popular member of a river party, involves setting up the groover at camp and cleaning it post-trip.

Snakebite (n.) Small hole in a raft that can be heard but not seen, detected by the hissing of escaping air.

SPORT (n.) Stupid People On Rafting Trips. See also: GORB.

Bow puppy (n.) Person riding in the bow of an oar rig, does not assist with paddling or steering.

Speed bump (n.) Kayaker who doesn’t get out of the way of a raft.

Baptism (n.) Raft guide’s first swim. 

This article on rafting terms was published in the Spring 2012 issue of Rapid magazine.This article first appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of Rapid Magazine.

 

Understanding Oceans at Deception Pass

All photos this page: Scott MacGregor
Understanding Oceans at Deception Pass

River water flows downhill, around corners and between rocks. I spend most of my time paddling whitewater so I understand rivers. Ocean currents, however, are caused by a gravitational interaction between the Earth and the Moon that’s mysterious to me. So, I booked myself into Body Boat Blade International’s two-day ocean currents course, which promises to take advantage of everything Deception Pass has to offer and build on the skills of intermediate sea kayakers.

I met Leon Sommé in 2004, when we sat together on the board of the Trade Association of Paddlesports. He and Shawna Franklin had just returned from an 81-day circumnavigation of Iceland with fellow adventurer Chris Duff. During breaks from the boardroom table we talked about rivers and oceans. Leon told me about the eight-knot currents, drastic eddy lines, incredible whirlpools and large upwellings at Deception Pass. 

Leon met Shawna 21 years ago in a kayak rolling pool session at the University of Minnesota, where they were both studying biology.“The instructor told us to find someone with the same length legs,” remembers Shawna. “ This way we would not have to keep adjusting the foot pegs inside the kayak we were sharing.” This turned out to be fine dating advice.

The two then worked as guides for Shearwater Adventures, a kayak tour company based on Orcas Island, Washington. While there, they developed an instructional program, which they ran for six years before breaking away and, in 2001, found- ing Body Boat Blade International.

“When we first started instructing at Shearwater, we found the BCU and started training in the BCU system,” says Leon. “We like the BCU because its curriculum and assessments help students set and achieve goals. It has an outstanding coaching program that teaches how to most effectively deliver programs and teach current best practice.”

I’d say their teaching style is one of coastal learning. They try everything once. If it works better than what they are currently teaching, they work it in. I felt encouraged to do the same. I asked Leon about this.“Why keep doing the same old thing, if there is a better way?” Why indeed. 

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Testing Our Capabilities

We begin the course with what Leon and Shawna introduce as a speed launch. Speed launch, what the hell is that? I wonder.

All of us line up on the beach, our boats floating, pointed towards the open water. I have the stern toggle of my boat in my hand, not sure what’s going to happen next. “GO!” Like sprinters out of the chocks, the group charges into the ocean, sliding their boats ahead of them. They run as fast and as far as they can and then dive clumsily onto their kayaks. With a leg on either side of their cockpits, they drop their butts into the seats, slip their legs inside and reach for their skirts. This was obviously not everyone’s first Body Boat Blade course.

I thought back to my first sea kayak expedition. What contrast. I spent 45 days gingerly entering and exiting in a farmer john wetsuit, booties and wool socks, just as the ice went out on Lake Superior, afraid to so much as get my feet wet. If I did, I’d be cold and miserable the rest of the day.

Every one of us in this Body Boat Blade currents class had on a full dry suit.

“Cold people don’t learn,” says Leon.“Dry suits allow our students to get into the water without getting too cold and wet. It gives them more confidence to try things like rescues, bracing and rolling.” And yes, the speed launch. If I hadn’t brought my own dry suit, I could have borrowed one from the well-stocked Rubbermaid they carry with them in their truck.

“We make a huge effort to ensure our students match the level of our clinics,” Shawna says. Body Boat Blade now offers 26 classes a season—foundation courses, BCU assessment, rolling, safety and rescue, performance paddling and this one, officially billed as Ocean Currents II: Two Days at Deception Pass.

“The speed launch is fun. It helps teach people more about balance and assists them in practicing some of the moves for the cowboy scramble rescue,” says Leon.“It helps them get their 10,000 hours.”

As easy swell rolls against the rocky coastline, we snake our way along, rubbing shoulders and boats with barnacles. “Getting you paddling right along the shoreline shows us something about your technical abilities, your confidence and your willingness to try new things,” says Shawna. “All of this information helps us to decide the best plan for the day and if we actually want to bring you into the Pass.”

I wonder how I’m doing. I decide it best not to ask and wait to see where we end up. 

A Class II River, Except Saltier

Deception Pass State Park is a winding 20-minute-drive from our hotel room in downtown Anacortes in north-western Washington State. It’s a 4,000-acre marine and camping park with 77,000 feet of saltwater shoreline.

Deception Pass connects Skagit Bay, part of Puget Sound, with the Strait of Juan de Fuca. From the launch at the Bow- man’s Bay campground, it is a short paddle to Canoe Pass, a more intimate lesser-traveled, 25-yard channel below the Deception Pass Bridge, between Whidbey Island and the tiny Pass Island.

Today, Leon and Shawna have timed our launch with slack tide. We arrive at ebb tide as water begins to spill back toward western Washington State. It’s a 4,000-acre marine and camping park with 77,000 feet of saltwater shoreline.

Deception Pass connects Skagit Bay, part of Puget Sound, with the Strait of Juan de Fuca. From the launch at the Bowman’s Bay campground, it is a short paddle to Canoe Pass, a more intimate lesser-traveled, 25-yard channel below the Deception Pass Bridge, between Whidbey Island and the tiny Pass Island.

Today, Leon and Shawna have timed our launch with slack tide. We arrive at ebb tide as water begins to spill back toward the ocean and we watch small eddy lines slowly form. In the beginning, they are very subtle, just perceptible enough to spot the division between the current and the calm eddies behind the nearby island and point. Then, before our eyes, the Moon’s mystifying force cranks open a big tap and a rush of water magically begins to flow to the ocean. Over the next three hours, the current’s speed builds to the day’s high of 7.4 knots, creating a smooth green tongue between a clean eddy line and a mushy, confused mess of converging currents and whirlpools.

“We use the 50 to 90 percent rule of currents,” Shawna tells me.“The tidal exchange takes approximately six hours. During the first third of this exchange, the current will be 50 percent of its maximum speed. The next third will build to 90 percent. And the final third we consider to be at its maximum.” And then, predictably the cycle reverses until it’s back at slack tide again. I’ve experienced this before on the Upper Yough River in Friendsville, Maryland, though its cycle was far less romantic. A valve was opened in the morning and closed at night by a man in a hardhat up- stream at the Deep Creek hydro control dam.

We huddle up on a beach for an intro to currents chalk talk. Leon sketches the features in the sand with piece of driftwood. Rocks. Eddies. Arrows to show the direction of the current. Eddly lines. I’d drawn the same thing hundreds of times while teaching whitewater canoeing. The morphol- ogy of moving water is the same. How sea kayaks react is completely different.

Back in our boats, I realize just how special Deception Pass really is. We begin breaking into and out of the current. We practice ferry glides back and forth. We’re gaining the tactical knowledge of speed and angle that Leon demonstrated with a toy kayak on the beach. We begin in a slight current and, as our skills and confidence progress, so do the speed and level of challenge, almost imperceptibly.

By 90 percent flow, we feel confident, quite pleased with ourselves, maybe even a little cocky. Shawna and Leon figure it is time to up the challenge.

“Okay, now what I want you to do is pull your skirts and get your butts on your stern decks,” Leon was grinning.

Easy.

“Okay. Good. Now ferry out into the current.”

Low brace. Easy. Steady. I balance in the eddy waiting my turn. David, who’d taken a number of Body Boat Blade classes before, taps me on the shoulder,“How about I stick close?”

I burst across the eddy line and then, as David predicted, I flip. This was, of course, the purpose of the exercise. Had I succeeded, Leon would have upped the ante to standing on my back deck, juggling chainsaws. Anything to get us out of our comfort zones and into the water, practicing rescues in the current.

“It’s one thing to understand how our boat is affected by currents and whirlpools but it is equally important to be comfortable in the water,” says Leon. To me it feels like floating down a deep class II river, except saltier.

Maps and kayakers prepare for Deception PassBack in my hotel room, I’d watched Body Boat Blade’s first instructional DVD, Sea Kayak Rescues. I learned that my first job as a swimmer is to hold onto my paddle and roll my boat upright, which allows me to hang on to its deck lines, essentially gathering up the yard sale I’d created. I’m still in the current moving toward the Pacific, but at least now I have options. 

I can clamber up and straddle my stern deck. Just drop my butt in the seat and stuff my legs in. The cowboy rescue. We learned to do it this morning during our speed launches.

Instead, David is right with me, as he said he’d be. We decide to practice something different. He tells me to grab his deck lines near his cockpit. In seconds, he’s dragged my bow across his lap, rolled my boat upside down, tilted his boat, and effectively emp- tied my cockpit. This took all of 10 seconds. He pulls my boat parallel and waits for me to climb in. He’d seen the video, too.

Deception Pass is not particularly unique. There are tidal currents at many areas in the Pacific Northwest. A few offer faster currents and larger surf. Leon and Shawna have paddled most of them,“In some of our other classes we use the waters in and around the San Juan Islands. These areas are more apt to have standing waves caused by tidal races, or current opposing wind.” The most famous, Skookumchuk Narrows in British Columbia, was featured in Justine Curgenven’s film, This is the Sea 2. “Due to the high numbers of paddlers there on a good tidal exchange, we don’t teach at Skookumchuk as often.” What makes Deception Pass unique is easy access and good clean fun.

Deception Pass’ easy accessibility and Body Boat Blade’s get wet approach to teaching are changing the way people go sea kayaking. By removing some of the variables, we’re allowed to practice technique with little concern for anything else.

We spent two days playing on only 200 yards of water in a state park 30 minutes from where we parked our car, 20 minutes from town.

Leon knows that for some this will become their go-to playground. For others, it is a training ground.“If you can paddle here with success and comfort, you can easily apply this knowledge and experience to your local waters.”

Scott MacGregor is the founder and editor-in-chief of Adventure Kayak. For more information about paddling Deception Pass, visit bodyboatblade.com and parks.wa.gov

This article on paddling ocean waves at Deception Pass was published in the Spring 2012 issue of Adventure Kayak magazine.This article first appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.