Butt End: Bushcraft

Stories

Photo: Kevin Callan — Butt End: Bushcraft

I think I have the humble pen thing figured out. It seems to come naturally when writing about misadventures. In any case, it works for me.

Humility will also take you far when canoe tripping. Lacking humility in the wilderness is the surest way to get into trouble. I’m frequently awed and humbled when I’m out there. In fact, that’s why I go out. Frequent humblings are good for the soul.

Humiliation? That’s another matter. But it’s just what I stumbled into last year on a trip with my friend Scott.

We had been given the job of preparing a base-camp for a BBC crew while they filmed a television special with Ray Mears. Mears is a bushcraft expert from the U.K. The kind of guy that can carve a paddle out of a tree in minutes or get a fire going without a match without breaking a sweat. The man’s bushcraft films are admired by thousands of fans worldwide, and here I was, charged with setting up his camp.

We were to stay a day ahead of them on the river, making sure everything was set for when they arrived.

“You want to be a writer, don’t know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.” — Paul Simon

It sounded like an easy job. And it would have been. If we had cooking pots. If I hadn’t forgotten them back at the put-in.

After taking an increasingly panicked inventory of the campsite I stared at the river and considered paddling back upstream, but we were too far and the current was too fast. We were trapped.

The first evening Scott and I ate peanut butter sandwiches rather than cook up our macaroni dinner. It was a hardship but we got through it. But not being able to boil water for coffee the next morning was unacceptable. What’s more we had to figure out a way to cook for the eight-person crew about to arrive that day.

First we tried placing hot rocks into a barrel pack full of river water, which gave us luke-warm, murky water filled with dirt, ash and probably parasites.

Next we spent an hour carving a log into a bowl to heat over the fire. It looked good, until it ignited, leaked and spilled its contents, dousing the flames. The third attempt was a little more successful. We found an old whisky bottle (bushcraft indeed) back in the bush, filled it half-full with water and hung it about a foot above the fire. A long while later, we had bubbly water to steep our coffee grounds in.

At noon the film crew arrived and I put on my humble hat and told them what had happened. Then, with little hope I suggested that maybe the bushcraft expert could show us, and the camera, what he was made of.

Mears looked thoughtful and for a moment I thought I might be about to learn something. Turns out I already knew his lesson.

“Well Kevin,” he said, reaching into his canoe, “we could use these pots left behind by some poor fool back at the launch.”

Later, with a full belly, I had to agree he was good at what he did.

This article on bushcraft was published in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots magazin

This article first appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

100 Years of Quetico

Trips

The summer of 2009 marks 100 years since the inception of one of the canoeing world’s largest protected areas. When Quetico became an Ontario forest reserve in 1909 and then a provincial park in 1913, a paddler’s paradise was born.

It’s a place you can exercise your eyes on cascading waterfalls, reflective tannin lakes and stands of old-growth forest; spend calm evenings lying on a rock listening to loons call; pick marble-sized wild blueberries for morning pancakes; and take on a challenging portage to some remote lake full of feisty fish.

There’s no better way to celebrate the centennial than to paddle the renowned Hunter Island route. This is where it all began. It was the “island” area that was first protected in 1909.

It’s not really a true island. The Hunter Island area is a chunk of land and lakes that split the two historically significant fur-trade routes, Kaministiquia and Grand Portage. The route is chock-full of history and has far more water to paddle than trails to portage. And with Quetico being a border park, you can get to it either at the north end from Atikokan, Ontario, or from Ely, Minnesota and through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area to the south.

The 200-kilometre circuit takes 12 to 14 days to complete, though it’s possible to slice and dice the circuit to leave you with different trips of five or seven days. If you are in a hurry, have a go at the annual Hunter Island Canoe Race and try to break the speed record. The current record, set in 1994, is just under 29 hours.

But you’re best not to rush the trip. Hunter Island has too many natural and historic treasures along the way. Paddling this route you will pass: the place where Bill Mason starred in his first film, a portion of David Thompson’s survey route of Canada, the route of the militia heading to engage Louis Riel during the Red River Rebellion, the place where the infamous John Tanner was shot, a portion of pioneering conservationist Aldo Leopold’s favorite canoe trip, significant native pictograph sites and Warrior Hill, where young Ojibway braves raced to the top to test their worth as warriors.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Off The Tongue: Babies Save Rivers

Stories

Photo: Scott MacGregor — Off The Tongue: Babies Save Rivers

The most dangerous thing that can happen to us guys is not a waterfall, nor a boulder choked, class V creek. It’s chicks and babies who kill paddlers!” wrote Reactionary columnist Ben Aylsworth in the Spring 2001 issue of Rapid.

Eight years later, now married with two little kids of my own, I have a completely different perspective. Aylsworth’s opinion at the time was too shortsighted (not to mention bitter and sexist) to see the lives of his paddling buddies come full circle.

Whitewater boat sales and participation peaked around 2001, not because of the super Ego, but because the last of the largest group of the population—the baby boomers—were still enjoying the golden whitewater years of their mid-thirties. Soon after, Ben would write, they were sucked from their boats, resurfacing in Lamaze classes and in minivans en route to soccer practice.

To be fair, these years are also the busiest time in most careers and a time when many paddlers are purchasing and trying to pay for their first houses. Paddles are traded for rakes, paintbrushes and drywall trowels. If you want to catch up with your thirty-something paddling buddies, try the tool rental desk at Home Depot. I have an account.

This special Love Issue is here to show those paddlers running scared from commitment that love doesn’t have to be as restrictive as a river-wide strainer and that there can be whitewater at the end of the wedding aisle and birthing canal. In this issue you’ll meet river kids and whitewater couples who are making it work.

My own family’s secret has been establishing Rapid and our lives in the Ottawa Valley. It was a conscious decision. We decided we’d rather live and work at the rivers than spend our weekends driving to them.

My son Dougie and daughter Kate, now four and two years old, have been swimming and paddling in class II rapids since they were born. Dougie has 35 river days scribbled in his log from last year alone. The kids have their own kayaks, paddles, canoe tripping barrels (one specifically for stuffed animals), fishing rods, sleeping bags and Therm-a-Rests. We have two tandem whitewater tripping boats and we split on a 14-foot raft (think giant playpen) with Rapid’s River alchemy columnist Jeff Jackson and his family.

There have never been more kids’ courses, boats and gear.

Some people argue that it is a result of this new gear that more kids are on rivers.

No doubt the availability of smaller gear and boats is making parents realize that they can start their kids younger. But I believe there is a second element at work. The RPM dads (and moms) of the late ‘90s have grown sick of soccer and are coming back to the rivers, bringing with them the offspring of the first whitewater boom.

Even if only half of the whitewater boomers get back in their boats and bring their families to the rivers, river paddling will be 50 per cent bigger than ever before.

Why should you care? Because today’s river rats will be tomorrow’s river advocates and environmental policy makers. When you look at it that way, babies don’t kill paddlers; paddlers’ babies save rivers.

This article on kids and paddling was published in the Early Summer 2009 issue of Rapid magazine.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2009 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Flushed: Just Follow Me

Stories

Photo: Matt Corke — Flushed: Just Follow Me

Aislinn and I met in college and bonded over cappuccinos and boiled perogies. She worried like a mother about my regular diet of Pop-Tarts and Lucky Charms. We shared a penchant for dreaming about far-away places too remote to make Outside magazine’s 50 Trips of a Lifetime and trying our luck at things that scared us.

That’s how I find myself scouting from a slippery bank as my first class IV resonates like the third beer on an empty stomach. A kaleidoscope of frantic foam, lashing tongues of dark water and air saturated with the river’s breath. The din of the whitewater drowns out the voice of my instructor—a callow hotshot who turns away to gaze at the wave for vital, entirely inaudible periods of his briefing.

My stomach flutters. A rabble of butterflies is trying to escape from its knotted clutch. With blissful ignorance and naïve optimism, I conjure an image of my boat slipping cleanly through the galloping whitewater. My faith in my fellow paddlers is unquestioning. Kayakers are transformed into knights; their boats are loyal steeds. Smelly neoprene is shining armour. Besides, nothing will go wrong, Aislinn assures me.

We are opposites in many ways. Aislinn is lanky and graceful where I am powerful and clumsy. As a climber, she moves up rock like a feather caught in a rising thermal. I scrabble below her, using brawn and grit without technique or strategy. She takes to kayaking with equal elegance.

Above the rapid, our instructor disappears over the drop without a word. Aislinn is calmly coaching, as if I am her personal responsibility. The sequence to the roll she taught me just three days earlier flickers like a dying light bulb in the dim labyrinth of my memory.

“Just follow me.”

I see her slip gracefully up the massive green tongue and slide effortlessly across the wave into the eddy below. The curling wave arcs above me. Water rushes my face and chest like a schoolyard bully in a game of Reeds. My boat stalls on its stern, then pirouettes and rolls upside down in what amounts to the only graceful part of my run.

I swim

Boils claw at my feet and threaten to hold me forever in the deep, black water. I drag myself onto a rock, shaking and swearing. Adrenaline courses through numb limbs. I’m a fighter who’s just lost after 15 rounds in the ring.

I might have left kayaking forever right then. But Aislinn wouldn’t let me. When my wit had fled to hide in vaulted towers high above the water, she brought me back to the river. And when I did my first combat roll later that day, I quietly thanked her.

We now live at opposite ends of the country. Our lives still revolve around paddling—hers in giving instruction and advice, mine in telling stories. Perhaps we have each other to thank.

This article on whitewater kayak instruction was published in the Early Summer 2009 issue of Rapid magazine.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2009 issue of Rapid Magazine.

River Alchemy: Virginity Lost

Stories

Photo: Charlie Munsey — River Alchemy: Virginity Lost

I’ve just returned from scouting what I believe to be the fifth first descent of a tributary to the Bonnechere River.

Fifteen years ago, I dragged along a local “old guy” when I first scouted the creek. He didn’t tell me he’d run it a generation earlier. Like him, I haven’t the heart to tell this new crop of keeners that i’ve run it before.

A quiet Ottawa Valley canoe tripping river for most of the year, the Bonnechere booms in spring high water, fed by several feet of snow melt. This unnamed tributary enters above Basin Depot and drains the southeast corner of Algonquin Park. An eight-minute run with a window of just a couple of days a year, the creek packs continuous class III rapids and a couple 20-foot falls.

Before people paddled for recreation and adventure, a first descent was merely a means to an end

Fur, gold, logs and mapping the borders of a growing colony brought industry-minded paddlers to nearly all of the continent’s rivers one or two hundred years ago.

Early explorers such as Alexander MacKenzie, David Thompson and Simon Fraser left their names on newly “discovered” rivers, but it’s unlikely they bagged first descents on these waters. Native guides whose ancestors had used the river corridors for thousands of years led these European explorers. Even our first descent tributary to the Bonnechere has been thoroughly modified for log drives that ended 70 years ago.

Unlike Sir Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong, our river running forefathers tended not to plant a flag on the summit of their accomplishments. Assuming natives, fur traders, gold miners, log drivers or surveyors didn’t travel it earlier, there is little way of knowing who was first down a river.

The difficulty of proving a first descent doesn’t mean there’s no such thing.

Three examples of indisputable first descents stand out in our collective whitewater history

The granddaddy of them all, and the one that arguably started this whole first descent fascination, was major John Wesley Powell’s 1869 exploration of the Colorado River including the Grand Canyon. The one-armed civil war veteran walked more rapids than he ran, but he was there to confront the unknown. When Powell ventured down the Colorado, the river didn’t even have the same name at the top and bottom of the run. His four-month trip defined the term epic. Not only did Powell connect important dots on the map of the West, he more or less created the whitewater river trip as we know it.

In 1971, Dr. Walt Blackadar, a 49-year-old physician with only four years’ kayaking experience, became a modern legend of first descents when he ran Turnback Canyon on the Alsek River solo in his mithril Vector fibreglass kayak. Located in the middle of the Yukon/B.C.’s remote Coastal mountains with the only walk-around option across 16 kilometres of glacier, Turnback was aptly named. The run typified Blackadar and topped a long list of impressive class V solo first descents. Blackadar was inducted posthumously into the interna- tional Whitewater Hall of Fame in 2007 and Turnback has seen only a handful of descents since.

Remote, committing, huge and still rarely run, the Grand Canyon of the Stikine in northern B.C. belongs on any first descents shortlist. in 1981, fellow Hall of Fame honouree Rob Lesser began a nearly 10-year quest to run the canyon in its entirety. On his fourth attempt in 1990 with Doug Ammons, Lesser succeeded in making the canyon’s first self-supported descent. Reportedly, it was three days of psychological torture.

Powell, Blackadar and Lesser each represent a different era and a landmark accomplishment that redefined the realm of the possible. There is no evidence to suggest someone travelled their paths before them. Unlike the voyages of Mackenzie and other early explorers, these were the first deliberate attempts to confront the challenge of a river as opposed to avoiding it.

This is why my Bonnechere tributary keeners are lining up their own Grand Canyon descent. As with any of a thousand out-of-the-mainstream runs, this one requires research, planning and commitment all commensurate to the skill and ambition of the group. Class II or class V—it doesn’t matter. As far as they know it has never been run before.

Would knowing change their mindset? Perhaps.

Does this fact diminish the sense of adventure and giddy nervousness that accompanies peeling out of an eddy into the unknown? This is, after all, why we bother. True first descents are personal, regardless of who may have been there before.

Jeff Jackson is a professor of Outdoor Adventure at Algonquin College in Pembroke, Ontario.

This article on first descents was published in the Early Summer 2009 issue of Rapid magazine.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2009 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Standing Waves: Seeing Green

Trips

Photo: Alisdair Marshall — Standing Waves: Seeing Green

Perched largely above the Arctic Circle between the 60th and 85th parallels, Greenland stores 10 per cent of the earth’s freshwater reserves in the form of a giant ice cap slowly melting into the sea. The island’s rivers flow straight off this ice cap, tumbling furiously down mountainsides and into barren valleys home only to caribou and the occasional stray polar bear.

Greenland is also the birthplace of kayaking

The first qajaqs were constructed of sealskin stretched over driftwood and bone 2,000 years ago. since then, generations of the native inuit people have paddled, hunted and fished along the island’s treacherous coastline using these seafaring crafts. One place they never ventured was inland to ply the rivers. They simply had no reason to.

In 2007, English adventurers Ali Marshall and Simon Tapley became the first paddlers to explore Greenland’s largely untracked interior in search of runnable whitewater. The two-man expedition was challenged by the difficulty of running adequate safety on the river, viscious weather and sketchy information and transportation.

“We’d gamble on valleys sometimes three days’ walk away to find all the gradient lost in big falls too high to paddle,” says Marshall.

The hit-or-miss nature of their six-week expedition only made the reward of good whitewater that much greater. After sailing down the island’s west coast with a great danish cod fisherman in a boat called Nardvhalen—and later being rescued by the same when a storm blew their tent and kit into the sea—the men launched a two-week assault on the rivers flowing into the Bjornesund Fiord.

“It was a true wilderness at least 100 kilometres from other people,” says Marshall. “It really summed up the reasons we came to Greenland: warm weather melting a seemingly infinite snow pack, smooth ancient granite and good gradient.”

The promise of more undiscovered whitewater lured Marshall and Tapley back to Greenland

In the summer of 2008, this time better prepared and with the addition of two more paddling friends, Mike Scutt and Graham Milton. The short, plastic creek boats they brought with them—evolved from the ancient qajaq design to perform in a different medium—were nearly unrecognizable to the locals.

“We stopped in Qaqortoq where a man hand crafted traditional Inuit kayaks,” Scutt recalls. A thriving local qajaq club let the visitors try their seaworthy speed machines but declined an offer to demo the team’s strangely-shaped, garishly-coloured boats. “They laughed at our plastic whitewater boats,” Continues Scutt.

The English paddlers described their experiences to the qajaq club. How they had spent two weeks crossing fiords, walking over land, hitching rides on tractors and quad bikes and being dropped off by speedboat at the mouth of a brown, silty river churning through an impassable canyon. They told the Inuit kayakers about the arduous trek up around the canyon into a tributary full of waterfalls, smooth slides and beautiful, blue snowmelt water. After showing the local paddlers footage of running a long, steep slide, milton told them that all the pain and struggle to get there was worth it for that moment of ecstasy he felt in the pool looking back at that monster.

The locals’ reaction? “I think part of our descriptions were lost in translation,” says Milton.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2009 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Open Canoe Technique: Trouble Brewing

Skills

Photo: Rick Matthews — Open Canoe Technique: Trouble Brewing

Imagine you’re accepting accolades for a perfect run of Coliseum on the Ottawa River when a boil in the outwash flips you and all your credibility. if you’ve spent most of your paddling days on smaller rivers, the seemingly random power of big-water boils and their seam lines are likely to catch you off guard. Whether you’re in a solo playboat or paddling a loaded tandem on a northern river trip, these features demand your attention. With the right strategies, even the strongest boils can be made a fun part of whitewater paddling.

Named for the appearance of the water, like a lobster pot on the stove, boils are most common where there are powerful flows and water depths of at least three metres. A boil on large volume rivers like the Ottawa or Nahanni might be the shape and size of a pitcher’s mound. To understand boils and seam lines we need to first consider the movement of water in the vertical dimension.

Boils are caused by a current that flows upward, erupting on the surface. It could be a current that was deflected by an obstruction on the riverbed, in which case a boil will be pretty consistent and stationary. Or it might be a fast-moving current that collides with a slower one and is forced upward, creating an inconsistent boil that surges and dissipates, or reappears up- or downstream.

Seam lines form at the edge of a boil’s mound. Where there is water coming up, there’s water moving down to fill the void. seam lines are like vertical eddylines formed where diverging vertical currents meet.

Boils can be distinguished from whirlpools—another big water feature—by how and where they form. Whirlpools typically appear near the top of deep, strong eddylines and move downstream where they dissipate.

Boils and seam lines usually form further downstream where the eddyline is less distinct

Knowing where and how these features form helps you to avoid them. Avoidance is your first and best strategy. Plan your moves ahead so you don’t have to turn too aggressively and kill your speed in an unstable situation. If you are going to hit a boil, you’ll have to paddle uphill to get over the mound. Approaching with speed and continuing to paddle maintains your momentum across the boil and makes it easier to steer when you reach the seam line.

Cross seam lines at 90 degrees whenever possible and move away from them quickly. These are often the trickiest part of the boil since the water is pulling down on one side of your boat and pushing up on the other. The same loose hips you use to stay balanced atop the surging mound will allow you to make the quick adjustments needed to counteract the seam line’s opposing forces.

In the event of a capsize, boils, seam lines and whirlpools can make it difficult to roll. If you do swim, hang onto your boat—the downward currents in strong features can outweigh the buoyancy of your PFD, taking you momentarily below before firing you back up to the surface.

This article on boils was published in the Early Summer 2009 issue of Rapid magazine.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2009 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Skills: Falling Flat

Skills

Photo: Stephen Wright — Skills: Falling Flat

Running big waterfalls can be one of the most dangerous aspects of kayaking. Witness professional kayaker Dunbar Hardy, who endured 10 days in traction followed by a year of rigorous physiotherapy after breaking his back on a 50-foot falls in Ecuador. Or Corran Addison, who says he still feels intense pain nearly 20 years after shattering vertebrae on a 70-foot drop. Both injuries occurred landing flat from too great a height. When scouting a significant drop, the foremost decision for any paddler is whether to boof for a dry, flat landing or plug for a wet nosedive into the plunge pool.

To Boof, or not to Boof?

Identifying whether a landing is soft enough to absorb a flat landing takes practice and experience. As a general rule however, the more flow going over a drop, the more aerated the water at the bottom. Frothy, aerated water acts like an airbag in a vehicle and makes for a softer landing. If there is very little flow going over a drop, the green water below provides very little cushioning so landing flat can feel a lot like slamming onto a concrete floor. Nearly all of your boat’s momentum stops upon impact, forcing your body—mostly your spine—to absorb the shock. Therefore, the higher the drop and greener the landing, the more vertically you’ll want your boat to enter.

Tuck it in

Consider this: you have left the lip of a waterfall that you planned to plug but are now falling flat to the pool below. To save your spine, you need to drop your bow for a more vertical entry. The easiest way to do this is to tuck your body hard against your front deck. Shifting your weight forward like this will slowly start to angle your bow downwards. When you’re running a fairly large drop, staying in this position will cause your boat to become more vertical throughout the fall. Tucking forward also curves your spine which helps protect your back. If your bow doesn’t drop enough and you are still headed for a flat landing, prepare to be slammed against your front deck. Turn your head to one side so your helmet takes the impact instead of your nose.

Stomp the drop

A second method to get vertical is to stomp the drop. Stomping involves aggressively changing your angle in mid-air. It is more difficult than simply tucking forward and hoping for the best, but it’s also more effective on medium-sized drops when you don’t have enough time for a slow-motion weight transfer.

Think of your body as a swiss army knife. Start closed in an aggressive forward position on your front deck, pulling your knees to your chest. Move to an open position by sitting up and leaning slightly back while pushing your legs and heels away from your upper body. While the stomp can drop your bow quickly, it also leaves your body in a very vulnerable position. The secret to stomping safely is to tuck forward again just before landing. This motion can pull your bow back up so be careful to shift your weight forward slowly by crunching your abs rather than pulling up with your knees.

The stomp technique works really well for small, quick angle adjustments and is best suited to shorter drops. With such potential for serious injury, it pays to practice both of the recoveries described above. Practice stomping drops that you can boof safely so you don’t risk injury if you land wrong. Although the stomp is very effective in the right situation, tucking onto your front deck goes a long way to protecting your back in all scenarios.

Kelsey Thompson is a professional kayaker and three-time member of the Canadian Freestyle Kayak Team.

This article on waterfalls was published in the Early Summer 2009 issue of Rapid magazine. This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2009 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Sea Kayak Certification: Inside Kayaking’s Top Rank

Stories

Photo: Jonathan Walpole — Sea Kayak Certification: Inside Kayaking's Top Rank

When Bruce Lash started kayaking in 1983, he never imagined one day leading a group of paddlers across 12 kilometres of open water on lake Superior in November. The self-proclaimed “ordinary paddler” and firefighter from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, first became interested in sea kayaking as a means to better duck hunting. Less than a decade later, he was paddling with top kayakers, the likes of Derek Hutchinson and Valley Canoe Products designer Frank Goodman, and had started the first sea kayak company on lake Superior. lash became part of sea kayaking’s highest order in 1995 when Nigel Dennis, a British Canoe Union (BCU) coach and legendary expedition paddler, signed his 5-Star Sea Award.

Lash says his 5-Star assessment included everything the Holy Grail of sea kayaking is known for: rough water landings, broken boats and night navigation. Early on in the crossing portion, a paddler panicked and had to be towed for most of the way. Then, Dennis flooded someone else’s bow hatch—camping gear and all—and left lash to pick up the pieces. All the while and ever deadpan, Dennis watched on from a distance.

“It was like a rite of passage,” says lash. “I’ve never been so intimidated in my whole life. But there was a certain comfort in knowing that the assessor put you in those situations knowing that you had the tools to get out of them safely. And because I went in ready for the worst, it was achievable. But it felt really, really good when it was over.”

Despite its iconic status, the BCU wasn’t the first national governing body of paddle- sports. The American Canoe Association (ACA) started up in 1880, long before 1936 Olympic hopefuls created a union of English paddlers. But sea kayaking was barely known in North America when the sport’s highest standards were set by BCU grandfathers and whitewater paddlers Hutchinson, Tom Caskey, Sam Cook, and John

Ramwell in the 1960s. 

BCU programs are divided into training and assessment stages. Since the beginning, the goal of the BCU’s top sea kayaking award has been to train and assess expedition paddlers for their ability to lead groups in advanced sea conditions.

In north America meanwhile, where sea kayaking blossomed without for- mal instruction, the ACA’s only sea kayaking offering by the 1980s was a course that corresponded with the bottom rung of the BCU’s five-step ladder, says Dave ide, who began paddling in Traverse City, Michigan, in 1983. “All the ACA had were beginner-level courses. The British were doing things like kayaking around Cape Horn and Nigel [Dennis] had kayaked around all of the British Isles. They were very into the adventure aspect and the rougher ocean, and had an instruction program to back it up.”

The British invasion began when Czech ex-pat and former whitewater slalom world champion Stan Chladek began importing British-built sea kayaks to his Detroit paddling shop in the late 1970s and BCU instructors to his Great lakes Sea Kayak Symposium in the mid-1980s. Ide says that Britons Hutchinson, Goodman and Howard Jeffs were recruited by Chladek to oversee the ACA program. But it quickly became obvious that the British system of instruction was more refined, and BCU North America became its own entity.

Ide, a long-time AT&T telephone employee who still lives on the shore of lake Michigan, admits to having an addictive personality. As quickly as he became hooked on sea kayaking, he also became one of North America’s highest-ranking paddlers. He surfed his 18-foot Nordkapp with Goodman, Dennis and lash at Chladek’s Gales of November rendezvous on lake Superior’s Canadian shore, explored Vancouver island’s gale-battered Brooks Peninsula and paddled the violent tide races of the British isles. He achieved his first BCU instructor award in 1990.

After taking Advanced Proficiency Sea (now 5-Star Sea) training on lake Michigan, ide joined the 5-Star fraternity in 1993 when he led a group of paddlers, including assessor Dennis, in fog and five-metre seas on the boomer-ridden coast of Maine. “I was the only one with a chart and to get back to shore we had to follow a particular path around a bunch of is- lands,” says ide. “When we made it in safely, Nigel said he’d be happy to sign my endorsement.”

The Advanced Proficiency curriculum was about “stretching the boundaries of your skill level,” says ide. Still, it was doable. Ide says that then—as is still the case with the 5- Star today—candidates were told the skills and knowledge they were expected to demonstrate well before being assessed.

“Some of the skills sounded intimidating—like throwing away your paddle and rolling up with a spare in breaking waves,” he says. “But practiced, and by the time the assessment came around I could do it without fail. The hardest parts were the leadership and navigation aspects. You never knew what they were going to throw at you.”

In 1994, Ide became a senior instructor and, along with New York’s Bill Lozano, was handed the unenviable task of administering the BCU in North America—while the tea-sipping grandfathers watched on from across the pond. When Ide sanctioned Lash’s 5-Star Sea assessment on Lake Superior, the old guard balked. “It never really flew with the people in Britain that we could have an endorsement that was non-tidal,” says Ide.

Sam Crowley, an Ide-trained sea kayak instructor from Marquette, Michigan, says there were complicated politics involved: “The BCU has always had this thing where some have aspired to go global and others have wanted to stick to England. In the late-1990s, the ‘stick to England’ camp won.”

The BCU withdrew high-level instruction in North America for a time. As the BCU’s influence here waned, homegrown American and Canadian paddlesports programs flourished. Both the ACA and Canada’s national paddlesports organization, Paddle Canada, developed beginner to expert programs with skills and instructor streams that parallel the BCU hierarchy. Yet interestingly—whether out of deference to the legendary status of the BCU’s top honour or just poor marketing—both labelled their top award a level 4. Both level fours have yet to equal the 5-Star’s prestige.

Back in England, the BCU remained the domain of some of the world’s best sea kayakers. Today the BCU torch burns brighter than ever in the hands of a fresh, younger generation of expedition paddlers and ocean playboaters like Jeff Allen. 

To understand the BCU program, says Allen, an instructor, expedition paddler and owner of Sea Kayaking Cornwall, you have to realize that its awards are based on the sea conditions of Great Britain’s North Atlantic coast.

“The biggest problem with the running of 5-Star assessments in the U.S. is the lack of strong tidal flow,” says Allen. “It’s not that the U.S. doesn’t have 5-Star conditions. But the strong tides [of the British Isles] are intrinsic to the BCU 5-Star Sea award.”

Allen, who has sea kayaked around Japan and Antarctica’s South Georgia Island, admits to having never heard of the BCU when he started paddling in the mid-1990s. “At first I thought what a mess—levels, stars, A grades—and assessors and coaches griping at the system,” he says. “There may be a certain amount of British bull, but I quickly realized that the core of the system is as strong as it gets.”

After several 5-Star dry runs in Welsh overfalls as a “crash test dummy,” Allen found himself under the leadership microscope in 2003, taking a group across the Straits of Gibraltar. The typically three- to four- hour crossing from Spain to Morocco turned into a nine-hour suffer-fest, with Allen and assessor Fiona Whitehead both towing other participants in buffeting winds.

“Because I prepared religiously, I can’t say that it was a challenge,” says Allen. “In my training I worked through the what-ifs, looked for answers and developed strategies.”

Unlike the early days, female paddlers have played an increasingly important role in today’s BCU—and are instrumental in bringing the resurgence of the BCU’s North American influence. Since Trys Burke became the first woman to achieve the coveted Level 5 Coach award and was certified to assess 5- Star candidates in 1998, Fiona White- head and American Jen Kleck have also become top-ranked coaches.

Inspired and intimidated by the 5- Star Sea’s reputation, Ginni Callahan, a sea kayak guide and instructor who splits her time between Washington’s Puget Sound and Baja, Mexico, challenged the award in 2005. She did her assessment in Wales under the auspices of Nigel Dennis, Rowland Woollven and Fiona Whitehead, in the powerful, unfamiliar tidal races of Holy Island.

“It was my first time paddling in England and behind it all there was this sense of the impossible,” says Callahan. “On the whole, sea kayakers in England don’t paddle in the same type of conditions that we paddle in here on the Pacific. The tide races are so dynamic. It’s true that the sea conditions over there are un- like anything in the U.S.”

Callahan says British-trained sea kayakers seem to have a fondness for hardship and an affinity for disaster. “I went over and practiced for a few weeks before my assessment and helped out as a rescue boater at Nigel’s symposium,” she says. “The symposium was a real eye-opener. Participants could choose between three streams of instruction: Playing in the tide races, rescues and incident management, or taking out Nigel’s old beater kayaks for a crash and bash. In the end, all three groups seemed to blend into one. It sounds crazy—and it was—but it really got me thinking on my toes.”

When it came time for her assessment, Callahan says the biggest challenge was the night navigation. She was responsible for leading the group on a set route in pitch darkness. As she completed the last leg, the single streetlight she was using as a target was missing and she was reduced to hoping for the best.

“When we got close to the beach and the light was gone, I was certain I’d screwed up,” says Callahan. “All the while, the rest of the group and the assessors were just watching me sweat it out. But it turns out I was right on. The light had been turned out for the night.”

Ten years after Dave Ide’s reign, instructors like Ginni Callahan, Jen Kleck, Leon Sommé and Shawna Franklin have re-established the BCU in North America. Sea Kayak Georgia and Florida’s Sweetwater Kayaks in- vite some of England’s finest instructors for their annual BCU weeks. And on the West Coast, Kleck runs 5-Star training courses and is planning a 5- Star assessment in the tide races of San Francisco Bay.

Callahan says the award’s “Holy Grail” reputation is only half right: “The assessment isn’t about trying to trip you up, it’s about getting you to lead. It’s accessible for those who’ve done their homework and have the leadership knack. Still, the award is real in the sense that it actually means something.”

Conor Mihell is a freelance writer and kayak guide based on Lake Superior. He holds the BCU 4-Star Sea award and is a Paddle Canada Instructor-Trainer (conormihell.com).

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2009 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Thirst for Knowledge: Where’s a Girl to Go?

Stories

Photo: flickr.com/littledebbie11 — Thirst for Knowledge: Where's a Girl to Go?

“Quit drinking,” my husband said. “You’ll just have to pee more.”

New to kayaking, I had a major problem to figure out this summer. How the heck do women pee from these things?

On our first trip, we had to stop every two hours for me to go. I decided there had to be a better way after reading fabulous stories of women on expeditions doing 10-hour marathon days. How are they doing this? I must know since we are planning our own circumnavigation this summer around Manitoulin Island. It would be handy to discover this secret before then.

I began a desperate quest for knowledge. I ordered back issues of kayaking magazines that looked like they might have hidden tips. I bought kayaking videos and books about kayak expeditions. I found few answers. In Kabloona in the Yellow Kayak, Victoria Jason describes having a drysuit with no relief zipper and holding it all day until she could unpeel on shore. Not an option for my weak bladder.

At last I came across an advertisement for a women’s drysuit that included a relief zipper and a “Shewee.”

Ah ha! I was off to the outdoor store to find a Shewee. I purchased a P-Mate—the same idea. The sales girl told me, “Just climb onto your deck and go. It’ll wash off.”

She had obviously never seen me practicing reentries. If I could do one of those headstands in a kayak, then I wouldn’t have this problem.

Time to ask the experts. I nervously sent an email to the well-known expedition kayaker Justine Curgenven. The very next day I received an answer. (In trying to convey my excitement at this to a hockey-loving friend, I compared it to him getting a personal e-mail from Wayne Gretzky. How she had the time to respond to my wee request between all her touring for her latest movie, I don’t know.) My quest was over.

She presented three options.

1. Pee on a sponge (ew).
2. Try the P-Mate into a bottle. (This, Justine admits, is pretty awkward.)
3. Raft up and put one foot on my kayak and the other on another kayak and pee in between. Yeah, okay. In fact, Justine told me there is a short clip in her latest movie This is the Sea 4 that shows this being done.

So, unfortunately, there is no magic formula, but I now have something to work on for the summer. After several weird attempts at standing on my back porch and peeing off it, I’m still unsure about lying down with a drysuit on in a tiny coffin-like space and aiming into a bottle while bouncing around in waves. And since I’m not going to quit drinking anytime soon, my new strategy involves “stopping to smell the roses” whenever I want to. At least until I can do a headstand.

Terry Johnson lives in Whitefish Falls, Ontario, and writes personal anecdotes of her outdoor adventures (terrylynnjohnson.com).

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2009 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

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