Editorial: First Comes Food, Then Comes Marriage

Stories

Photo: Steve MacDonald/Camp Cooking: the Black Feather Guide — Editorial: First Comes Food, Then Comes Marriage

With utmost respect for my favourite writer, I must disagree with his cranky opinion of backcountry cuisine.

I admit you can take gourmet eating too far. In my restless twenties I went on a guided kayak tour and was appalled by the excesses of what surly guides call a “float and bloat” trip. I remember grilled steaks on the first night, fresh peach shortcake with real whipped cream for dessert. Lunch featured a spread of hard and soft cheeses, charcuterie and two kinds of smoked fish, followed by fresh fruit and homemade chocolate chip cookies. As if that weren’t enough, halfway through the trip the guides paddled back to base to restock the larder and returned with Häagen-Dazs packed in dry ice. With so much time devoted to cooking and eating, we spent all seven days within an hour’s paddle of our starting point. We ate more calories than we burned and put more mileage on our silver- ware than our paddles. i like eating more than most, but that’s not my idea of a sea kayak trip. Edward Abbey would have been appalled.

I respect the gustatory minimalism of the hard-tripping ascetic I once was, but as years go by and my trips get shorter, I am coming around to the gourmet camp. I still have good friends who subscribe to the “food is just fuel” philosophy, but my tastes are diverging from theirs. If you dropped in on a recent trip and watched us unpack our respective lunches, you would see me carefully preparing an open-faced bagel sandwich with smoked oysters and cream cheese while my friend is happily scarfing cold baked beans from a can (“No Name, 66 cents!”).

MAKING THE MEALS COUNT

I see gourmet eating not as an end in itself, but as a reward for a hard day’s paddle, a complement to the fine scenery and amiable company of a trip. Kayak trips are one time in my life when I’m working hard enough to be truly hungry, and since I spend a good half of my time on the water thinking about my next meal, I like to make those meals count.

If I once underestimated the importance of gourmet camping, that all changed six years ago when I went paddling for the first time with my girlfriend. Determined to impress, I pulled out all the stops and served marinated chicken and fresh-baked pumpkin pie on the first night. She still tells the story about how I won her heart with that meal (and complains how my cooking nowadays rarely measures up). We’re getting married a few days after this magazine goes to press. For our honeymoon we’re going on a paddling trip and bringing plenty of good food.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Boat Review: Evergreen’s Solito

Photo: Scott MacGregor — Boat Review: Evergreen's Solito

The name Solito for Evergreen’s latest whitewater solo boat was literally pulled out of a hat. Before the new solo boat was about to be released last spring, Mountain Equipment Co-op ran a contest for its members to suggest names, the prize being a shiny new Evergreen Whatchamacallit. More than 5,000 names were dropped in boxes across the country and then short-listed to eight by a panel of judges. Wakefield, Quebec, resident Patrick Hunt is the proud owner of the very first Solito.

Evergreen Canoe Company is more commonly known among whitewater canoeists for their Starburst, a highly rockered, 17-foot river tripper, than it is for solo playboats. Six years ago or so, Evergreen acquired the rights to produce the Starburst, Prowler and Sunburst II, formally Blue Hole Canoe models. Along comes canoe designer John Graye shopping a new boat design and Evergreen has themselves a solo boat.

The Solito falls into the same category as the Esquif Zoom and Pyranha Prelude, short but still a full-bodied open boat. These designs are great surfers, quick to pivot, ideal for small rivers and technical moves. It’s the type of boat you grow into with a little experience.

If you’ve hung around open canoes for a while you’ll take one look at the Solito and say “cut-down Ocoee.” When the Dagger Ocoee was the hottest boat, paddlers were cutting sections from the middle of the hull and joining the two ends back together with epoxy. Great idea except that it removes the widest, most stable part of the canoe. The Solito is flat-bottomed with sharp chines and sharp bow and stern like the Ocoee, but wider, less flared and 13 inches shorter. So maybe not really like the Ocoee, but closer to that than anything else.

Although our test model looked practically new you can see and feel that the wide, flat bottom is oil canning between your knees. Sitting in it you can push the hull down into the water, which means that the water pressure is pushing up on the hull. Roll upside down and your weight really draws the hull in. What this means for performance is hard to tell, as you can’t paddle the boat any other way. With a more rigid hull, the Solito should be faster, and should also be crisper handling. Evergreen has been adjusting the specification of the Royalex sheets they use to stiffen it up, and the new hulls are supposed to be much better.

If the Solito was ours, we’d try moving the thwarts toward the centre of the boat and try bringing them in an inch or so. Sometimes drawing a boat in at the gunwales will cause the bottom to flex, tighten up and be more convex, which in the Solito would be a good thing. A rounder hull should make it faster and being narrower at the gunwales would make it easier to paddle. But this will make it initially more tippy and reduce the amount of flare, robbing its secondary stability. We’d also drill out the rivets and screw on some ash or cherry gunwales.

It seems like we’re being picky, but not really. The Solito is a great little boat that will suit a large number of paddlers, we’re just dreaming of making it our own. And we know from the Ocoee days that this particular shape is tons of fun to paddle and play around with.

Specs

Material: Royalex
Length: 9’ 11”
Width: 28”
Depth: 14”
Gunwales: Vinyl
Weight: 45 lbs (as tested with available Mike Yee Outfitting and bags)
MSRP: $1,349 CAD, not outfitted

Watch THE CANOE an award-winning film that tells the story of Canada’s connection to water and how paddling in Ontario is enriching the lives of those who paddle there.

Boat Review: The Island by Hobie

Photo Victoria Bowman — Boat Review: The Island by Hobie

BEFORE YOU ASK what business this crazy contraption has in a kayak review, let me explain that the core of the Hobie Island sailing trimaran is a standard Hobie Mirage Adventure sit-on-top kayak (this boat’s full name is the Hobie Mirage Adventure Island). The Mirage Adventure is the fastest kayak in the Hobie lineup, designed for maximum speed, tracking and carrying capacity. So if you strip off the Island’s pedal drive, plug-in wheelie cart, twin outriggers, 15-foot mast and 54.5-square-foot sail, you’re left with this nice all-purpose kayak to paddle around or fish from. It even has three hatches and built-in fishing rod holders.

A cautious kayaker, I first climbed aboard the Island with my paddle firmly in hand, ready to resort to paddling if things went sideways. Pedaling with my feet, controlling the rudder with my left hand and working the two lines for the sail with my right felt a bit like learning to fly a helicopter at first. But within half an hour playing in moderate winds I went from complete sailing beginner to flying along at up to seven knots. When the wind died or I stalled trying to come about to tack, I simply threw in a few pedal strokes to get moving again. I had a blast chasing waves and surfing downwind, jacking up the speed with the pedals if I needed a little oomph to get over a wave crest. I soon stowed the paddle for good.

The sail system is the real deal with the same high-quality rigging as Hobie’s famous sail cats: Harken hardware, Delrin plastic bearings at the base of the mast, Spectra cord rudder lines. With the roller-furling mast, you can go from full sail to zero in about five seconds, and instantly adjust the amount of sail for varying wind speeds. Kicking back and enjoying the view while averaging four or five knots, I had dreams of loading up for a long coastal tour and effortlessly cruising 50 to 100 kilometres a day with a cappuccino in the cup holder and some Jack John- son on the—okay, so there’s no stereo.

The Island is nearly impossible to flip due to a self-limiting design: when the boat catches a lot of wind, it leans over and buries the downwind outrigger, automatically slowing down (soaking the paddler in the process) and turning safely upwind. As my confidence grew, I started fantasizing about having more floatation in the outriggers, more clearance for the outrigger arms, and a larger rudder with a more powerful control so I could suck more speed from a strong wind. But I’ll bet that would get me into trouble. And I doubt you could still call it kayaking.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Adventure Kayak magazine. For more boat reviews, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Boat Review: The T-1600 by TRAK

Have you seen The Kayak Transformers? This summer blockbuster begins not long ago in a galaxy not far away (Alberta), where a group of entrepreneurs quietly hatch a plan to create the most successful kayak company in the world.

By the end of 2005 our heroes have raised more than $2.4 million in startup capital and are angling for another $2 million from investors. In 2007 their top-secret invention, the TRAK T-1600, finally hits the water with a big splash. They boldly hype it as “the world’s only performance kayak that goes in a pack” and the media eats it up.

The action begins when the T-1600 rolls onto the scene in an attractive duffel bag with a plastic external frame and built-in wheels. Then it stuns its human owners by transforming into a medium-sized touring kayak in less than 20 minutes—faster than any other folding kayak in the universe. The one-piece hull and deck and aircraft-aluminum frame appear outstandingly engineered and constructed. A battle ensues for the hearts and minds of kayakers everywhere.

There is a dramatic climax when we discover that there are three hand-powered jacks built into the frame—one on each side of the cockpit and one along the keel between the paddler’s legs. These allow the T-1600 to change shape on the water. In an instant it switches from the flat profile of a rowing shell to the rocker of a whitewater canoe. Egads! Do you realize the implications? Here is a kayak that is immune to the classic tradeoff between speed and maneuverability! It can outrun play kayaks and outplay touring kayaks! Global market domination is virtually assured.

There’s a moment of doubt when we see that the side jacks are designed to hook the hull left or right to overcome turning in crosswinds (because the T-1600, in a gesture of elegant simplicity, has no skeg or rudder). The hard-chine, deep-V hull is not strongly affected by wind, so we wonder if this kinky feature is a strength or a weakness.  As the saga continues, however, the TRAK T-1600 proves itself to be an awesome transformer. It holds its own against any other folding kayak for its construction quality and ease of assembly alone. Dueling with quality hardshell kayaks in their element is another matter. These old standbys do what they do really well, at a price that’s easier for the masses to swallow. So the battle rages and it will take more time to know if the T-1600 can fulfill its creators’ dream of revolutionizing kayaking the way parabolic skis swept downhill skiing. Things look rosy for now, but just like in Hollywood, you can pretty much bank on a sequel.

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This article first appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Adventure Kayak magazine. For more boat reviews, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Performance Paddling for Dummies

Skills

Photo: Don Stoneman — Performance Paddling for Dummies

For nearly 30 years my friend Steve has been paddling canoes “marathon style,” calling “huts” and switching sides every eight strokes or so. While some of Steve’s on-water time has been spent racing —he has been known to show up at the cottage regatta with his young son and make heads turn—far more of his days have been spent tripping across Algonquin Park and expeditioning in the Arctic.

Why does Steve paddle marathon style on trips? Steve admits that canoe tripping isn’t about being in a hurry— every canoe tripper will tell you that being outdoors in the fresh air and on the water is simply good for the soul. But you still have to achieve travel goals every day. So why not paddle the same distance with less effort and fewer sore muscles, with more time and energy left to explore when you get to the campsite?

Marathon style melds the human body (or bodies) with an exquisitely designed canoe to achieve a cruising speed of five or six miles per hour. Steve says that, boiled down to its essence, all it takes to master marathon’s elegant and efficient style are three rules of thumb. Steve’s three rules are essentially the fundamentals of the perfect forward stroke stripped of all fancy bits, such as the J- stroke, until there’s nothing left but what makes a canoe move quickly and effortlessly through the water.

The first rule: use the big muscles of the body’s core. Too often, canoe trippers simply reach forward and pull the paddle though the water with their arms. But the arms should be merely connecting rods to the paddle, not the pistons that drive it. The real power comes from the large mus- cle groups of the body’s core—the lats, abdominals and to a lesser degree, the shoulders. The arms hold the paddle in the water while these large muscles provide propulsion.

Rule number two is the secret to accessing the power of those core muscles: sit in the proper marathon position. Sit in a comfortably padded canoe seat—most marathon style paddlers prefer the rear of the seat to be raised slightly. Keep your back straight. Position your feet less than shoulder width apart against a firm footrest just far enough in front of you that your knees are either at the same height as your hips or just slightly higher. Rest your feet against a specialized footrest or strategically placed canoe pack to take the pressure off your hips. Keep your hamstrings loose, knees together—do not press your legs against the sides of the canoe.

This an ideal posture to prevent lower back pain. It also facilitates a forward lean of about nine degrees or 10 percent and lets your hips move freely. Maintain that lean in a relaxed fashion through all phases of the forward stroke. Do not hinge forward at the waist to maximize your reach. Bending forward tires the muscles, and it makes the canoe bounce, wasting energy. In the proper seating position, your skeleton takes the load. You can paddle further and faster without fatigue.

Now you’re ready to place a stroke. Bend your paddle-side knee to let the paddle side of your body rotate forward. Drop your paddle-side shoulder to place the blade in the water at your feet. Push down with your top arm and pull on the shaft with your back and abdominal muscles. Take the blade out before it reaches your hip.

Do it again.

Now for rule number three: you must keep your paddle perpendicular to the water surface so that it moves parallel to the keel line. Pay attention to your top hand— it should be out in front of your paddle-side shoulder from the very beginning of the power phase of your stroke, only coming low and in front of your body during the recovery. If the top hand strays, the paddle won’t travel parallel to the canoe’s keel line. The bow paddler will push the canoe slightly off course to the side away from the paddle, wasting energy that should be spent pushing the canoe forward while the stern paddler spends energy drawing to bring the canoe back in line. A stern paddler who doesn’t have the top hand over the paddle is likely crabbing the stern off course. So get that top hand out over the paddle! You know you’re doing it right if the shoulder strap on the “top arm” side of your PFD is rub- bing against your ear or even your cheek.

When both paddlers are performing this stroke correctly (wind and current effects aside) the canoe will gradually veer toward the bow paddler’s side. Call a “hut” to switch paddling sides and in a few strokes the canoe will come back on course with no momentum-wasting pries or J-strokes.

Marathon style paddling is most effective when you have a lightweight performance canoe with a long water- line, minimal rocker, a sliding bow seat and adjustable footrests; you and your partner have correctly sized paddles—ideally bent-shafts; and your canoe is made trim by adjusting the load or sliding seats.

However, Steve’s three principles of an efficient forward stroke are the same no matter what canoe you’re in, whether you’re skirting the shores of Bathurst Inlet, crossing Lake of Two Rivers or trashing those twits who beat you at last year’s cottage regatta.

Don Stoneman has been racing marathon canoes and kayaks for about 25 years. He is the chair of Canada’s Marathon Racing Council and past president of the Ontario Marathon Canoe Racing Association.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2004 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.

Drag-and-Drop

Skills

I set up for shallow slides much the same as I set up for any creek line. I start opposite the side I want to end up on and carry momentum into the rapid to cross the grain of the falling water. On shallow slides in an open boat carrying momewntum is even more important than in a kayak, since an onside forward stroke wants to spin the boat and any strokes in one inch of water don’t work very well.

On the Independence River in New York State I started down a narrow shallow slide that fanned out as it steepened, before dropping into a very tiny cauldron surrounded by sloping granite banks. With some surprise I found myself grinding down angled left as planned to cross the grain, but definitely not moving left. Matter of fact, as I was approaching the landmark rooster tail at the lip of the steeper bit, I was sliding even further to my right toward the cauldron—not at all where anyone would intend to go. Finishing the drop backwards seemed like the best of the worst, and even though there was so little water cascading over the rocks you could hardly call it a rapid, it was enough to drown out the laughter of everyone on shore.

It was several months before I came up with a plausible explanation of why I’d gotten so far off line.

On the Doncaster, a classic Quebec spring run, I watched the same thing happen. In this photo, the boater is trying to drive river left but the water pushes him out towards the middle of the rapid. He either didn’t come into the rapid with enough forward momentum to begin with, or the drag on the bottom of the boat in the shallow water caused the boat to slow down and move slower than the water. Either way, if you’re not moving faster than the water, crossing the grain turns into a scary back ferry.

Think back to the old days when we all used the back ferry to descend rapids slowly. A back ferry works because the canoe is moving slower downstream than the current, due in this case to your backpaddling. The water pushes on the exposed side of the canoe moving the craft laterally across the river.

On a shallow slide you get the same effect when your creek boat is slowed by the friction of the river bottom.

As soon as you lose forward momentum the current begins to take your boat with it. Aligned perfectly with the current, you’re going where the water is going. Any angle in either direction and presto, you are in back ferry mode, whether you like it or not!

So far, I’m not setting up to back ferry down slides. I still much prefer maintaining forward speed and driving toward the direction I want to go.

However, understanding how the friction in shallow-water slides slows my boat, I can always try to claim I was back ferrying when I end up beached on shore.

Who knows, maybe it won’t be too long before we’re all back ferrying off waterfalls… you go first.

This article on back ferries was published in the Summer 2007 issue of Rapid magazine.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2007 issue of Rapid Magazine.

The Macho Move

Skills

The macho move is one of the most impressive downstream freestyle moves known to mankind. Invented by Brad Ludden and named by Jay Kincaid, it became mainstream after Ludden and other pros displayed the new move at the 2002 IR Triple crown on the Nolichucky River in Tennessee.

The macho move is simply an air loop, which pops off the peak of a wave while moving downstream. Only two waves are required to get a nice aerial macho move. It is ideal to learn the move on high-volume rivers with medium-sized waves where you don’t have to worry about hitting bottom. The New and Gauley rivers in West Virginia are my favourites for doing macho moves since the potential spots to do this move are endless. Also endless are the potential variations of the macho move. One slight variation of the macho move was done for this particular photo sequence, with the boat popping off the peak with a twist to get more of a space Godzilla macho move. New ways are still being discovered.

The feeling of doing a massive air flip while travelling downriver at high speed is truly exhilarating. once you nail your first macho move the addiction will begin. You’ll never just float down a wave train again.

How to macho move:

Step 1: Paddle at medium speed into a wave train with fairly consistent standing waves. The greater the spacing between the waves, the more downstream speed you’ll require. Proper timing is crucial for the macho move.

Step 2: The initiation is the classic double-pump technique, started at the peak of the first wave. The key is to lift your bow into the air while moving over the first wave peak, and to drive your bow as deep as possible into the trough between the two waves. This loading of your bow’s volume deep in the trough is where the pop of the macho move comes from.

Step 3: As you begin to travel up the face of the second wave, stand up on your foot blocks just as you would for an air loop. You should time this jumping action so that you are completely standing up just before the peak of the second wave.

Step 4: Snap your torso forwards as if you were flatwater looping off the peak of the wave. You will encounter much less resistance than a normal flatwater loop since the water is dropping away from you as you travel downstream off the peak of the wave. You know you’ve nailed your timing perfectly when you completely clear your stern of the water and you land flat on your hull in the next trough.

Pro tips:

1. Practice both the flatwater loop and loops in holes, and concentrate on the timing of the jump to increase your pop into the air.

2. The higher you pull yourself into the air off the initiation wave peak, the deeper your bow will go into the next trough. The deeper your bow goes in the trough, the higher you will be thrown into the air off the second wave peak.

3. Approach the first wave at a slight angle from the side. This will help you face downstream while vertical on your bow, which will make your macho move loop finish straighter.

This article on the macho move was published in the Summer 2007 issue of Rapid magazine.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2007 issue of Rapid Magazine.

River Alchemy: Random Beauty

Stories

Photo: garyandjoaniemcguffin.com — River Alchemy: Random Beauty

I stumbled on it some years ago on a rambling hike down a dry streambed in Driggs, Idaho. I found a perfect bend in a river. A 180-degree change in direction, carved from the alluvial plain. The gravel bank was perhaps eight feet high; it was plumb vertical, and had a perfectly walled arc, perhaps 100 feet in diameter. From every angle it was astoundingly geometrically perfect. It grabbed my eye and carried it around its curve. I had never seen such mathematical perfection in nature before.

Luna Leopold felt that same sense of awe in nature. As the son of Aldo Leopold, the famous pioneer of wilderness ethics and land protection in the United States, Luna Leopold was the first to set out to study rivers in a manner unheard of—he measured them… in great detail. In fact he spent a lifetime creating formulas to explain just how rivers work, and how it was possible for them to carve the perfect bend.

By and large, he was successful.

He was the creator of what is now called quantitative hydrology, and in doing so re-established much of the fundamental assumptions of modern engineering.

Starting in 1953 with his obscure (to most readers) text, The Hydraulic Geometry of Stream Channels and Some Physiographic Implications, Leopold pulled rivers apart, feature by feature, and scratched out the formulas that explain their behaviours. Some of his findings are uncanny. Consider these, if you haven’t before: the wavelength a river meanders is, on average, 12 times its width; the Sine coefficient for those meanders is the same coefficient for the compression waves that form on a stream’s surface; and the riffle-pool interval is one half the wavelength of the meanders.

Fascinating.

He created formulas to explain helical flow, wave creation, hydraulics, sediment load and watershed flood rates. The list goes on and on. In my search to explain the perfect bend all roads lead to Leopold’s work. He was incredibly prolific and clearly a genius. While mathematically dazzling, his formula for the perfect bend left me spiritually unfulfilled.

A year later I was handed Barry Lopez in a used bookstore in Smithers, B.C., Lopez lives on the other end of the Sine curve from Leopold; if Leopold is pure science, Lopez is pure poetry. River Notes is Lopez’s river dissection, via a series of short stories so descriptive the book drips with water. His swirling eddies suck you in, carry you into the current, then delicately and surprisingly drop you in the literary ocean of deep thought with his famous single-sentence endings.

Lopez explores the idea of how a river can so seamlessly and completely change direction, while looking for instruction that may be useful to his own life.

Mired in depression, he laboured to examine every aspect of the bend in the river behind his home. If he could figure out this bend, then maybe he could figure out how to turn his own life around. Bed-ridden and feeling no hope at all, he hauls himself down to the stream and dips his hand in the water. The essence of the turn, he realizes, is not in the details (nor in any of Leopold’s formulas), but in some bigger connection between himself and the river.

Lopez’s exploration of the fine details of rivers is in a way an exploration of the human soul, but his life-changing river bend metaphor did not speak to me any more than Leopold’s algebra.

I’ve since returned to the sharp and blocky Canadian Shield rivers, rivers with turns seemingly unaffected by water and time pushing against them. In my lifetime I’m unlikely to find another bend so geometrically perfect.

With every new river I paddle I realize it was not the bend that was so intriguing, it was how the perfectly bending arc grabbed my eye, smoothly railing it around the corner in a new direction. It was not the bend in the river, it was what lay beyond that was so intriguing and so important. The perfect bend is not a complex equation. For me now, the perfect bend is the one just downstream, the one luring me to explore what is just beyond.

This article on science and poerty was published in the Summer 2007 issue of Rapid magazin

This article first appeared in the Summer 2007 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Go North

Trips

Tundra sunsets that last for hours, wildlife from another epoch,

whitewater coursing through sheer canyons and rock cathedrals
reaching to the sky—if you
haven’t paddled in the north
you owe yourself a trip.

Planning for a northern river trip
can take up to a year, which is why you should start now. We’ve asked five experts which Arctic and
sub-Arctic rivers you have to paddle.

You can take their word for it.

Thelon River

Northwest Territories and Nunavut

The Thelon River sweeps out of spruce-lined valleys into vast treeless barrens. You can paddle for an entire summer under the watchful eyes of lumbering muskox, rocketing gyrfalcons, patrolling grizzlies and vast herds of caribou. This is as close as you can get to primeval Pleistocene wilderness on the planet.

The Thelon’s steady current counters the barrenlands’ relentless east winds. In places the wind and current can pile up big standing waves, but usually the paddling is easy, and the kilometres go by faster than you’d like.

Though the area is now empty of people, signs of ancient human life are everywhere. Dene campsites, inukshuks, burial sites, food caches, tent rings, arrowheads, chipping stations and rock blinds litter the valley’s barren ridges—as if the people who lived on this land just left.

Keep your eyes open

The ruins of the tiny log cabin where John Hornby and his party starved to death in 1927 can be seen on the north side of the Thelon below the junction of the Hanbury River.

Don’t forget

Pack a spotting scope. You can set it up on a tripod and feel like you are on a prehistoric safari at every campsite.

Routes

The stretch from the junction of the Hanbury and Thelon rivers to Beverley Lake should take two weeks and is not challenging. For a trip of three weeks intermediate paddlers can start via the Hanbury, Upper Thelon, Clarke or Elk rivers. All involve some portaging, rapids and canyons. To extend either route allow 10 to 14 days to get from Beverley Lake down to Baker Lake. Between Beverley Lake and Baker Lake there are three very big lakes and some rapids. You should count on becoming wind-bound for a few days here and should be a seasoned Arctic traveller. There are commercial flights out of Baker Lake.

Max Finklestein is the co-author of Paddling the Boreal Forest and author of Paddling a Continent. He is an officer at the Canadian Heritage Rivers System and has paddled the Thelon six times.

South Nahanni River

Northwest Territories

The South Nahanni’s canyons are bigger, longer and more impressive than any other Arctic river I’ve paddled. They have wildly varying characters, from the powerful whitewater of Virginia Falls and Fourth Canyon to the quiet waters and sheer vertical walls of the Gate and towering buttresses of First Canyon. They are magical to paddle through and better to explore on foot.

The whitewater is the real highlight of the Nahanni. If you start your trip at the Moose Ponds in the headwaters of the South Nahanni or the Flat Lakes on the Little Nahanni, you’ll have three days of nearly continuous technical rock gardens that push what can be done with loaded tandem canoes. For experienced whitewater paddlers, it is kilometres of pure fun. The river quickly grows in volume and below the access points at Island Lakes and Rabbittkettle the excitement comes in the form of big waves and increasingly stunning scenery.

Keep an eye out for

Two tufa mounds are a short hike away from the Rabitkettle River. These mounds of sandstone-like calcium carbonate have been built up by hot springs for 10,000 years and are up to 20 metres high.

Don’t forget

A wide-angle camera lense. For a day of the best scenery available to a canoeist you can’t beat the day through First Canyon, starting at Dead Man’s Canyon.

Routes

Most People fly from Fort Simpson into one of five put-in points. For trips of three weeks that start with three days of whitewater put in at the Moose Ponds or the Flat Lakes. The lower access points deliver you to a higher volume river with big waves rather than rock gardens. Outfitters will take people with novice whitewater skills, but the more whitewater experience you have, the more you will enjoy it. From Island Lakes it is three weeks with lots of time for hiking. From Rabitkettle Lake, and the start of Nahanni National Park, it takes two weeks. For the last two days of the trip the South Nahanni leaves the MacKenzie Mountains and meets the Liard River and your pick-up for the three-hour drive back to Fort Simpson.

Mark Scriver has been guiding for Black Feather since 1984. He is the co-author of Thrill of the Paddle and has paddled the South Nahanni, Tatshenshini, Firth, Hess, Horton, Natla, Snake, Mountain, Moisie, Clearwater, Seal and Chuluut Rivers.

Soper River

Baffin Island, Nunavut

The Soper doesn’t just feel like a northern river. It feels distinctly Arctic. Though there are some scrubby willows in the river valley there is no mistaking the fact you are far above the treeline. On top of that, you begin and end the trip in Inuit communities, not Dene communities like most rivers in the Northwest Territories. Seeing polar bear hides stretched out on frames in Kimmirut is a good reminder of where you are.

Despite the remote feel, the river is easy to get to. Paddlers in Eastern Canada can leave home in the morning and be putting up their tent beside the river the same afternoon.

The Soper’s cold waters have cut a U-shaped valley through the flattened peaks that gird the river. The park it flows through, Katannilik Territorial Park, means “place of many waterfalls” and you never go very long between water spouts cascading off the mountains.

The best way to travel the Soper is to allot up to half of each day for side hikes. It only takes an hour to get on top of the ancient rounded mountains to watch the low midnight sun playing on Arctic wildflowers.

Keep an eye out for

While hiking downstream of the Livingstone River confluence, look for small open-pit mines. Semi-precious mica and lapislazuli were mined as recently as the 1970s. Great rock hunting.

Routes

Between Mount Joy and Soper Lake the river doesn’t surpass non-technical class II, except for the easily portaged Soper Falls at Soper Lake. A pace that allows for plenty of hiking will get you down the river in seven days. The season runs from July to late-August. First Air flies from Ottawa to Iqaluit, where you get on a plane that drops into a glacial valley below Mount Joy and touches its tundra tires down on an esker. Finish at Soper Lake, a 15-minute drive from Kimmirut. You can arrange for a shuttle and perhaps dinner with an Inuit family in Kimmirut from the Hunter and Trapper Association. First Air flies out of Kimmirut back to Iqaluit.

Wendy Grater is the owner and director of Black Feather Wilderness Adventures. She has canoed the Tatshenshini, Bonnet Plume, Snake, Firth, Mountain, South Nahanni, Natla-Keele, Coppermine, Hood, Burnside, Seal, Bloodvein and Soper rivers.

Hood River

Nunavut

Any river that Bill Mason liked more than the South Nahanni must be worth paddling. What the Hood has going for it is everything—that is to say it is diverse. There are beautiful lake sections, pounding technical rapids and spectacular falls and canyons. Topping it all is the 60-metre Wilberforce Falls, a two-stage drop that is the highest waterfall above the Arctic Circle.

You don’t have to be a slalom champ to do the Hood, but the rapids are long and can be challenging. You need to be comfortable eddy-hopping down technical sets. Bring good skills and judgment and leave the testosterone behind. But know that you can’t paddle everything. There is no way around a few long, tough portages.

Keep your eyes open

The wildlife is off the charts. Perhaps most impressive are the muskox. You are assured of seeing herds of this seemingly prehistoric beast.

Required skill

Without a reliable back ferry for negotiating long rapids you shouldn’t be on the Hood River.

Routes

Charter a float plane out of Yellowknife to drop you in the headwaters near Lake Tahikafaaluk (make sure the ice is out before you get there). From there it will be a two- to three-week trip down to Bathurst Inlet Lodge and the charter back to Yellowknife.

Cliff Jacobson is the author of more than a dozen books on camping and canoeing. He was married at Wilberforce Falls in 1992.

Coppermine River

Northwest Territories and Nunavut

The Coppermine is an intersection of things geological, biological and cultural.

It takes you on a roller-coaster ride through different rock layers that reveal the meeting of geological epochs.

Above the rock there is a thin layer of soil that seems fragile but somehow supports Lapland rhododendrons that are old enough they might have been brushed by Samuel Hearne’s foot in the 18th century.

The river traverses the dividing line between the treeline and the tundra, which means you get both experiences, and have enough fuel to cook lavishly. More importantly, it crosses the border from the Northwest Territories to Nunavut, and from Dene to Inuit territory. It shows that rivers are bigger than politics.

When you hike to a place of prospect and see the river as it cuts through time and space all these elemental things converge and leave you with a lasting connection to this empty land.

Keep your eyes open

As a warm-up for his real disaster, Sir John Franklin travelled to the Arctic Coast via the Coppermine in 1819, losing 11 of his 20 men. Things were still going well for the party when they hit Rocky Defile, a good place to pull out a copy of Franklin’s Journey to the Polar Sea and read the description of the rapid he named:

“The river here descends for three-quarters of a mile in a deep but narrow and crooked channel…confined between perpendicular cliffs resembling stone walls…. The body of the river pent within this narrow chasm dashed furiously round the projecting rocky columns and discharged itself at the northern extremity in a sheet of foam.”

They ran it, of course.

Don’t forget

Powdered wasabi and dehydrated pickled ginger for fresh Arctic char sushi.

Routes

Charter a float plane drop-off in Point Lake, from where you can speed down the river in two weeks or travel leisurely in three. With the exception of Bloody Falls on the last day the entire high-volume, but not particularly technical, river is usually runnable for paddlers with class III skills.

James Raffan is the author of Bark, Skin and Cedar and has travelled the Coppermine River twice in the summer and once in the winter.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

Editorial: A Drop in the Bucket

Stories

Driving home from a kayak fishing trip last week I realized I had done what most whitewater paddlers do every weekend—I filled my gas tank and cooler before I left home.

The week before, back at the Rapid office, I had been preparing an economic impact survey to measure the amount of money spent in Palmer Rapids during our Canadian Whitewater Instructor Conference and sixth annual Palmer Rapids River Festival. I’ll use the data from this to present a case to my local municipality, county economic development office and tourism association arguing that whitewater paddling is good for the area.

Meanwhile, the only things I left behind after my weekend in the abandoned-mining-town-turned-tourism-based fishing community were a couple of snagged lures and a case of empties.

For my fishing trip, I easily dropped $250 on gas, groceries and bits of tackle. Buying it all locally would have only cost me $18 more than it did at the highway gas bar and box store supermarket. With eight of us in our group and eight other cabins at the place we stayed, for an extra six dollars a day each, these guys at this one fishing camp could have injected $10,000 into the local economy simply by buying supplies at the Gowganda general store. And that doesn’t take into account the beer!

We need to stop thinking about our rivers as being free.

With increasing pressure on rivers for hydro development, river protection groups have to slap a sticker price on whitewater. These groups are standing up in public meetings across the country convincing local politicians and governments that paddlers will generate more business and more revenue than turbines.

I respect the efforts of groups like Les Amis who are committed to protecting the Kipawa River from hydro development. Unfortunately, this year Les Amis is officially cancelling the 21st annual Kipawa River Rally due to what vice President Peter Karwacki calls the “unsafe, unpredictable situation created by the punitive actions of [the federal government].” Karwacki recommends paddlers send letters of apology to local businesses in the host town of Laniel. Maybe the loss of revenue will spur local businesses to stand up and take notice. Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

We know that economic impact studies sway government decisions when it comes to whitewater paddling.

Whitewater parks are being built all across North America on the basis of their economic returns. Cities like Reno, Nevada and Wausau, Wisconsin have invested millions to create whitewater tourism and are reaping rewards. More complacent communities are letting developers shut off their natural rivers.

We simply have to stop thinking of rivers as being free and be conscious and proactive with our spending. We can pay for a shuttle instead of driving two cars from the city. Stay the night at a local campground, motel or bed and breakfast. Rent our boats locally. Shop at the local grocery store. Fill our gas tanks for the ride home. Plan to meet your friends at the restaurant for breakfast. Buy an ice cream cone. And if there’s a box at the take-out or campground, dude, put your money in the box.

We need to pay where we play. And if it costs us more to do so, it’s not an added expense, it’s an investment.

This article on shopping local was published in the Summer 2007 issue of Rapid magazine

This article first appeared in the Summer 2007 issue of Rapid Magazine.