When your photo gear costs more than your shuttle rig, whitewater photography can become risky. Here are four great options for taking great photos on the river while staying dry.
PANASONIC
DMC-TS4
Because a Pelicase won’t fit in the chest pocket of your PFD. Waterproof, shockproof, dustproof and freezeproof, this little point-and-shoot is a rugged alternative to a bulkier set-up. 12.1 megapixels and the ability to take full 1,080p HD video, a wide angle lens and extensive manual options mean it’s more than enough camera for most recreational photographers.
High Sign: Built-in GPS tagging stores each photo’s location in the file info.
Low Sign: It’s power hungry— carry spare batteries.
The foldout feet of Gerber’s new Steady add a whole new dimension to the term multi-tool. It’s tricky to keep a smartphone still enough to get razor sharp images, but the suction cup mount on this pocket-sized knife-cum-tripod allows you to steady your phone before shooting. The standard screw mount also works with compact digital cameras up to 12 ounces.
High Sign: More reasons to go Steady include two knives, pliers, screwdrivers, a bottle opener, wire cutters…
Low Sign: The suction cup doesn’t stick to textured surfaces so most smart-phone cases have to come off.
More flexible than an 11-year-old Russian gymnast, this tripod has two-dozen leg joints that contort for a stable shot, no matter the terrain. We had the SLR-Zoom version wrapped around tree branches, rocks, paddle shafts and thwarts, and the rubberized rings and foot grips kept our camera and heavy zoom set-up rock solid. High Sign: The SLR-Zoom model we tested was an easy-to-stow 9.5 inches tall. Low Sign: The ballhead lock doesn’t allow
for panning when shooting video. www.joby. com. $80 (SLR-Zoom and Ballhead Combo)
AQUAPAC
SLR CAMERA CASE
Essentially a drybag for your camera, Aquapac’s SLR Camera Case lets you shoot on or in the water worry-free. Operate your camera through the supple material
of the case while capturing crystal clear images through the acrylic lens.
High Sign: We had fun getting shots from in the river and other taboo perspectives.
Low Sign: Depending on the layout of your SLR, adjusting some functions through the case is fiddly.
On and off the water, these three destinations offer the best amenities out there.
LOWER KLAMATH RIVER Somes Bar, CA
With a sauna, hot tub and unforgettable cuisine, it might be hard to drag yourself away from Otter Bar Lodge (www.otterbar.com). But the warm waters of the nearby Klamath will draw you in while the crowds run the more popular Sierra rivers. The Klamath is dam-controlled with consistent flows well into the dry summer months. Ample one- or multi- day trip options between Happy Camp and Ishi-Pishi Falls offer plenty of great options for laid-back kayakers and rafters alike.
YOUR RIDE
Fluid Bang
SHUTTLE ROUTE
Take Highway 3 west out of Yreka from the I-5. Turn right onto Main St. at Etna, follow it until Forks of Salmon and turn right onto Salmon River Rd. You can’t miss the sign for Otter Bar Lodge.
MIDDLE GOLD RIVER Campbell River, BC
Check in at the Strathcona Park Lodge (www.strathcona.bc.ca) and settle into one of the plush waterfront, mountain-view cottages. Bring your own gear or let the lodge outfit you with top-of-the-line kit. Time your trip to the Gold with flows between 50 and 200 cms— usually from October to May. The Middle is friendlier than the Upper, but both can be run by intermediate paddlers. Enjoy canyons, old growth cedars and the creeky feel that’s synonymous with the rivers of Vancouver Island.
YOUR RIDE
Jackson Kayak Villain
SHUTTLE ROUTE
Take the Gold River highway out of Campbell River all the way to the lodge. Staff will provide shuttle directions to the multitude of day-trip options down the Gold.
TRUCKEE RIVER Reno, NV
With 11 drop-pools and two channels over a half-mile of river, freestylers can blunt, surf, loop or run slalom steps from downtown Reno’s hotels and casinos. After the removal of a dam in 2004, 7,000 tons of rock were dropped into the Truckee to create one of the biggest whitewater parks
in North America. Go big in front of the passers-by who will gather to watch and then walk the three blocks to the Eldorado Hotel to risk it all in their 80,000-square- foot casino.
YOUR RIDE
Wavesport Project X
SHUTTLE ROUTE
Take the Downtown Reno/ Virginia St. exit off of the I-80. Turn right onto N. Sierra St. Cross the river and take the first right on Island Ave. Continue until you arrive at Wingfield Park where you can park your car and walk to the water’s edge.
River Alchemy by Jeff Jackson is a column that appears reguarily in Rapid magazine.
When I first noticed paddlers on my home river wearing basketball jerseys under their PFDs, I didn’t put much thought into it. After all, old jerseys sell at Value Village for $3, dry quickly and, being sleeveless, let you show off your guns. When this spring I saw paddlers wearing basketball jerseys under their PFDs but overtop of their dry tops, it occurred to me something else was at play.
We are a peculiar bunch, whitewater paddlers. All paddlers, really. Recently, I was invited to an instructor training day preceding the impressively huge MEC Paddlefest; present were sea kayak, canoe, SUP and whitewater instructors. The sea kayakers wore dry suits and were slathered in sunscreen, the canoeists wore Tilley hats and quick-dry long pants, the SUP instructors reluctantly wore PFDs as they would rather go without, and the whitewater representatives wore helmets—all this despite spending the day sheltered in the Toronto Harbourfront. While as a group we all had much in common (which was the point of the day), what separated us was culture.
Culture is the shared assumptions and values of a group, which get reflected in consistent behaviors. There is something called social identification theory, which proposes that when people choose to join a group, they also take on that culture. What’s more, when individuals really buy in, they take on that culture as part of their identity, and use it to define who they are. This explains why cowboys or biker gangs walk, talk and dress as they do, why triathletes shave their legs, and why someone may be compelled to wear a basketball jersey over his dry top.
There was a time in our short whitewater history when we spoke of New School and Old School, but we don’t anymore. The term was attached to the explosion in freestyle boat designs in the late ‘90s and a new way of paddling that was emerging. The last part of that sentence may irk some: a new way of paddling. While putting the paddle in at the toes and pulling it out at the hips has always moved the boat forward, what did change through that time were the assumptions and values surrounding paddling—a new culture was emerging. For lack of a better term, people called it new or New School, as in not what you old longboat farts are doing.
Social identification theory predicts this, as groups and individuals define themselves primarily by what they are not, especially in the early days of a culture when it is not necessarily clear exactly what they are. But we don’t talk about New and Old School anymore because the new culture became the primary culture of kayaking. It is not new anymore, it just is. It carried forward the original cultural traits from the earlier generation of paddling and added the new elements evolved from playboating.
Culture emerges from shared experience, and over the last decade and a half (up until the last three years, I would argue) we all more or less shared the same paddling experience: evolving boat designs focused on playboating, park and play became river play. But over the last handful of years that shared experience has started to splinter. As the top of the sport has pushed be- yond what the average recreational paddler can do (or even relate to), theirs becomes a different experience than the big wave/waterfall group. Recreational river play is based around different assumptions and values than those being adopted by this elite, and so a separate culture emerges once again.
Back to the basketball jersey: except to a select few, it seems ridiculous. What it does do is declare identification with a group—in this case the basketball jersey happens to represent the big wave gang. Fair enough. Like cowboy boots, a leather biker vest, shaved legs or a Teva tan, this is just the symbol of a culture. These symbols represent our identities, and while it is merely a basketball jersey, I’m not going to criticize someone for defining himor herself as a paddler.
– Jeff Jackson is a professor of Outdoor Adventure at Algonquin College in the Ottawa Valley, and is the co-author of Managing Risk: Systems Planning for Outdoor Adventure Programs, published by Direct Bearing Inc.
This article in iPhone photography on the river was first published in Rapid magazine.
The next time you paddle into a scenic locale, don’t be surprised if there isn’t a single camera in sight. It’s not that paddlers with an eye for photographic flair have given up sharing their vision—and exploits—with the world. Many river shutterbugs are finding a better way to shoot, edit and upload images without the need for a bulky SLR, laptop or high-speed Internet connection.
As long as paddlers can get signal bars on their phones, that is.
“I think it’s pretty cool that I can take a photo on my iPhone and upload it to the world, pretty much instantly,” says Matt Hamilton, a 36-year-old paramedic and former Canadian Freestyle Kayak Team member.
Hamilton isn’t alone. With on-board cameras and quick Internet access, mobile phones are increasingly becoming the ultimate all-in-one devices. In April 2012, National Geographic reported that consumer surveys showed camera phones accounted for 37 percent of Americans’ digital photos in 2011. By 2015, the share of images made with phones could be close to half.
The iPhone is one of the most popular and capable smartphones.
“If I’m hanging out at a wave with friends, I’m shooting with my iPhone,” says professional photographer and avid kayaker, John Rathwell, 25, adding that he still pulls out his SLR for professional work.
Hamilton also shoots with the more capable Canon 30D SLR, and his Olympus waterproof point-and-shoot is always in his lifejacket. But his iPhone, compact and equipped with a relatively inexpensive waterproof case, sees about half of all his outings.
“Everybody seems to communicate through Facebook, Skype or texting,” says Hamilton, who enjoys the immediacy of uploading directly to friends and paddler groups on Facebook.
For self-proclaimed “techno idiots” like Hamilton, simplicity is among the reasons for going with the iPhone. Applications like Instagram boost the accessibility of mobile phone photography even more. In just over a year, the free photo editing and sharing app has gained over 30 million users and won several awards, including a highly esteemed Webby—a Best of the Web award hailed by The New York Times as “the Internet’s highest honor”—for Breakout of the Year.
Phone cameras are not without limitations. Take away the networking capabilities and downloadable apps, and even the top-rated iPhone’s camera is about par with mid-range point-and-shoots. The camera has no manual settings for ISO, aperture or shutter speed, and relies solely on downloaded applications to adjust photos.
Still, it’s possible to capture professional quality photos with a phone. In 2005, award-winning photographer Robert Clark published Image America, the first photo book to use only images from a camera phone. Two years later, Clark shot images for National Geographic’s pioneering how-to guide, The Camera Phone Book.
According to Rathwell, static settings are the biggest downside to shoot- ing with an iPhone. “You’ll quickly find that it shoots only wide angles,” he says. “If your kayaker subjects are far away, you’re not going to get a very good shot.” But it’s exactly this lack of control that forces professionals and even novice shooters like Hamilton to get more creative with their shots. “It gets you thinking a little bit differently,” says Rathwell. “How you can get closer to the action, or how you can use the landscape and scenery to make the photograph work.”
Canoeist Becky Mason and musician Ian Tamblyn unite to combine their artistic talents in this remarkable convergence of video, audio and paddling talents. Alone in her red cedar-canvas canoe Becky takes you for a wild ride above and below the crystal clear water of Lac Vert, Quebec. With Tamblyn’s original score as the backdrop and using some astonishing underwater camera angles Mason gracefully links a myriad of strokes and manoevres together into what can only be described as a canoeist’s visual and musical feast.
Director and Producer: Becky Mason and Reid McLachlan Website: www.redcanoes.ca
This review of square stern canoes originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.
When hunters and anglers head out on the water, they are often looking for something different than the average canoe. Square stern boats affer a larger cargo capacity to help carry gear and the catch. They have shapes that can be paddled or motor driven, and come in durable materials. Here are three current options.
ESQUIF
Rangeley 17
Designer Notes: Based on the traditional Rangeley concepts from the turn of the century, its hull excels at rough water handling on large windy lakes. With a 49-inch beam, the boat allows for safe, reliable cruising under power as well as tremendous efficiency when paddled. With a very high capacity, the Rangeley 17 is a wonderful option for those looking for a hunting or fishing boat.
Designer Notes: Created by—and for—hunters and fishermen, this rugged performer marries a triple keel for superior tracking with integrated hydrodynamic side sponsons to deliver remarkable stability along with a 1,000-pound capacity. The Missourian’s square stern easily accommodates motors up to five horsepower. Each canoe can sport a unique camouflage design.
Designer Notes: The MacKenzie Sport 15 offers a stable hull design appreciated by hunters and anglers. The 37-inch beam and 15- inch center depth provide over 1,000 pounds of capacity with seven inches of freeboard. Its efficient hull design provides excel- lent performance with a two- to three-horsepower outboard.
This feature article originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.
“We like to do a bit of a test whenever we bring guests out here,” said Jeremy Ward, Curator for the Canadian Canoe Museum and one of our three hosts for the day. “We get a pretty good idea of how much fun we’ll have judging by how wide-eyed you are when you first walk through the door.”
He was only half joking. Apparently some of the people they take through the museum’s archives don’t even bat an eye as they cross the threshold. They go right on talking as if they have just strolled into a Walmart, and walk out barely noticing the significance of the collection.
Wondering how one could be anything less than floored I asked, “How’d we fare?”
“You guys looked pretty amazed.”
From the exterior, the 30,000-square- foot warehouse is nondescript. It used to serve as a factory for Outboard Marine, a motor manufacturer and part of Peterborough’s long boat building history. After the industry faltered in the ‘60s, the company eventually went under and the building and all the equipment inside were essentially left to collect dust.
“When we first moved in, all the boats were stored wrapped in plastic and sealed off to preserve them from exposure to the dust and decay of the rest of the building,” said John Summers, the museum’s General Manager. “It was quite a process to get it to where it is today.”
After the remaining forgotten factory equipment was removed, the local fire department came in and literally hosed the building’s interior down, floor to ceiling. A small army of volunteers made up mostly of university students on their summer holidays whitewashed the walls and resealed and painted the sprawling concrete floor.
Today, natural light washes in from the rooftop windows, bathing the hundreds of boats in soft sunlight. Ancient-looking dugouts line one outside wall on shelves rising up 20 feet. Racks loaded with some of the museum’s 500 curious paddles of all shapes, sizes, materials and ages sit near the warehouse’s entrance. Along another wall is a drop sheet, hung to create a makeshift photo studio for the cataloging of each piece in the collection. Twenty-foot wood-plank boats and fragile birchbark war canoes on dollies crowd aisles lined by rows of stands on wheels. Each stand holds nine canoes in various stages of repair and preservation, each canoe with its own manilla tag stating a name and item number.
Ward pointed out the Starkell’s Orellana of Paddle to the Amazon fame; then, a canoe carved by First Nations to commemorate the Hudson Bay Company’s 300th anniversary that required painstaking attention to detail in fabrication but had apparently never actually seen water.
Ward shared the history of the gold medal-winning K1 from the 2004 Olympics in Athens; a miniature decked Fijian outrigger outfitted with a crab claw sail; and the Père Lallement—a 22-foot cedar canvas Chestnut canoe that capsized almost 35 years ago on a school trip in Timiskaming, resulting in the death of 12 boys and their master.
Each of the dozen-or-so canoes I recognized had such incredible stories behind them. And there were hundreds more boats with stories I could only guess at.
“In each story is a lesson of cooperation between people,” explained the museum’s Executive Director, James Raffan. “They’re all about people’s relationship to place, and about remembering.”
Like an inquisitive child, I jumped around from boat to boat, asking about their origins, the most peculiar looking ones really catching my attention. There is a definite international flavor in the materials, shapes, designs and techniques used to build many of the boats.
“What I find very exciting as we look at canoes from California or from Samoa, from Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands or South America, is that only a certain portion of each canoe is functional,” explained Ward. “Of course it needs to perform, it needs to paddle, it needs to be maneuverable or strong-tracking, but so much of each boat is just the artistic, the cultural art form of the community it came from and it’s so distinct.”
“There are some strange looking watercraft in here,” he added, “but they all have a family resemblance. Each one has its own individual story but, as an aggregate, they all link together.”
He and his team use these links to create the imaginative exhibits in the museum’s main display area. “This is an idea factory,” Ward beamed.
Like his colleagues showing us around, he could happily go on all day, revealing details of workmanship, design and history. We would happily follow.
At the risk of sounding ignorant, I had to ask about the many racks holding dozens of what appeared to me to be run-of-the-mill cedar canvas canoes. Ward smiled, knowing what was coming before I could even get the question out. It’s clear he’s passionate about the eccentricities of every piece, but all three of our tour guides acknowledged that there is some replication in the artifacts.
“The collection is filled with the idiosyncrasies of its founder, Kirk Wipper,” said Summers. “Because it started as a private collection, it was really just his collection of boats. He didn’t necessarily have the same bigger-picture outlook that we need today to run the museum.”
In 1957, at a summer camp north of Minden, Ontario, a friend presented camp owner, Kirk Wipper, with a dugout canoe from the 1890s. Ten years later, his collection had grown to over 150 boats housed in log buildings and dubbed the Kanawa Museum.
As Summers suggested, Wipper’s collect- ing habits were very organic. Friends would keep him informed of interesting watercraft as they became available. He would scoop up a freighter or a cedarstrip as they would cross his path. He would take on debt to invest in truly unique artifacts.
“The collection is filled with the idiosyncrasies of its founder, Kirk Wipper,” said Summers. “Because it started as a private collection, it was really just his collection of boats. He didn’t necessarily have the same bigger-picture outlook that we need today to run the museum.”
Through it all, he was guided by a feeling of responsibility to continue collecting in order to share the whole story of canoeing and kayaking, and their relationship to the environment and the history of North America.
His dedication was tireless. No Haida dugout canoe had been carved within living memory until Wipper commissioned one in 1968. He negotiated the $150,000 purchase of 44 canoes from New York’s Museum of the American Indian. He transported a 53-foot dugout canoe from British Columbia to Ontario on the roof of his pick-up truck.
By the ‘80s, the Kanawa Museum had outgrown its home. After hearing that Wipper was looking for a new home for his 600 boats, a group from Trent University set out to bring the collection to Peterborough, home of the famous Peterborough Canoe Company.
In 1989, a board of directors was formed and by 1994, after several summers spent transferring the collection, the artifacts were in the hands of the newly established Canadian Canoe Muesum. The doors to the current location opened to the public July 1, 1997.
As our hosts sealed up the archives and we made our way back to the museum’s main building—the one with all the exhibits—conversation turned to the present.
While this museum is truly one of a kind, its inception really isn’t that out of the ordinary. “A crazy collector is behind the founding of a lot of museums,” said Raffan, “look at the Smithsonian. What’s not so well known is the fact that this is a living, breathing organization.”
Raffan, Ward and Summers manage the collection with a clearer mandate as far as accepting artifacts goes, but they also continue to reflect Wipper’s goal of telling the entire canoeing story.
Over 100 boats are on display in the main exhibit area, along with hundreds more artifacts. In the warmth of muted museum lighting, visitors explore a salon dedicated to cedar Chestnut and Peterborough Canoe Company boats from the heyday of recreational canoeing in the early 20th century. Around the corner, behind glass, sits Pierre Trudeau’s iconic deerskin coat across from a screen playing Bill Mason films.
Upstairs, Hudson’s Bay blankets, casks and muskets are arranged in a birchbark canoe; plaques describe life as a voyageur during fur trade times. A group of middle school students sit in a circle on the floor nearby amidst skin-on-frame kayaks, learning about the primitive materials and craftsmanship from a volunteer. “The museum isn’t just about the past,” explained Summers. “It’s about what people do with their families today.”
“The canoes are physically old, but the things that make them what they are, are as fresh and new today as they were when the boats were first made,” he continued. “One of the things we like our visitors to come away with is how connected this all is.”
In contrast to the birchbark and cedar is a polyethylene Dagger freestyle boat hanging from the ceiling—a prototype from the days when whitewater paddlers were parking cars on the bows and sterns of their boats to flatten them out to improve performance in a hole.
In another corner, there is a fully operational workshop where Ward and a crew of volunteer artisans build and repair boats, paddles and other paddling paraphernalia while visitors watch, ask questions and even participate.
“It really is amazing that we’ve created all of this from next to nothing,” said Raffan, referring to the fact that the museum continues to run exclusively on funding from private sources and membership. “We truly are a world-class museum destination and there continues to be no funding from the federal government.”
This has caused some instability over the years. In 2003, they were forced to close their doors due to financial problems. The following year, an anonymous donor stepped up and paid off two-thirds of the museum’s debt. Under this momentum, they were able to bolster membership and reopen the world’s largest collection of ca- noes and kayaks.
Financial hardship may seem like an economic reality inevitable in the world of special interest collections. But if you put the museum into context, it becomes clear that someone has dropped the ball when it comes to public funding.
The canoe is inextricably linked to North American history. The Canadian Canoe Museum chronicles the evolution of a civilization as much as it does boats and paddles. In 2007, the canoe was voted as one of the Seven Wonders of Canada as part of a reality TV series. In commemoration, the museum has established National Canoe Day, celebrated every year by thousands of people across Canada and around the world.
Today, the museum has a staff of nine, and a crew of 120 active volunteers who Raffan credits as being at the heart of a lot of the day-to-day operations. The artifacts, facility and events have been established as world-class without the help of any significant government backing. Working under this reality has forced Raffan, Summers and Ward to be creative.
“Take five zeros off the budget of a big museum,” said Raffan, “then take 10 per- cent of that and it would make a huge difference to what we do.”
Still, members get some wonderful perks beyond the usual gift shop discounts and unlimited admission. Among other benefits, Raffan recently announced a members-only online exhibit—a unique, exclusive web museum filled with content visitors to the bricks and mortar museum can’t access.
They are also optimistic looking into the future. Raffan and Summers share medium-term plans of moving the museum from its current location just off the highway, bookended by plazas and industrial parks, to Peterborough’s picturesque waterfront, giving them the opportunity to offer an on-water component to the museum in a purpose-built facility.
As we wrapped up our behind the scenes tour, we shook hands and promised to return soon. Exiting through the foyer, we were thanked by the retiree volunteers manning the museum’s front desk and gift shop.
We all know that canoeing is about more than just boats and paddles and this museum reflects that. Raffan’s words summed it up perfectly. “These are lessons that I think go forward—lessons about paddling together, about working together so that we can make sense of what’s happening today and chart a course for tomorrow.”
– For more information on events, exhibits and how to become a member of the Canadian Canoe Museum, visit www.canoemuseum.ca.
This Family Camping article originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.
We’ve all been one or know one. Memorized the impossible, seven-syllable names (try saying Archaeornithomimus three times fast); pretended the backyard was Jurassic Park (and known that, to be perfectly correct, it really should be called Cretaceous Park); slept between dinosaur-motif bed sheets. Yes, I’m referring to the part-time paleontologist, the fearless fossil hunter in your family. Whether it’s you, your son, grandson, sister or dad, a fascination with the creatures that walked, crawled, swam and sprouted long before we appeared can inspire a fun theme for your next family adventure.
MISTAKEN POINT ECOLOGICAL RESERVE
NEWFOUNDLAND
Newfoundland is world-renowned for its fossils. Long ago set adrift from what is now Europe, the Rock’s sheer bounty of, well, rock is home to ancient marine organisms spanning 320 million years of geologic time. Most famous of these fossil beds is Mistaken Point, a wave-battered crag that takes its name from the deadly result of sailors mistaking it for the safe harbor of Cape Race. Buried in fine volcanic ash 565 million years ago, the creatures now exposed here in tennis court-sized slabs of sea cliff are not only the most ancient deep-water marine fossils in the world, they’re also the oldest diverse collection of complex organisms ever discovered. And they’re controversial, too. Only a handful of the frond-like, leafy forms resemble known living animals— most are so radically different that some scientists insist on assigning them to their own completely separate kingdom.
STAY AWHILE: Reached by dirt road and a six-kilometer hiking trail on the tip of the Avalon Peninsula, Mistaken Point has an edge-of-the-world feel that’s worth visiting even if you’re not a fossil buff. Between June and September, don’t pass up a whale and puffin-watching boat tour 90 minutes north in Witless Bay.
INFO: The point is two hours south of St. John’s, off Route 10. Meet your guide at the interpretive center in the coastal village of Portugal Cove South for a daily tour (departs 1 p.m., May–October, 3–4 hours). 709-438-1100, Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve
DINOSAUR PROVINCIAL PARK
ALBERTA
When dinosaur fanatics dream of Nirvana it looks a lot like southeastern Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park. Here the Red Deer River Valley carves through Canada’s largest badlands, revealing haunting hoodoos, isolated mesas and the greatest concentration of Late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils ever found. Every known group is represented, including favorites like Triceratops, Hadrosaurus, The Lost World’s battering ram Pachycephalosaurus and, of course, the terrifying Tyrannosaurus rex. Seventy-five million years ago, this was low swampy country with a steamy subtropical climate, and the dinosaurs rubbed shoulders with fish, turtles, crocodiles, amphibians and even marsupials. Since the first paleontologists began digging here in the 1880s, more than 23,000 fossils have been collected, including 300 dinosaur skeletons. Some of these now reside in museums around the world, but the greatest collection is housed just a two-hour drive away in Drumheller, Alberta’s Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology.
STAY AWHILE: Explore the stark beauty of the badlands on the six-kilometer Great Badlands hike. Join one of the park’s paleontologist-led family or kids’ day programs, including an authentic dinosaur dig, prospecting hike or dinosaur day camp.
INFO: The park is three hours east of Calgary, off Route 544. Dinosaur Provincial Park, 403-378-4342 ext. 235, Dinosaur Provincial Park
BADLANDS NATIONAL PARK
SOUTH DAKOTA
South Dakota’s White River Badlands are to the study and understanding of ancient mammals what Alberta’s badlands are to dinosaur research. Since 1846, paleontologists have uncovered the remains of camels, three-toed horses, saber-toothed cats, rhinos, rabbits, beavers and more, providing the most complete snapshot of mammalian life in North America during the early Age of Mammals 36 to 28 million years ago. But that’s not all. The extensive erosion that has produced this landscape of buttes, pinnacles and spires amid the prairie has also revealed even more ancient fossils dating from the Cretaceous. During the Age of Dinosaurs, however, a warm shallow sea covered the Great Plains. Since dinosaurs were land creatures, none have been found here. Instead fossil hunters have unearthed giant marine lizards called mosasaurs, along with fish, turtles, nautiloids (shelled mollusks) and ammonites (ancient squid).
STAY AWHILE: Bison, bighorn sheep and prairie dogs may be seen from the park’s trails. Hike 1.5 miles to the Notch, a dramatic overlook of the White River Valley—watch your step, the trail climbs a log ladder and skirts drop-offs.
INFO: The park is 75 miles east of Rapid City on Route 44. Badlands National Park, 605-433- 5361, Badlands National Park
BURGESS SHALE
YOHO NATIONAL PARK, BRITISH COLUMBIA
The word Yoho comes from the Cree language. Probably the best translation is “Wow”. Native peoples and modern visitors exclaim at the stupendous Rocky Mountians, emerald lakes and 833-foot Takakkaw Falls (another Cree word meaning magnificent). But it is likely that paleontologist Charles Walcott also breathed “wow” in 1909 when he discovered the fossil bed now known as the Burgess Shale. In seven years, Walcott collected more than 65,000 fossils, many of which were unknown. Declared a World Heritage Site in 1981, the Burgess Shale is still regarded as the finest site for Cambrian age fossils. Join a daylong guided hike—the only way to view the park’s two fossil beds—to learn how these half-billion-year-old marine animals hold important clues to evolutionary understanding. Mount Stephen’s famous trilobite beds are accessed via a nine-kilometer hike, while Walcott Quarry is a strenuous, 22-kilometer round-trip to a spectacular subalpine ridge.
STAY AWHILE: There’s no shortage of things to do in Yoho. View some of the park’s abundant wildlife and lofty peaks while hiking one of the dozens of trails, canoeing on aptly named Emerald Lake or staying at a historic backcountry lodge.
INFO: The park is a short drive west of Lake Louise on Trans-Canada Hwy 1 and borders Banff National Park to the east. Yoho Visitor Center, 250-343-6783, Burgess Shale
WHAT IS A FOSSIL?
Think of fossils and the first thing that comes to mind is probably a dinosaur skeleton. But fossils come in every shape, size and age—the oldest fossils are 3.5-billion-year-old stromatolites while the youngest are just 10,000 years old.
Mold and Cast Fossils form when a skeleton is buried by sediment. Over time, the sediment turns to stone and the entombed bones begin to dissolve, leaving a cavity in the shape of the original skeleton. Water rich in minerals enters the cavity and the minerals deposited in the mold form a cast that has the same shape but none of the internal features (or DNA) of the original skeleton. Most of the fossilized bones, shells and leaves we find are mold and cast fossils.
Replacement Fossils are made up of minerals that have taken the place of the original organic material while preserving the internal structures. For example, petrified wood is actually rock—silicon or calcite crystals have replaced all of the organic matter down to the last cell!
Whole Body Fossils are unaltered, intact organisms like mammoths caught in ice or tar pits, or insects trapped in amber.
Trace Fossils record the activity of an animal, rather than the animal itself. These include footprints, tracks and coprolites (fossilized poop!).
– Sweden is the world’s leading exporter of matches, manufacturing around five million boxes daily—the equivalent of about 250 million matchsticks.
– The original matches—small sticks of pine impregnated with sulphur—were first used in China in the sixth century.
– Matchbox collectors are called phillumenists.
– “Third on a match” means bad luck. The superstition dates back to WWI when it was believed that if three soldiers lit their cigarettes using the same match, a sniper would see the match strike, take aim at the second soldier lighting up and pick off the ill-fated third.
– Five hundred billion matches are used each year.
– A lawsuit was filed against Match.com in 2005, claiming that the dating website secretly employs people as bait to send fake messages and go on as many as three dates per day to keep paying clients returning. Both the suit and the plaintiff’s love life failed to ignite.
– Up until the early 1900s, matches were made using toxic amounts of white phosphorous, causing an epidemic of a deadly bone disease known as phossy jaw.
– The safety match separates reactive materials, with red phosphorus on the matchbook’s outer striking strip and potassium chlorate on the match head, making undesired ignition virtually impossible.
– Most wooden matchsticks are made from aspen or white pine with a single tree yielding anywhere from 400,000 to one million sticks.
– If all of the three-inch Matchbox toy cars ever built were parked bumper to bumper, they would stretch around the equator more than six times.
This essay originally appeared in Canoeroots and Family Camping magazine.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in all the Olympic fanfare and it’s impossible to miss Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt but you probably don’t know any sprint canoeing heroes. Relative to the deeply entrenched canoeing culture in North America, top-level racing has a weak following.
With marathons, outriggers, war canoes, even dragon boating, there’s no shortage of competitive spirit amongst recreational single-blade paddlers in North America. This has not, however, been translating into more and better athletes canoeing at an Olympic level.
Pam Boeteler is the president of WomenCAN International, a collective focused on gender equality in canoeing at the Olympics—an issue that she suggests is partly behind the waning interest in elite canoeing events. “There are no women’s open canoeing events at the Olympics,” says Boeteler. This despite the fact that 36 countries have established programs for women at various stages of development.
“On top of that, nobody just goes out and high-kneels recreationally,” Boeteler points out, referring to the trickier stance that elite sprint canoeists use to gain power. “We have a population who want instant gratification and don’t necessarily have the time to learn an entirely new skill.”
Paddling, unlike most elite sports in North America, doesn’t have a recreational stream to draw from.
“I started looking at the industry as a whole and over time there was this disconnect between recreational and elite paddlers,” says Wade Blackwood, executive director of the American Canoe Association. “When the ACA and USA Canoe/Kayak (USACK) split in the ‘90s, performance dropped off, medal counts dropped off and participation at the elite level dropped off.”
As a result, the ACA is once again working together with USACK—the national governing body for paddlesports racing and a member of the national Olympic committee—in an effort to reduce the obvious disparity.
The ACA has 5,700 instructors and Blackwood hopes that by introducing the idea of competitive canoeing into beginner courses, people will become aware that they can get involved in elite paddling disciplines.
In the end, both Blackwood and Boeteler agree that increased exposure and support for local competition are the keys to bridging the gap between recreational and elite paddlers. Extending the canoeing culture leisure paddlers love into the competitive sphere is healthy for both camps.
