The astronomical name for a shooting star is a meteor. It is the flash of light you see in the sky when a meteoroid or a meteorite burns up as it enters the atmosphere.
Meteorites are pieces of space rock that make it through the atmosphere and strike the Earth’s surface without completely vapouri zing. About 5,800 hit the Earth each year. Meteoroids vapourize before hitting Earth.
The custom of wishing on a shooting star originated in England in the Middle Ages, when peasants believed meteors were heavenly souls coming to Earth to mark the birth of a new person.
The odds of being killed by a meteorite are 10 trillion to one. You are roughly 1,000 times more likely to win a lottery.
The Sudbury basin is thought to be the impact site of a meteorite with a diameter of more than 200 kilometres, possibly the largest to have ever struck Earth.
In Islamic folklore, meteors were missiles launched at evil-doers (to use the current terminology) attempting to slip into the gates of heaven.
To the Ojibwa, shooting stars were gifts sent to someone on Earth by the Great Spirit.
Comets are pieces of rock less than two kilometres in diameter that orbit the sun. As a comet travels through space, material is blown away and forms a debris trail.
Annual meteor showers occur when the Earth’s orbit passes through the trail of a comet. Shooting-star gazers can see more than 50 meteors per hour in mid-August during the Perseid meteor shower when the Earth crosses the path of the Swift-Tuttle comet.
Bad Company’s 1975 song “Shooting Star” tells of the hazards of stardom and excess facing billboard-topping rockers. Their album burned up after hitting number three on the charts and they never reached such heights again.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.
Spirit Moose Sightings | Photo: Bill Roth/Anchorage Daily News
If your camping partner returns from gathering firewood in a hysterical panic, gibbering about having seen a “ghost moose,” don’t necessarily initiate an emergency evacuation on the grounds of failing mental health.
Sightings of white-coloured moose have been reported in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Newfoundland, Alaska and Idaho. Last fall, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) joined Newfoundland and Labrador in officially recognizing their existence and putting them off limits to hunters in some areas.
As far as MNR biologists know, white-coloured moose are neither a separate species nor albinos. Mike Bernier of the MNR’s Chapleau District says the white coat occurs naturally but is extremely rare—the result of a recessive gene controlling hair colour. If two carriers of the gene reproduce, there is a 25 per cent chance the calf will be white (and a 50 per cent chance the calf will be a carrier of the gene). Of the roughly 4,200 moose in the area surrounding Foleyet in northeastern Ontario, Bernier estimates that only six are white.
Spirit Moose Sightings | Photo: Bill Roth/Anchorage Daily News
Ontario’s new regulations outlaw the hunting of “predominantly white-coloured moose” in a parcel of Crown land between Chapleau and Timmins. Newfoundland and Labrador passed similar legislation for a small portion of southwestern Newfoundland in 2002. But for the bulk of both provinces—and the rest of North America—white-coloured moose are fair game and a prized trophy.
Joel Theriault, a bush pilot from Foleyet, lobbied for the protection of white-coloured moose in Ontario. Theriault hopes that the new regulations will pave the way for moose-watching tourism in his area. He compares white moose to the famous white-coated kermode “spirit bear” of British Columbia, and pre- dicts similar success for local guides.
“White moose are worth a lot more alive than mounted above someone’s fireplace,” said Theriault.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.
For one year while I went to university I lived by the ocean. All I had to do to launch my kayak was walk across the road. That’s when I learned I have a paddling impulse that’s triggered by light. If the afternoon turned out calm, and the light had a certain quality, a warm colour and softness just before sunset, my internal light meter would command me to “ctrl+S” whatever document I was hammering on in my basement apartment, grab the rubbermaid with the duct tape label that says “paddling” and make for the garage. It was a luxury to be able to respond whenever the impulse struck.
More often, this happens on a trip. Tents are set up, sleeping bags laid out, dishes are washed and the food put away. Then somebody gets the crazy urge to drag a boat back down to the water. It’s a sort of frenzy to capture what remains of the day, like the mania that grips photographers during the afternoon’s terminal moments. We become like teenagers driving the strip, loving our rides so much that we’ll just cruise when there’s no place to go. With stomachs full of pasta and muscles so tired that paddling should be the last thing on our minds, we go out anyway be- cause life’s that short.
One time on the west coast there was a strong, warm wind coming in off the water; we put in on the sheltered side of the islands and paddled around to where we could just sit in the lee of the rocks and ride the swell. We faced the west wind and floated there until the big ball of the sun dropped into the sea. If we could only understand why this feels so good, put it in a bottle and sell it; we’d be rich. Then again, we can put it in a kayak; and we are.
This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2006 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
For the people of northwest Greenland, culture and nature are deeply linked. A rule that requires hunting to be done from kayaks is helping to preserve both.
The Inuk’s patience and focus are awesome. Pauloos Simigaq has been floating on the mercurial, iceberg-choked waters of Inglefield Fjord for hours with only the unbroken water and the occasional Marlboro to pass the cramped time in his homemade, canvas-covered kayak.
He is nestled against one of the countless bits of fractured ice pan in the fjord—the white underbelly of his kayak blending in with the ice when viewed from below. The boat, his paddle and harpoon, his seat made of a skinned polar bear head, and his sealskin boots all resemble those his father wore, and those worn by countless preceding generations of Inughuit hunters.
Without warning the silence is split by a wet, hollow “pfew…pfew” of exhaled breath and the still surface of the fjord is broken by the watermelon-like heads of a small pod of narwhal. Their wake leaves a jagged arrow on the silver sky-reflection of the sea, as they rise from their deep-water halibut feasting to fill their black blood with oxygen.
Pauloos, alert, hurriedly pinches off the embers of his cigarette with his calloused fingers and slips the butt into the front pocket of his white cotton anorak. His wife, Inge, has been watching with our group of southern tourists on the lookout—a grassy prow of land that affords a 180-degree view of the fjord, and warns Pauloos of the approach of the narwhal with a tiny handheld radio. Such is the paradoxical situation of the Greenland Inuit—with one weathered hand Pauloos stows his thin-bladed hand-carved paddle and adjusts his ivory-tipped harpoon, and with the other he holds the portable radio to his mouth, asking Inge where the narwhal are in relation to him, which way they are heading.
Soon he sees the rounded heads moving through the ice floes toward him. Slicing the water ahead of the pod are the sharp points of the males’ spiral horns—the unique teeth from which sprang the legend of the unicorn when the first narwhal tusks appeared in mainland Europe in the Middle Ages. These mysterious horns were said to have magical cure-all properties and were bought and sold for small fortunes.
Pauloos pulls away from his iceberg port and sprints after the pod. From a comfortable perch amid the poppies, avens, grasses and blueberries that give this icy land its name, we watch with the same held breath that permeates the entire fjord.
Pauloos’ thin-bladed paddle allows him to fly silently toward the rearguard of the narwhal pod. As he closes in, with one swift motion he stows his paddle, hefts his harpoon and draws his arm back for the throw.
Our group of foreign ecotourists has ostensibly travelled here to observe the wonder of Arctic wildlife, not to watch wildlife be killed. But the long-forgotten hunter in us somehow wills the harpoon point toward flesh—a hope that we can no more make sense of than we can fight.
Pauloos Simigaq is a hunter in a way few modern people would comprehend. He is not out here to bond with his buddies or to prove his prowess. He is not even out here with the typical southern excuse that he needs to “get away from the wife”—inge simigaq and their three young children, Mikael, Nialianguaq, and Utuuniaq, are along for the hunt as well. Pauloos and his family are out here hunting because they know no other life, and because it is truly their identity. They are inughuit—a word that means “the real people.” Pauloos simply is a hunter. Period.
Even his home, Qaanaaq (dubbed “the world’s most northerly palindrome” by the Lonely Planet guidebook), is a modern version of a traditional camp. it boasts 860 Danish and inughuit inhabit- ants, and an estimated 3,000 sled dogs; days in qaanaaq are eight parts arctic quiet and two parts howling cacophony.
The traditional hunting in this part of the High Arctic has earned the inughuit a reputation as some of the few remaining true hunters on the planet. Food gathering here is as much ritual as it is necessity, and even the methods are echoes from what would be termed a “long forgotten” past in any other part of the world.
Here, little is forgotten.
Most narwhals in Greenland and the Canadian Arctic are hunted with high-powered rifles fired from modern boats with outboard motors—a tough sell as a “traditional hunt.” little is known of even the basic life history of the narwhal, including its reproductive rate and natural mortality rate, and this has raised concerns about the sustainability of these modern hunts which often fail to retrieve as many as 50 per cent of the animals that are wounded or killed by the hunters’ bullets.
Only in the Thule District of northwest Greenland are narwhals hunted from traditional kayaks using harpoons and sealskin float bags. These are the rules here—motor boats can be used to transport a family or hunting party to the hunting grounds and to bring the meat and muktuq back to the village, but the actual hunt and capture of the animal must be done from a traditional kayak.
This true traditional hunt fulfills two purposes. First, it anchors the people’s ties to their cultural past with an unforgiving certainty, requiring a commitment unheard of in most modern cultures. Without these Thule hunting laws, the ancient kayak techniques and the inughuit culture would have been lost or forever changed years ago, as it has been in much of the modern Arctic.
There is also a perception, communicated with laughter and curious inspection of our bright red rotomoulded plastic kayaks, that the traditional technology is far superior to the modern.
The canvas-covered boats are lighter by far than our tandems, and are relatively easy to build and re- pair with the materials at hand; the time-tested hull design allows for a critical mix of speed and stability ideally suited to hunting large marine mammals.
The second purpose of the traditional hunt is that it both limits the number of narwhal killed and the number that are mortally wounded and lost. Not many hunters are dedicated enough to spend weeks building their own kayak, harpoons, and paddle, and then spend cramped, dangerous hours float- ing amongst the icebergs of Inglefield Fjord waiting for their narwhal. The fact that every year at least one hunter either has a very close call or simply vanishes into the icy seas adds a further deterrent.
Those who are patient and brave enough to hunt, however, are almost guaranteed to bring home the muktuq from any narwhal they successfully harpoon and kill, barring the unpredictable intervention of arctic ice and weather. Attached to the hunter’s harpoon tether is an inflated sealskin bag, like a giant bagpipe bag with claws. A successful harpoon strike anchors the harpoon head to the narwhal. The float tires the animal out to hasten the kill and keeps the animal afloat once it is killed, ensuring that most har- pooned animals are retrieved.
In a way this is true conservation, not only of human experience and culture, but of wildlife as well—an answer to sustainable harvest of our large marine mam- mals that was discerned centuries ago by the forebears of Pauloos and the Inughuit—a people wise enough to recognize and live by the concept of “enough.”
As I watch Pauloos’ spear sail over the water, the biologist in me wonders for the future of the mythical narwhal—a creature that is listed as “of special concern” in Canada and whose numbers have been dwindling throughout the animals’ range. But the romantic in me senses the pure resonance of the his- tory, courage and power of what we are witnessing, and I inwardly cheer when the arc of Pauloos’ throw climaxes with a bloody spray and frenzied splashing as the entire herd senses the danger and dives for the shelter of the frigid water.
This is the most dangerous time for the hunter, as with one hand he sculls his paddle to balance in the wake and mad splash of several tonnes of terrified whale flesh, and with the other he rapidly and deftly pays out the cord attached to the harpoon buried deep in the narwhal’s side.
Finally Pauloos pulls the sealskin float safely from the stern deck of his kayak and watches it speed away across the fjord to disappear with a sudden “plop” into the black depths, leaving only ripples to recall the drama of the moment.
The held breath of everyone watching seems to re- lease as Pauloos calmly paddles over to retrieve his harpoon shaft where it now floats. he stows the re- trieved shaft and his paddle, calmly lights a cigarette, and watches for his sealskin float to return its prize to the still surface of Inglefield Fjord.
Dave Quinn is a freelance writer, photographer and guide based in Kimberley, BC. He has visited the Thule District of Greenland three times in the past two years.
This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2006 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
Jenny’s voice, one part joking plea, two parts whining 10-year-old, drifted up to me from the back of the group. Until now, on our fourth day, the usually desk- bound paddlers I was guiding north of nootka sound had been the picture of contentment, enjoying the kayaking life to its fullest. and I had successfully dodged the sandy bullet. but that rest- less look had come creeping into everyone’s eyes today, caribbean visions of holidays past dancing in their heads.
I’m no mere sun-worshipping beachgoer, you see, able to toss a gritty towel and umbrella into the trunk of my car and drive home to a cleansing shower and a vacuum cleaner. I live and work in the outdoors. and I know what I like.
Experience is a great teacher in the wilderness, and I’ve had my share. sand gets everywhere—under your fingernails, between your toes, and in your fresh fish dinner. ever try to get sand off of a slice of cheese?
I’ve found sand bunched in and breaking the bindings of my field guides, grinding the threads of the cap of my water bottle, and I personally have two chipped molars as a result of sand in my food.
Sand sticks to your feet and under your socks, piles up at the bottom of sleeping bags and falls out of your hair onto the pillow when you’re sure you’ve kept your head out of the ground that day.
Sand chafes under the straps of your sandals, binds up the tent zippers, and gets buried under the flap of skin created by blisters.
It sticks to your sunscreen like feathers to tar.
It jams up paddles and tent poles alike, irritates under your heels while you sit in the kayak, and crusts into your eyes in the wind—I once pulled silt out of the corners of my eyes for fully two days after a windstorm on an arctic river. Dandruff? No, it’s just sand. Foggy? Nope, it’s the grit in my sunglasses!
I prefer stones. Small, smooth, round stones. Cobblestones. Like the ones, say, just north of the Robson Bight Ecological Reserve in Johnstone Strait, in some of the coves in the Nuchatlitz Islands on western Vancouver Island, or all along the coast of Lake Superior Provincial Park. Cobblestone beaches are forgiving. They are developed in character, having both the courtesy and common sense to remain in their place on the ground when trodden on, and not attempt to hitch a ride to destinations unknown.
I have long suspected, but been unable to prove, the greater self-confidence of rocks as opposed to their more bro- ken-down colleagues, the grains of sand. No need to invade your space uninvited, no personality trait that sets them to wandering when all is well in the place they have just left. A commitment to the beach, perhaps.
Sand can claim no such integrity.
The fact that stones are morally superior, so to speak, is amply demonstrated among the small- to medium-sized cousins that I prize the most for sleeping beaches. Their sense of hospitality is refined to the point where they actually mould themselves to your body ensuring a good night’s rest. Unlike displacing a bed in a pliable cushion of stones, trying to mould a bed in sand is more like making a form in concrete.
“Aren’t there any beautiful sunset-facing beaches around here?”
Inwardly sighing, I mustered a smile and turned around to answer Jenny. “Sure there are!” I said. Hey, the customer is always right. You do what you must to make the trip work, but I know where my heart lies. It’s nestled in the hollow of a warm, smooth rock.
Rick Snowdon is a guide, traveller, freelance writer and occasional student. He divides his time between Quadra Island, British Columbia, and Thunder Bay, Ontario.
This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2006 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
Editorial: Lucky for Narwhals, Greenland Kayakers are Missing the Point
If, on the third weekend in May, you happen to drive your pickup truck through Georgia, cross the Ogeechee River, take a right on Ogeechee River Road, go over the railway tracks and right at the bottom of the hill, you’ll rattle into the Traditional Bow Hunters of Georgia Southern Championships. And if you thought of packing your traditional hickory longbow and arrows whittled from wood, cane or bamboo you could, for 20 greenbacks, enter the tournament in the primitive class.
Thirty yards ahead of you, you’d see a McKenzie 3D deer target, the pride of the McKenzie Target line—the official targets of Buckmasters, North American Bow Hunters and the National Field Archery Association. As you drew back your handcrafted longbow and took a bead on the vital zone, you’d notice how exceptionally sculpted and meticulously painted the life-size buck is. A massive set of synthetic antlers adds the finishing touch.
McKenzie puts so much attention to detail into their targets because, they say, “We believe that nothing can prepare a bow hunter better for the hunt than prac- ticing with a target that looks exactly like the game they will be hunting.”
If, on the last weekend in August, you happen to be driving your Saab wagon along Highway 17 on the north shore of Lake Superior and turn down Michipico- ten River Village Road just south of the gi- ant Canada goose marking the Wawa exit, you’ll end up at the mouth of the Michipicoten River and the base of Naturally Superior Adventures.
If you had thought of tying on your homebuilt traditional Greenland skin-on-frame kayak or mass-produced synthetic replica, you could, for $250 Canadian, join 50 other Greenland-style kayak enthusiasts at the first annual Naturally Superior Traditional Sea Kayak Symposium. Once registered, you’d paddle your traditional hunting craft, learn rolls and build a paddle.
And on Saturday night you’d gather for a concert, although the organizers are still searching for a big-name musical act.
You would not, however, find yourself with a harpoon launcher in hand 30 yards off an anatomically correct 3-D narwhal or seal target.
Reading about Greenland-style kayaking, I was struck by how little attention today’s recreational Greenland-style paddlers, in their quest to master traditional paddling strokes and rolls, have paid to the kayak’s original purpose—hunting.
Even Chris Cunningham, author of the book Building the Greenland Kayak: A Manual for its Construction and Use, admits, “While I’ve made a few harpoons and darts and have even managed to get off some good throws, the only thing I’ve ever hit was the bow of my kayak.”
All is not lost.
Qaannat Kattuffiat is a Greenland-based kayaking organization dedicated to keeping the traditional kayaking skills alive. At their annual championships and through affiliates like Qajaq Copenhagen and Qajaq USA, competitors practice throwing harpoon for distance and targeting floating fluorescent balls about the size of seal heads.
I pitched David Wells, owner of Naturaly Superior Adventures, my idea of working hunting into his symposium. I thought Adventure Kayak magazine could sponsor the traditional hunting part of the week- end, and McKenzie Targets could surely sculpt a more realistic Greenland hunter’s target than an orange rubber ball.
In principle, Wells liked my idea of recreating the traditional hunt, but he concluded that throwing harpoons at lifelike narwhal or seal targets might not go over very well with the sensitive sea kayak crowd. I suspect he’s right, although it’d be a way to get anti-seal-hunting protestor Paul McCartney to attend the event. And maybe Paul would bring his guitar.
This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2006 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
Esquif is recieving plenty of good press lately as the only whitewater canoe company committed to innovation and new designs. Take, for example, the multi-chine hull of the nitro or the Zoom’s pry dimples. Esquif sent Paul Danks to win the 2005 World freestyle championships in their prototype salsa Oc1. Don’t forget the spark, the slalom boat that’s sweeping every race across north America. And now comes the all-new Taureau—part creeker, part playboat in an all-new material.
Last fall I dragged a prototype Esquif Taureau up five kilometres of black slag railway rock for a low-water run of the upper Petawawa River, the six-kilometre, 11-rapid section draining into Lake Travers on the east side of Algonquin Park. By mid-summer the upper Pet is a creeky class III-v run, the perfect testing ground for the new Taureau.
Other versions of decked open canoes (now there’s an oxymoron) like the Dagger quake and Robson’s CU fly have all been roto-moulded poly- ethylene—kayak plastic. You can’t help but notice the smooth, glassy gel-coat-like gleam of the new Taureau. Esquif’s new material—which they call T-form Elite—comes in sheets, like Royalex. Two sheets are heated in an oven and then moulded to form the shapes of the hull and deck which are then pressed together and joined at the seam.
Time will tell what the long-term durability of this new material is, but the advantages are immediately obvious. The Taureau is rigid, light and shiny. After dragging the boat for hours on sharp gravel and sliding, pitoning and boofing my way down the Pet it looked no worse than similarly treated plastic kayaks and like new compared to Royalex boats.
I’ve heard Mark scriver talking for years about designing an OC1 creek boat. “The move to shorter open canoes was being led by freestyle, not river running,” says scriver. “But we learned that these shorter boats boof better, fit into smaller eddies and are more responsive and forgiving.”
So Scriver, the Robin Hood of open canoeing, and his band of Merry Men, including Paul Mason, Andrew Westwood, Joe Langman and Jacques Chassé, set out to rob the R&D-rich freestylers of their short length, planing hulls and extreme rocker. Adding volume in the ends and a longer waterline, they designed an open canoe creeker and playboat that does pretty much anything except cartwheel. from the forests of framptom, quebec, the Taureau is a legend about the redistribution of honour and justice to the common canoeist.
Scriver admits that some critics are going to see the Taureau as a boat for advanced paddlers only, but he says, “If you compare it to kayaks, it’s closer to a combination of Liquidlogic’s Jefe and their new cR 250.” neither of which are advanced boats.
The Taureau is not difficult to paddle at all. In fact it is wonderfully stable, dry and free of quirky edges. It’s my new boat of choice for technical low-volume runs with small, tight eddies, ledgy drops and fun little holes and waves. It is, however, small and specialized so—with canoeing’s steeper learning curve—it’s a boat that will appeal more to intermediate and advanced paddlers.
This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2006 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great boat reviews, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.
A couple years ago, the brains at Impex Canada and U.S.—with significant input stateside from Danny Mongo—melded to design a fast, efficient long-distance touring kayak for advanced paddlers. The result is the Force 5, with large gear capacity for expeditions (181 litres), narrow beam for speed, and minimal rocker.
The Force 5’s shallow-V hull with an “aggressive medium” chine provides moderate initial stability. It’s easy to put on edge and, with firm secondary stability, easy to hold there. Overall, the stability profile going into a tilt and all the way over to immersion is impressively predictable.
Impex figured that the Force 5’s high-end paddlers would want a straight-tracking boat and have the skills to edge aggressively to crank out a turn. The outcome: the Force 5 will turn on edge but takes some effort to coax around. The payoff: no noticeable weathercocking in a moderate crosswind, minimal energy spent holding a course, and a drop-down skeg that stays stowed away for worst-case scenarios. A buoyant bow provides a dry ride in surf and waves.
Impex Force Category 5 Specs
Length: 18 ft
Width: 20.75 in
Depth: 13 in
Weight: 58 lb (fibreglass)
Cockpit: 16 x 32 in
Bowhatch: 58 L
Sternhatch: 85 L
Dayhatch: 38.5 L
Total Volume: 341L
MSRP: $2,775 USD (fibreglass)
The Force series has many of the design elements of classic British expedition boats—including rubber hatches from Valley Canoe Products, a reinforced keel and curved fibreglass bulkheads—from a Canadian manufacturer at a great price.
You can handle it
Finicky kayak handlers know to carry loaded boats by the hull, saving the grab loops for on-water rescues. Stylish, notched handles moulded into the bow and stern give tired hands a break and make it easy to follow the rules.
The eye of the hurricane
The Force 5 is a high-volume version of the Impex Force 4, which comes from the same mould but has a cut-down hull. The resulting roomy cockpit accommodates large paddlers.
The comfy fibreglass seat has a padded, ratchet-adjustable backband and a seat pad (not shown) from Immersion research.
Impex is gunning for the small but dedicated market of advanced kayakers who are loyal to boats like the NDK Explorer. The steep sides and moderate chine echo the Explorer’s lines, offering similar performance and volume with slightly stiffer tracking.
This article originally appeared in Adventure Kayak‘s Early Summer 2006 issue. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions here, or browse the archives here.
Baskaus River, day 1. “The Baskaus has been run since the 1970s. We assumed it would be a good warm-up for the more remote Chebdar River. I wish we had a warm-up for the warm-up.” | Photo: Seth Warren
Struggling to keep a grip on my 90-pound kayak, I tried to anchor it to a tree. No luck; the weight of the fully loaded boat started to drag me down the rotten incline until my legs jammed underneath a log and a stick probed me in an unmentionable place.
All humor had long since tumbled into the gorge below, along with untold amounts of loose scree. We were seven hours into a portage around a 50-meter section of Siberia’s Chebdar River. I gripped the grab loop as if it were my own sanity. If I let go the boat would have plummeted thousands of feet back to where this ridiculous journey began, stranding me in the middle of the Altai Mountains with only a paddle.
It was the fifth day of our six-day, self-supported first descent of the Chebdar. To get to the put-in we had hiked two days over ground so rough the pack horses we had hired were turned around by their owners. The morning broke with the typical schedule of coffee, energy bars and talk about what lay ahead—except today we didn’t know what lay ahead. The river had been attempted by raft twice before. Both parties had met unnavigable gorges, abandoned their missions and gear, and walked out.
After two quick kilometers, a canyon pinched the river into a horrendous maze of terminal holes and exposed rocks that funnelled the angry water through woody sieves. The final section pushed itself through a two-meter gap between cliffs that fell straight into the river. Our only option was to climb.
Baskaus River, day 1. “The Baskaus has been run since the 1970s. We assumed it would be a good warm-up for the more remote Chebdar River. I wish we had a warm-up for the warm-up.” | Feature photo: Seth Warren
Mountain climbing with kayaks
It was early—11 a.m.—and I assumed we’d find a route above the gorge with a few hours of portaging. That optimism slipped away with every step. The climb began on as steep a slope as trees can grow on, each step sunk knee-deep into decomposing vegetation. Three labored hours later the trees thinned and I turned my head to see the canyon wall close on the other side of the gorge. I tied my boat off to a tree and it hung nearly suspended in the air. We were now on a climbing expedition with kayaks—people and boats were to be on belay or tied off to anchors at all times.
We pooled every piece of climbing gear we had and followed the most obvious way forward, a three-pitch traverse that ended in a highly exposed dead end. Russell Kelly free-climbed straight up on a scouting mission using the hanging vegetation to aid his ascent. A long hour later he came swinging back down like a clothed Tarzan: “It’s a long, long way up. But I made it to the top and found a ravine that goes down. No guarantees but it might get us down to the river.”
Photo: Seth Warren
Photo: Seth Warren
Three hours into the portage and we were less than half way to the top. Every water bottle was swinging empty at the end of its clip. The possibility that we’d descend back down to the river only to find more impassable sections nagged at me like the neoprene rubbing on my blisters. We had little information about what was downstream. Russian paddlers told us it looked runnable, but that was only from map and aerial scouting.
After three pitches, the steepness mellowed and we began shouldering our boats toward a saddle as dusk fell. I reached it last and came across a desperate scene. Five dirt-encrusted figures were bent over and panting dryly through mouths that hadn’t tasted water in hours.
A sleepless night on scree
Though skeptical about blindly descending, we couldn’t stay put so we began lowering the boats through a steep tree-choked ravine. Four rope lengths later we came out at the top of a scree field. For the first time in hours I could hear the river below.
Camp was destined to be at the base of the scree field, above the lip of a cliff that faded into darkness. Pruzan and I followed the beam of our headlamps toward the sound of some running water coming out of the cliff below. I anchored myself to a tree and slowly lowered Pruzan across a descending traverse to a rivulet where he filled up all the water bottle and a big drybag. Nothing will ever taste as good.
Chebdar River, day 5. Downriver of the day-long portage from hell. Nothing worth having comes without some sort of fight. | Photo: Seth Warren
Relief overcame fatigue when Wilson’s whistle put an end to the few hours I spent in my tent wondering which of us would be crushed or swept off the cliff by the talus that was still adjusting to having been disturbed for the first time by six clumsy humans.
After a meager breakfast, we got back at it, traversing along the rim of a cliff until we found a five-hour route down to the river through another scree field as a thunderclap announced a downpour of rain. We arrived back to the river at 11 a.m. after 24 hours spent getting around 50 meters of river.
All we could see downstream was a class VI rapid that led into a thin gorge. There didn’t seem to be any way to scout it, but it didn’t matter. Portaging again was out of the question.
Seth Warren was joined on the Altai expedition by Russell Kelly, Aaron Pruzan, Matt Wilson, Ryan Casey, Evan Ross, Adam Majors and Nick Turner.
This article originally appeared in Rapid’s Spring 2006 issue. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine and get 25 years of digital magazine archives including our legacy titles: Rapid, Adventure Kayak and Canoeroots.
Baskaus River, day 1. “The Baskaus has been run since the 1970s. We assumed it would be a good warm-up for the more remote Chebdar River. I wish we had a warm-up for the warm-up.” | Feature photo: Seth Warren
I was seven the first time I saw Niagara Falls. My strongest memories of that family vacation are of the wax museum, Ripley’s Believe It or Not and grilled cheese sandwiches. The falls didn’t impress me much, and it certainly didn’t occur to me to run them.
The same can’t be said for others. Since 1901 Niagara Falls has attracted nutbars of all sorts going over the lip for their final swan song or for a shot at fame and fortune. Besides the 20 suicide victims police purportedly retrieve from the pool below every year, 15 “daredevils” have run the falls. Ten have survived.
Most of those 15 attempts sound like contenders for the Gong Show. They’ve relied on all manner of inner tubes, wooden barrels and metal kegs. One guy even rode off the lip on a jetski, hoping his rocket-propelled parachute would bring him down safely. Unfortunately he did a poor job of attaching the parachute to his body.
Most recently, in 2003, Kirk Jones, an unemployed man from Detroit, survived a swim over the falls wearing nothing but the shirt on his back (and some pants). He went on to join the Toby Tyler Circus. To paddlers, though, one story stands out.
Jesse Sharp, an unemployed 28-year-old from Ocoee, Tennessee, had ten years of whitewater experience behind him when he ran Niagara Falls in his red Dancer C1 on June 5, 1990, making headlines across the continent and reinforcing the public’s belief that paddlers are all crazy. He didn’t wear a helmet so his face wouldn’t be obscured in photographs. Friends believed he did it as a stunt in order to launch a career as a stunt man.
But Sharp may not have been a total quack. He had a decent creeking resume and he scouted the falls for three years. On the day of his attempt he made dinner arrangements downriver in Queenston. We can only assume he made his line, but he never made it to dinner. Authorities recovered his boat, which suffered only a mi- nor dent, but Sharp’s body was never found. It seems 170 feet of freefall was too much.
When Jesse Sharp went over Niagara Falls the world record for successful waterfall descents belonged to Shaun Baker for his freefall of 49.5 feet. Six years later Baker upped his own record to 75 feet. With Ed Lucero and Dave Grove both breaking the 100-foot barrier in the last three years, 170-foot Niagara is looking more and more like the type of river paddlers challenge themselves on and less like a sideshow for a wax museum.
People run waterfalls (and paddle whitewater, for that matter) for all sorts of reasons, but very few do it because it will make them famous. Those pushing the envelope of paddling are doing it with a noticeable lack of bravado after long bushwhacks through hordes of bugs. Ed Lucero fretted for a week with fear gnawing his sleep before he committed to running the 105-foot Alexandra Falls in the Northwest Territiories. Dave Grove thought his 101-foot run of Oregon’s Metlako Falls might be a record, but he didn’t get back to measure it until a month later.
These paddlers were not reckless seekers of fame. In some ways both were humbled by their accomplishments, but they also upped the ante when it comes to what is possible in a kayak. These accomplishments open the door for bigger challenges and expand the pool of what is considered possible.
Twenty years after my first family trip to Niagara, the falls impressed me more, and I spent a long time tracing lines over the lip to the pulverized froth below. It still doesn’t occur to me to run the falls—it’s both illegal and likely a quick death—but paddlers are now dropping falls nearly two-thirds the height of Niagara. It says a lot about the pace of progress in our sport that paddlers have even caused me wonder if they’ll ever reclaim this natural wonder from its dark history as a tourist-ridden venue for stunts and suicide missions.
Jeff Jackson admits he spent more time on a winery tour than at the falls or the wax museum during his last trip to Niagara.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Rapid Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Rapid’s print and digital editions here.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Canoeroots Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Canoeroots’ print and digital editions here.
This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2006 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions 
This article originally appeared in Rapid’s Spring 2006 issue. 
