Boat Review: The Polaris by Simon River Sports

Photo: Adventure Kayak Staff — Boat Review: The Polaris by Simon River Sports

Last fall, hunting for something new for readers led me to the unfamiliar world of sprint racing and the boathouse of Toronto’s Beaches Canoe Club. There I met Simon River Sports president Karen Lukanovich, who put a wing blade in my hand and sent me out in the Polaris, hoping I would stay upright.

SRS is a Canadian company that has made a name for itself in sprint kayaking and branched out to offer a unique line of “performance touring” kayaks—hybrid hulls that split the difference between the “milliseconds count” minimalism of racing and the unrefined burliness of touring. Boats like the Polaris are all-around speedsters for adventure racing, fitness paddling and fast-and-light touring.

“Bring your knees together,” Lukanovich coached as I settled into the unfamiliar sitting position. The Polaris was obviously just a slightly detuned cousin of the racing hulls in the boathouse. It’s wider and more stable—SRS actually rates it an 8 out of 10 for stability. But its cockpit is clearly configured for the aggressive, upright paddling position that is familiar to sprint racers but awkward for us touring paddlers who are used to reclining into a backrest with our knees splayed under the coaming.

When paddling in rough water, I felt vulnerable perched with just my bum and the soles of my feet touching the boat and my knees sticking up above the cockpit. But the relaxed sitting position of a regular touring kayak just doesn’t cut it for paddlers hooked on speed and a full body workout, which is the whole point of a performance touring kayak.

Indeed, after paddling the Polaris a few times, going for a workout in my touring kayak felt like lacing on hiking boots to go jogging. The Polaris is fast because it has virtually no rocker—the waterline is probably a couple of inches longer than that of a touring kayak of the same overall length—and it is super light at just 31 pounds in carbon.

For effortless cruising on flat water, fitness paddling or adventure racing—or anyone who needs a superlight boat but doesn’t want to give up the speed of a long hull—dial up your local paddle racing club or dealer and check out the Simon River Sports line.

Seat and deck

The seat is a small, moulded platform—a mere perch for the athlete’s toned glutes. A quick release slides the seat forward/backward in a groove in the marine plywood base. The paddler sits upright with knees together. Lower back and torso are free to rotate for the most efficient and powerful stroke. This aggressive positon takes some getting used to, but once you master the racing style, going back to the old La-Z-Boy slouch just doesn’t feel right. There is just one small hatch on the rear deck for accessing the rudder assembly. Other SRS models come outfitted for touring with a rear storage hatch.

Rudder

The understern hydrofoil rudder turns this rocket-straight boat in a relatively smooth and effortless arc and makes minor course corrections easy. Turning strokes become all but obsolete as the paddle becomes purely the engine, the rudder the steering wheel. You must place the boat in deep water or launch from a dock to protect the understern rudder. Some SRS models come with a retractable “overstern kick-up” rudder that’s more practical for touring.

Cockpit and footrest

The long, narrow cockpit fits paddlers from 4’10” to 6’10”. Only skinny-hipsters need apply. The adjustable footrest provides a solid, sloping platform to push against with both feet. Pumping with your legs on every stroke counteracts the side-to-side rocking of the boat—the rocking motion throws the boat off course and reduces efficiency. Your lower body should get tired too if you’re doing it right. A little aluminum stick between your toes controls the rudder with a slight touch. A sprayskirt is available, but beware that this boat has no sealed bulkheads—a reminder that the Polaris is designed for training on calm waters and near-shore paddling.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2004 issue of Adventure Kayak magazine. For more boat reviews, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Canadian Paddling Bars

Stories

Paddling bars are a great buffer between a great day on the river and the drive back to wherever. They are the nucleus, holding together the free-spirited electrons who are the fabric of the paddling community. Without paddling bars we’d land back in our apartments or day jobs bubbling with epic stories to unload on people who nod politely but quite frankly don’t give two shits. They can’t. They’ve never cleaned gates 16 and 17 or been worked in a pourover above a drop.

Some paddling bars are the light at the end of tunnel after a long day on the river when you’re tired and hungry. Like Calumet Pizza on the Rouge, The Mad Trapper on the Kicking Horse or the Backeddy Pub at the water taxi dock for Skook. Ever stopped to wonder why these bars are located in such thirst-quenching locations? Because some thirsty and enterprising paddler came along before you and he too dreamed of a cold beer at the takeout.

Then there are the paddling landmarks, the destination bars like the Madawaska Valley’s Wilno Tavern, the Ottawa’s River Club, The Drake in Canmore and the Rockcliffe Tavern at Minden’s Gull River. After dinner you sucker a driver and pile into the largest vehicle in the campground and crank the only cassette in the van—a live bootleg of Bob Marley.

In the winter these watering holes freeze over and are taken back by the local loggers and sled-heads. But when the whitewater flows the gates on the taps are open. The person standing next to you doesn’t ask the score of the Jays game, or hasn’t heard the weather forecast. He speaks your language of aerial blunts and cubic metres per second and brags of bagging a swimmer at 60 feet, not to mention knowing the proper way to order beers in both official languages:

“Donne moi quatre Labatt Cinquants s’il vous plait.”

THE ROCKCLIFFE TAVERN

Serving: Gull River, Minden, ON.
Mullet factor: High (but long at the back).
Beer by the gallon: 140 oz. pitchers for $34.
Local brew: Molson Canadian.
Clientele: Locals and cottagers mingle on Saturday nights with camp staff from Kandalore, Kilcoo and Onondaga.
House cocktail: Jack Schnapps (“hangover in a glass”).
Perks: Taxi service, ATM across the street, $3 drinks on Wednesdays, Sunday night open mike on the patio.

THE RIVER CLUB

Serving: Ottawa River, Portage, QC.
Menu: “They sell food here?”
Night: Sundays.
Watch for: the river.
Drinking age 18.
Meat market factor: Grade A.
Odds of sucking face on the dance floor: High. “Even the losers, get lucky sometimes.” – Tom Petty

THE WILNO TAVERN

Serving: Madawaska and Ottawa Rivers, Wilno, ON.
Menu: Polish perogies, Skidder Burger, homemade pies.
Night: Tuesday-night blues jam.
Local Beer: Valley Gold.
Locals: Aging draft-dodging hippies and lumberjacks can really cut the rug.
Perks: First Tuesday of the month is smoke-free.
Factoid: Oldest Polish settlement in Canada.

LE LIBIDO & CALUMET PIZZA

Serving: Rouge River, Grenville, QC, where $10 buys: A) a lap dance for the lonely river guide that lasts for two songs; B) a poutine and hotdog combo washed down with Jack Daniels.

THE DRAKE

Serving: Kananaskis River, Canmore, AB.
Watch for: Live music by “BC DC”, dirtbags, posers.
Factoids: One of Canada’s “top 3 ski bars”.

THE BACKEDDY PUB

Serving: Skookumchuck, Egmont, BC.
Home of: Fabled Skookum Burger—10 ounces of beef with fries and all the fixins’ for only $16.25.

THE MAD TRAPPER

Serving: Kicking Horse River, Golden, BC.
Watch for: stuffed animal heads, disco ball, the Golden Kayak Club refueling on cheeseburgers and Kokanee.

JJ’S ROCK AND ROLL LOUNGE

Serving: Slave River, Fort Smith, NT.
Factoid: Half the paddlers in town bartend at JJ’s.
Perks: Paddling vids on the big screen, all-night jam sessions, nightly specials—Wing Tuesdays, $3 Highball Wednesdays, Draft Fridays.

JENNIFER’S

Serving: Sturgeon Falls, Seven Sister’s, MB—pop. 70.
Perks: Chef Jozef’s alligator chowder, rattlesnake consommé and shark borscht; monthly draw for a steak & lobster dinner including a shot from a $1,350 bottle of 100-year-old French cognac.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of Rapid Magazine.

House Crashing and Steep Creeking in Northern BC

Trips

The outdoor play in northwestern B.C. is neverending. In 2001, filmmaker Dustin Knapp came with a crew to Terrace, B.C., chasing rumours of an untouched whitewater mecca. Dustin passed the word on to his bro Brandon about the area’s huge number of unrun rivers and falls. And last September, Brandon Knapp showed up in my living room at 2 a.m. with a whole crew from Teton Gravity Research. They were looking for first Ds and unique never-before-filmed rapids and falls to feature in the up-and- coming New Rider Productions movie Wehyakin. And they were looking for a place to sleep.

Our house is 980-square-foot two-bedroom. I had talked to Team Dagger paddler Scott Feindel about coming up to paddle and offered him a place to stay. Well, in the morning I woke up to people everywhere, eight in total—in the mud room, kitchen, spare room—and my wife Suki was going nuts. There was Brandon, Scott, TGR regular Seth Warren, Dagger bad boy Corey Boux, Riot rep Matt Rusher, NRP film jockeys Trask McFarland and Loren Moulton and photographer Ryan Creary.

“Shane and Suki, who hadn’t met any of us before, awoke to 10 people scattered all over their home,” Creary said. “Then Corey clogged the toilet and chaos ensued from there.”

Iknow I will live in Terrace for years to come because there is so much to do. Hundreds of creeks, rivers, waterfalls, logging access roads, huge run- offs and a paddling season that extends from April to late October combine to make this region a whitewater paddler’s dream.

Over the years the development of logging roads has opened the door for kayakers seeking new rivers; every year new roads and bridges are built, potentially opening up the next classic run. Most of the current put-ins and takeouts are at bridges, which makes things nice because bushwhacking in northern B.C can be hell.

NORTHERN BC’S NUMEROUS FIRST DESCENTS

Over the past decade, paddlers from the region have been gradually ticking numerous first descents. Local kayakers can testify that the only dilemma is not finding the virgin runs, but deciding which one to tackle first. And with a relatively small paddling community, the harder runs only see one or two descents a season.

Always ready to get in a few days on the river with strong boaters, I was pumped to show these guys around. Starting in Terrace we ticked the class V classics—Willams, Kelanze, Kalum, Kitnayakwa, and the second descent of Wesach Falls, a 63-foot waterfall 35 kilometres north of Terrace. Everyone ran it. It’s the easiest falls ever—line it up and tuck. You’re more likely to get into trouble at the put-in.

“I seal launched in and skipped across the river and nailed the wall which bounced me into this hole,” Boux said. “There I was 25 feet from the lip of the 63-foot drop, doing unintentional loops. I finally broke free of the hole and gained my composure as I floated to the lip of the falls.”

Later, we pushed on to some of the runs I have been looking at for the past few years. I was impressed by the precision of these guys’ basic river moves, especially with Brandon. Not having to worry about them screwing up the line, the stress level was way lower for me even though we paddled some sick stuff.

We rented an ocean boat and headed down the coast to Kitimat, a small industrial port town 55 kilometres from Terrace. Our day on the ocean boat proved to be a good value with two first descents including Jesse Falls. The falls makes up the shortest river in the world. So a fisherman told me—fishermen are a good resource in northern B.C. Jesse falls is an astounding coastal waterfall that cascades 50 feet out of an alpine lake, dumping you directly into a deep-sea harbor. We ran the falls and stopped at a natural hot spring on the way home.

Back at base camp, things settled down after awhile. Suki calmed down and the guys were rad, cleaning and cooking every night! After their two-week stay they bought us a DVD player, helping us enter into the 21st century.

Shane & Suki Spencer own and operate Azad Adventures, an outdoor guiding, instruction and retail business in Terrace, B.C.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Park and Play: Thompson River BC

Trips

The B.C. Interior is a desert, complete with rattlesnakes and tumbleweeds. Here, the Thompson River is an anomaly—a big-volume thrill ride through the sun-baked heart of ranch country.

As the river drops into its canyon, the worn bedrock below surfaces in the form of house rocks and Dr. Seuss–style tow- ers. Coulees choked with sand and scree pour in from the sides. It’s the type of place where you’d expect Clint Eastwood to ride up over the next mesa and shoot the nose plugs off your helmet, John Wayne to mosey around the next butte and challenge you to a throwdown.

Tom Faucher is an end slinger from way back. Dirty Tom, as he’s known to friends and enemies alike, has been coming to the Thompson for years and knows the river well. Like most B.C. paddlers, his favourite watering hole is the Frog.

“Thar’s ah’ways play,” he drawls. “Bettah as it gets lowah.”

End slingers always were men of few words.

The fact is, ol’ Dirty is no cowboy, just a paddler who likes the Frog wave on the Thompson for its accessibility, dependability and off-season playability.

The Frog is easy to find. The Trans- Canada Highway follows the Thompson as it winds its way down to Lytton and its confluence with the mighty Fraser. Look for the first real rapid on the river, located between Cache Creek and Lytton, just upstream of the canyon section. There’s a highway pullout on the left, a ladder on the right. A two-minute walk and you’re there. After a rain, beware of the grease they call mud that coats the rocks at the put-in.

The Thompson carries a lot of water, 2,500 cubic metres per second (cms) at peak flow in June, dropping to a trickle during the cold months of January and February. The Frog comes in at 600 cms (around August) and is in best shape at 370 cms (through winter until the flood starts in May). That gives you something to do in B.C. when all the other water is either gone or turned to ice.

Like a lot of features, what you get depends on the level. Usually there’s a hole (the Pit) to be found on surfer’s right, a nice shoulder, then a seam and a scrappy little wave. It’s fast and dynamic, with enough of a foam pile to keep you in place.

There’s an eddy on river left, but get there quick or you’re on a tour downstream. Sometimes there’s a rope fixed further downriver so that you can pull yourself back up and not have to get out of your boat.

Thanksgiving sees local end slingers with time on their hands, a belly full of turkey and a mind for trouble. Every year Dirty Tom and friends head to the Frog for a showdown to tap in on the optimum fall levels. Y’all can join, but remember to bring your hat. Even in October, that desert sun is so strong it’ll make you squint. Just like a cowboy.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Skills: Catching Eddies

Skills

Catching eddies is easier when approaching the eddy pool from across the river.

Approaching eddies from the side, you generate the momentum needed to cut across eddy lines more effectively than when you approach from upstream. Also, when you ferry across the river toward the eddy line, you can more easily achieve the best entry angle for paddling into the eddy pool.

Too often, paddlers descend a river by simply pointing their canoe downstream. Then, when they wish to catch an eddy, they can neither angle the boat quickly enough to cross the eddy line, nor generate the necessary speed to cross over the boils and whirlpools that make up the eddy line. You can solve these problems by paddling across the river, moving laterally toward the eddy pool. The resulting speed and angle will drive the canoe across the boils and into the pool.

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Begin by positioning your boat across the river from your target eddy. Begin your approach by ferrying across the current—moving across the river reduces unnecessary downstream momentum. As the ferry progresses, your lateral momentum toward the eddy pool will begin to build (photo #1).

Once you are within a couple of boat lengths of the eddy line, open your angle so the bow is aimed toward to the top of the eddy (photo #2). Hitting eddies from the side at 90 degrees contradicts the “45-degree rule” you may have been taught, but it works and is done by all advanced paddlers. The lateral momentum and open angle drives you across the eddy line into a snappy, tight eddy turn—at 90 degrees the canoe has less distance to turn to complete the manoeuvre pointing upstream. However, if the eddy line is very wide, you may still want to point the canoe slightly downstream to help it cross and carve a powerful arc into the eddy (photo #3). The lateral momentum created by the ferry carries your canoe across the eddy line and into the pool.

By ferrying across the river toward eddy pools, you create sideways momentum that helps drive the canoe across difficult eddy lines. Moving from one side of a river to the other during your descent gives you the opportunity to use lateral momentum to enter eddy pools and maintain maximum control of your descent down the rapid.

Andrew Westwood is a regular contributor to Rapid and is an open canoe instructor at the Madawaska Kanu Centre.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Re-Actionary: Who Let the Dogs Out?

Stories

It’s a pretty picture—the photo of the outdoorsman in the plaid shirt. He’s rugged-good-looking, in his forties, perhaps a few days’ worth of perfectly even stubble adorning his rich tan and deep, soulful eyes. His vintage cedar strip canoe sits poised on the calm shores of a placid lake. Virgin forest stretches into the warm horizon of an immaculate sunset. A hearty fire throws up heat and light. And who lies quietly and obediently at his feet? The pièce de résistance—his dog. What a load of crap!

You paddlers with your stupid barking dogs, you are selfish, not soulful. There is no peace or tranquility whilst your ill-bred and even-worse-mannered mutt rummages through my dinner scraps, howls at the moon and pisses on my tent. It might paint a nice picture, but dogs and paddling don’t mix.

We paddlers come together at campgrounds, river-banks, and festivals. Often this means that we have our tents very close to one another. Strangely, we all get up at the same time. Ever wondered why? It’s not because we want an early start on the river. It’s because at 5 a.m., some yippy collie sees a chipmunk and begins to bark, and the other 15 canines join in.

Or, back at the campground after a hard day’s paddle, you’ve made yourself a fine meal and realize you don’t have a drink. So you set your plate down on your camp chair to go for a soda or a brewha. When you return to your seat, somebody’s slobbery mutt is scarfing down the last of your beef stroganoff.

Whose fault is this? Well a dog owner (if you can find him) will either deny it—”my dog would never do that”—or laugh—”what did you expect for leaving your plate on the chair?”

I won’t even get into cleaning up after your dog, but let’s just say that many of us like to walk around barefoot.

I’m no dog psychiatrist. I can’t go into details on why doggie A with no balls is acting out frustration on doggie B who still has balls. What I do know is that about every 10 minutes, some dog owner is jumping up screaming and running across the campground to tear his dog off the bleeding neck of another. Very tranquil! At any given river festival there are so many dog fights that maybe we should forget kayak tossing and paddle tricks. Maybe we should build a ring and sanction a fighting league—à la White Fang—with all house proceeds going toward river conservation.

Now let’s talk about the river dog. You know the drill. Owner goes paddling and dog chases him down the river. This isn’t so bad on it’s own—kinda cute—except the dog is stressed and barks the whole freaking time. Very peaceful! Again, the owner knows this will happen yet does nothing (like leave the animal at home). Result? We think the owner’s an inhumane idiot.

Which brings me to my final point: Who is at fault in all this, the dog or the owner? We all know the answer. Dogs are creatures of habit: they don’t have a set of manners for eating with the boys and another set for eating at the girlfriend’s parents. If your dog eats people’s food, goes through garbage and begs, it’s because you, the owner, have brought it up poorly. You, the owner, have failed this beast and, consequently, you have failed us.

Don’t bring your dog to the river.

Ben Aylsworth likes things on all fours but still leaves it at home.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Editorial: Chasing Elephants at the Worlds

Stories

I didn’t have to go to the World Freestyle Championships in Austria. I could have assigned the story and photos to another writer and photographer and stayed back in the office to take care of more important things.

There are always more important things.

But I didn’t start Rapid magazine to take care of important things.

Rapid began because I dreamed of travelling around the world, paddling, writing and pretending to be a photographer. I remember being seven years old, wanting to be the bearded guy wearing khakis in National Geographic, riding in the back of a Jeep chasing elephants, two Canons hanging from his neck.

Eleven years later I was sitting across the desk from my high school guidance counsellor. He was studying my marks, and I was telling him about my journal, the elephants, the Jeep, and how I was sure to have trouble keeping the dust off my lenses.

He wasn’t listening.

“Your grades are much better in math and science,” he said finally, pulling an application form from the top drawer of his tidy steel desk, “you’ll be accepted in engineering.”

Guidance counsellors are paid to sell young minds a real job for the tiny price of their dreams. He was right: I was accepted to engineering and I went. But my dreams kept bubbling to the surface. Complex equations reduced my spirit to the lowest common denominator and branded a squiggled not-equal-to sign into my soul. I only lasted a year….

Very few of the 370 competitors at the 2003 Rodeo Worlds in Graz are scraping together what a guidance counsellor would consider a respectable living by doing cartwheels. But they gathered at the River Mur to chase dreams. Dreams of gold medals, or dreams of paddling the crystal blue waters of the nearby Soca River in the Slovenian Alps. Dreams too strong to be squashed by stuffy men in cardi- gans sitting at desks full of forms.

Take the 17-year-old Norwegian paddler I met in the Graz airport on our way home. He told me he’d flushed early in his first ride and didn’t make it past the first round. His mom was proud of him and she’d be picking him up at the airport. He’d trained for a year and travelled a thousand miles across Europe chasing his dream. Tomorrow he’d be back in school to catch up on more important things.

“Isn’t it a long way to travel to paddle for 60 seconds?” I asked him.

“Yes, but I did it,” he said proudly. “Besides, you came way further and didn’t even paddle!”

The kid was right. I didn’t paddle on this trip. There was no dusty Jeep or charging elephants, but I too was travelling the world, chasing my dreams, two Canons hanging from my neck.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of Rapid Magazine.

Mediterranean Sunrise: Kayaking Comes to Croatia

Stories

Photo: Guillaume Fatras — Mediterranean Sunrise: Kayaking Comes to Croatia

It’s been a long time since western visitors last wandered the Croatian coast—before the decades of Marshal Tito’s communism and the Croatian war years from 1991 to 1995. But now Croatia has opened up again to tourism. The old Gorgon Mediterranean has shed her grim politics to reveal another one of her faces, this one notable for its beauty and untapped potential for kayak touring.

Croatia is a long, maritime country, across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. Starting at the northern border near the Italian town of Trieste, it stretches along the seacoast as far as Dubrovnik in the south, adorned by 1,000 arid, rocky islands. That Zagreb, the capital city, hides in the inland region of Slavonia is the only characteristic that denies the country’s pas- sionate affair with sea. The rugged coast is lined with villages. Every village has its little harbour, and every family once had a fishing boat. Fishing has now been replaced largely with tourism, but this is still a land best experienced via the sea.

Many areas of the island-studded Croatian coast are ideal for kayaking trips. I chose to visit the coastal province of Dalmatia, at the south end of the country, because of its cultural interest, harbour towns and easy paddling. The palace of the Roman emperor Diocletian in the city of Split as well as the old city of Dubrovnik are both UNESCO World Heritage sites. And Dalmatia’s three elongated islands—Brac, Hvar and Korcula— allow for sheltered paddling even when the infamous Mediterranean winds pick up.

Dalmatia has names for all of its winds, of which the notori- ous bora is the most powerful. Named for Bureaus, the God of the North Winds, the bora comes from the north and inland, blowing down with gale or storm force through gaps in the Dinaric Alps, the half-desert limestone mountains that form the steep rim of the Adriatic bathtub. The bora can last for days and ruin any plans you have of paddling windward. But the bora occurs rarely in the summer months. The southerly wind, the jugo or scirocco, is also weak during this hot, humid time of year. In summer, the welcome, cooling breeze of the northwesterly maestral prevails.

Sea kayaking was not yet popular the last time Croatia was a tourism destination, and today, kayak renting is only just beginning. We brought our own folding touring kayaks, flying into the international airport of the harbour city of Split, Croatia. The boats were to be our camels, carrying water to sustain us between infrequent refills on days reaching 40 degrees C. The Hypalon hull material would cope well with the hard stone beach landings that we would find everywhere. The boats’ lack of speed was only a minor sacrifice.

Split is the largest settlement in the north of Dalmatia and a good place to fly to because you can almost jump from the plane to the water. Thanks to the ferry service, we saved our strength crossing the 19 kilometres to the island of Brac. Our muscles were better used paddling out in the islands, far from the motorboat traffic.

Brac has the steepest shores of the Dalmatian islands, formed by a singular white stone. For centuries, the stone of Brac has been highly valued by masons. The Berlin Parliament, monuments in Vienna and even parts of the White House are made from the bricks of Brac.

You can easily get into wild areas along these islands, spared from crowded shoreline housing by the absence of roads. Camping is permitted along the shore, even on private beaches as far as three yards above sea level.

A day of leisurely paddling passed and a tiny inlet welcomed us for a quiet, mosquito-free night—no tent required, although the stony ground is a bit harsh. We ended the day with an evening bath in the sea, which often reaches 27 degrees C.

The crossing from Brac to the neighbouring island of Hvar only takes an hour by kayak. But we had some novice kayakers along and rode the ferry instead. The ferries among these islands are as common as bus service and a tempting option for lazy paddlers. We saved face by claiming our friends’ inexperience as an excuse.

Hvar is the longest island on the Adriatic Sea, and it’s not very developed. You’re even likely to find deserted houses, which our guide, Tome, told us were probably Serb summer homes. “They don’t dare come back,” he said. His statement could only come from a Croatian, for we cannot imagine having war on the mind in these paradisiacal surroundings.

Where the ferry stops in the town of Stari Grad, we left our kayaks with no worries of theft and hopped on rented mopeds to visit Hvar’s eponymous capital. Although it’s less than an hour by scooter, the town is on the opposite, southern coast and would have been more than a day by kayak, around the distant promontory of Cape Pelegrin. We motored over the middle of the island past fields of lavender protected by stone walls, with views of open sea to the horizon.

In the town of Hvar, we found a fine spot with a plaza looking like a small version of Venice’s Piazza San Marco—a sign of Croatia’s history as a colony of the Venetian Republic. A newer attraction of the town is its clubbing, which is renowned all over Europe.

Clubbing is something that you certainly won’t find on the third island, Korcula. Like Hvar, Korcula is the name of both an island and a town. The bora started blowing the same day the ferry dropped us at Korcula’s quays. The 35-knot wind kept us from paddling for two days, so the town kept no secrets from us. We had time to learn that the locals are proud of the town’s claim as the birthplace and early home of Marco Polo, though history often records his provenance as Venice. Meanwhile, our kayaks, left at the foot of the town’s ramparts, provided housing for a cat and its brood that were not so happy when the time came for us to leave.

Our trip of 15 days gave us plenty of time to tour the sights as we paddled the rugged, arid-looking coast down to Dubrovnik. We would sometimes stop at seaside restaurants where the owners were happy to fill our jerry cans with water and give us a break from our usual fare by serving local cheese, a type of ham called prsut, and fruits and vegetables fresh from the market. And we once saw two dolphins, a rare occurrence along this coast where colonies of German naturists are the more common mammalian life form.

The “pearl of the Adriatic,” Dubrovnik is a bigger town than Split and Hvar and is a gem indeed. Attacked by Vikings, Turks, and more recently Serbs, it is now the tourists that overrun its streets, churches and ramparts. You’re best to get an early start to explore, taking to the gleaming white streets at 6 a.m. You walk along the tiny, deserted lanes of the old town, pass matronly ladies tak- ing sea baths in the harbour, and reach the ramparts where you look out at the Adriatic in the rising sun.

This is the old face of the Dalmatian Med, made over as a kayaker’s paradise.

Guillaume Fatras is a freelance writer, photographer and former whitewater slalom kayaker based in Lyon, France.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Revenge of the Bird Nerds

Stories

Lucas Foerster is not what we’re looking for at all. Wiry and tanned from a summer spent outside as a researcher in Point Pelee National Park, he starts off by making it perfectly clear that just because he likes looking at birds doesn’t mean he isn’t a normal, active 27-year-old guy. Lucas knows he doesn’t fit the nerdy profile of the usual birding suspect: retired, hefty disposable income, khaki safari pants and questionable social skills. He tells me right away that he’s also into surfing. He even drives a vintage 1970s VW camper van. His mountain bike is parked just outside.

Scott MacGregor, Adventure Kayak’s publisher, has joined me in Point Pelee to photograph our kayaking mission to one of the world’s premier bird-watching destinations. On the drive we tallied up our limited knowledge of birders and birding and jokingly came up with a comical vision of Revenge of the Nerds characters and Nature of Things conventioneers in press-on David Suzuki beards and multi-pocketed vests rocking to the soundtrack from Hinterland Who’s Who. We concluded that birdwatching is boring, but we might get a good story if we could find one of these oddball aviphiles to satirize. I was crushed when the park managers at Point Pelee present- ed us with Lucas the surfer, a guy way too much like ourselves.

If you picture Ontario as a funnel of land channelled by the Great Lakes into the southwestern corner of the province, the outlet at the bottom of the funnel is Point Pelee. Canada’s southernmost tip, Pelee juts out into Lake Erie at the same latitude as Rome and northern California.

Pelee is a funnel for nature—”the best migrant trap in inland North America.” Birds migrating through southern Ontario concentrate at the Pelee bottleneck, resting and feeding at the point’s vast wetlands before moving on to northern Canada in spring, or across Lake Erie to wintering grounds in the tropics each fall. One of the best ways to see wildlife on this continent is to sit at the bottom of this funnel and let it all come to you. The total number of bird species recorded here is 372, almost 80 percent of the Canadian total. A dedicated birder can see 100 species in a single day.

The bird migration route is left over from a former land bridge across Lake Erie. Now the birds island-hop the same route from the point and across the leftover bits. The vestiges of the land bridge also make for good sea kayaking: wetlands inside Point Pelee; wave-washed beaches on the outsides of the point; challenging shoals and currents off the tip; and Pelee Island, a quaint land of inns and vineyards, 13 kilometres to the south. Paddlers occasionally cross the whole 50 kilometres from Point Pelee to Port Clinton, Ohio, braving Lake Erie’s unpre- dictable winds and rough shallows that hide the wreck- age of over 100 ships.

Point Pelee is the perfect place for a kayaker to get an education in birding, which is why Scott and I packed our kayaks and funnelled down the busy Highway 401 toward Windsor one cool weekend in October—an ideal time to see birds.

The spring migration, which peaks in May, is famous because the birds sing loudly and are easy to spot in bright mating plumage. But in the fall, after the breeding season, there are more of them, and more rare species. With the northbound race for sex behind them, migrants doddle and wander off course on the way back down south. Others blow in from out of region on weather systems driven by seasonal hurricanes in the tropics. Birders from nearby cities keep an eye on the storms and come out to track these rarities. They post sightings on the Internet complete with driving directions to the nearest farmhouse, picket fence or oak tree.

These are the nerds we came to see.

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We find Lucas at the park’s staff residence, flipping veggie burgers for dinner. He tells us of his conversion to birding. He was a nature lover all his life. Whether it was hiking up a mountain with his buddies to track down a particular type of snake, or taking the path less travelled in search of a rare plant.

Working in Pelee, it wasn’t long before his attention turned skyward. He resisted at first. “I once swore I’d never be a birder,” he said. “I became a closet birder.” Before long, he caved totally. Now he wears his binocu- lars with pride and wishes more people were birders.

Lucas believes that bird-watchers care more about the environment than non-bird-watchers. They are more respectful of nature. Not all of them—not the listers who treat bird sightings like hockey cards or stamp collections—but the real birders, the ones who understand birds because they notice everything, who go out in hik- ing boots and kayaks and lose themselves in the natural world. The soul birders.

It’s all just an excuse to be outside, getting close to nature. That’s all that birding is about. “Like surfing,” Lucas shrugs. “It’s the same thing.”

When Lucas recounts his lifelong love of nature, I compare his passion to my own. When people asked me as a kid what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said “naturalist.” I only grabbed this term because I knew that I wanted to live and work outside in wild places. The only people I met who did that were the provincial park natu- ralists I met on family camping trips.

In the world of “higher education,” however, there is no such thing as a “naturalist,” only biologists with their microscopes and textbooks. So I became an outdoor recreationist instead. My world was a playground, not a museum, library or science lab. Some people are in awe of the matrix of life; some of us are just out there to have fun. If the natural world is wine, Lucas is the connoisseur and I am the one who just likes to get drunk, damning the details.

But sooner or later you wake up in a strange place and learn you have a problem.

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During a three-month kayaking trip last summer, my paddling partner and I were haunted night after night by the same mysterious cry from deep in the West Coast rainforest. It sounded like someone hyperventilating over the neck of a soda bottle—hoo-hoo-hoo.

“What the heck is that sound?” one of us would ask. Upon which the other would act like a smart-ass and say, “That’s the cry of the bird that goes ‘hoo-hoo-hoo.’” Then we would laugh and go on to other subjects, like what flavour of Jell-O we’d packed for dessert that day.

This silliness went on for weeks, as dumb trip jokes between kayakers often do, growing less and less funny, until I felt melancholy looking out at the natural world. Day by day, nature was becoming more and more familiar, impressing me with its permanence and pervasiveness. And the cry of the bird we never saw continued to taunt us—hoo-hoo-hoo—scolding me for being so self-centred and ignorant, for having the audacity to know nothing of the natural world I’ve spent hundreds of days paddling through, for daring to be bored by Life.

“To the extent that each person can feel like a naturalist,” writes Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson in his book Biophilia, “the old excitement of the untramelled world will be regained.”

Sarah Rupert, a lifelong birder and Pelee park interpreter, explains that birders—known amongst them- selves as field ornithologists—can be divided into a few basic types. There are novices, who get a kick out of idention was confirmed down the barrel of a gun.” But W.E., figuring he wasn’t much of a hunter anyway, was per- suaded by the spectacle of migration to lay down his arms and observe nature instead. His actions led to the designation of Pelee as Canada’s ninth national park in 1918.

Duck hunting dwindled and was finally banned in Pelee in 1989. Canon and Nikon have replaced Remington and Smith & Wesson. The new hunters come to tick golden-winged warblers off their life lists, or to see the Henslow’s sparrow, the rarest bird in Ontario. They hunt with $2,000 binoculars, cameras and flashbulbs. The unscrupulous play back illegal recordings of bird mating calls on portable CD players, or carry shears to coif the bushes to frame a perfect photo, or flout the rules by walking off trails and “pressuring” the birds by their sheer numbers—2,500 a day through the park gates in May.

Out on the pond in a kayak you can escape this madness. Very few birders use kayaks, even though the kayak is traditionally a hunting tool, built for stealth, and one of the only ways to fully explore Pelee’s marshes.

“The naturalist is a civilized hunter,” E.O. Wilson writes. “He goes alone into a field or woodland and clos- es his mind to everything but that time and place, so that life around him presses in on all the senses and small details grow in significance.”

Looking at nature closely, you inevitably find out that it’s disappearing. The wetlands outside the park boundary, which once extended far inland, have been drained to grow onions, soybeans, tomatoes. If not for W.E. Saunders and Parks Canada, the whole peninsula would be drained and sprouting onions and condos by now.

I’ve learned that inside the survey-straight line of the park boundary, there are more “species at risk” than in any other national park in Canada. All this on a meagre 16 square kilometres, a few minutes’ drive from Canada’s busiest highway, at the heart of a region that supports a quarter of the nation’s human population.

Lucas explains that his studies show the average age of the pond’s turtles is much older than in previous studies. Mike says the bullfrogs are completely gone and nobody knows why. Zebra mussels are changing the ecology of Lake Erie faster than scientists can measure. And on and on. This is the one-way story of the nature funnel. Pelee is just a dribble of land balancing a tide of civilization— nature inside, civilization outside. It’s tempting to give up hope.

One thing I’ve noticed about kayaking: you move slowly, suspended in the middle where the boundary between civilization and nature dissolves. And the result—what some people call boredom—is also a kind of mindfulness. It follows naturally to have questions about what you see. No longer satisfied not to know the bird that goes hoo-hoo-hoo, you start to connect.

Maybe we are all naturalists. In Biophilia, E.O. Wilson explains that our fascination with other life forms is innate, two million years in the making. Survival once depended on identifying what we were going to eat for dinner. So it is not odd to be obsessed with nature. It’s more odd that we could ever not be obsessed by it. Birding is in our blood and our genes, and among inane human pastimes it carries a moral trump card.

“To explore and affiliate with life,” Wilson says, “is a deep and complicated process in mental development. Our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it, hope rises on its cur- rents.”

Out on the marsh, I notice a bird drop from the sky to the water and then fly up, circle around and drop again. To me, it’s a just another boring black speck. With Lucas and Mike along, the black speck becomes a peregrine falcon trying to capture a blue-winged teal. The teal averts death by diving each time, until the peregrine gives up. Lucas tells me that the falcon will set out across the lake some day soon, a black speck bound for South America.

“Wow,” I say. That’s not boring at all.

Adventure Kayak editor Tim Shuff now bird watches from his office window and recently learned the difference between a yellow finch and a bobolink.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.

Guide To Backcountry Kayaking On Alouette Lake, British Columbia

Photo: Paul German — Urban Adventures: Alouette Lake BC

With the Pacific Ocean on the front doorstep, many West Coast paddlers forget there’s great paddling in the backyard too, a mountain wilderness with freshwater lakes perfect for trips ranging from a couple of hours to a long weekend. Alouette Lake is one such place where we can paddle right into the Coast Range. It’s a manmade jewel that gleams like a natural emerald in the cradle of the snowcapped peaks.

Alouette Lake is in Golden Ears Provincial Park, a 55,000-hectare mountain playground nestled into the northern rim of the broad, fertile Fraser River Valley. The park is only about an hour’s drive east of Vancouver and a three-hour drive north of Seattle.

[ Paddling Trip Guide: View all paddling trips in British Columbia ]

As we drive through the park gates, signs direct us to the popular boat launch, just 10 minutes inside the park at the southwestern tip of the lake. To skip the boat ramp queues, we can put in at the day use area instead or, if we’re paying to car-camp, at Alouette, Gold Creek or North Beach campgrounds about 4 km farther up the west shore. These options require a few minutes’ portage, but can save time when the ramp’s busy.

Orange sea kayak pulled up on the beach — Beautiful beaches like this one, a short paddle from the main campground, make great lunch spots. | Photo: Paul German

Pointing like an arrow from southwest to northeast, Alouette is 17 km long, but only about a kilometer wide on average. We cross the lake and paddle along the eastern shore, close to the land where the air is rich with the scent of cedars and evergreens. Landing to answer nature’s call, we discover wild raspberries. We keep our ears open for noises— because the black bears love berries too!

Back on the water, we pass a large stream that cascades down from the hills to feed the lake. The late afternoon sun backlights the cold, damp air that follows the water down the creek bed, causing the vapour to glow like a spectral second stream that spirals just a foot or two above the lake.

After about 10 km from the boat launch (or about five from the car campgrounds), we reach the Narrows. Also known as the Cut, this constriction marks both a physical and a psychological gateway.

The lake briefly tapers to less than 25 meters wide, and shallows from dozens of meters deep to just a meter or two.

Man standing at edge of lake with kayak beside him and tent on beach. — The narrows divide the north and south ends of the lake and make a great small campsite for overnighters looking for a quiet getaway and views of the peaks. | Photo: Paul German

The lake was formed in 1926 when developers dammed a river to create a hydroelectric reservoir, connecting and vastly enlarging two existing smaller lakes. The Narrows is a reminder of the swamp that separated the two natural bodies of water. On either side and beyond, the mountains rise steeply out of the water, creating the feel of a wild freshwater fjord. Very few powerboats venture beyond here.

Just beyond the Narrows, we turn left and land at a small beach at the southwest end of the lake’s second segment. Hidden in the trees above the beach are several levelled earth pads built especially for tents, as well as an outhouse. If we were on a day trip, we would stop for lunch at this point, then head back. But we’ve brought camping gear, so we bathe in the lake, then dry out and cook supper over a small fire.

The next morning, we set out on a day trip to the far north end of the lake, about 7 km away as the crow flies. As we paddle, we can trace with our eyes the journey of water from the slowly melting snowfields on the surrounding mountaintops to the white plumes that fall dozens of meters down sheer rock faces, and finally to the streams that merge into the lake.

Along the eastern shore, not far from the end of the lake, is a grey concrete arch reminiscent of a medieval gate tower. It marks the intake of a long, manmade tunnel that feeds water right through the mountain down to Stave Lake and its hydroelectric generators.

At the very head of the lake, the Alouette River, sweeping into the lake across a cobblestone delta, offers a tantalizing glimpse along a mountain valley that seems to recede forever toward the horizon. If we were trained and equipped for it, we could land, find the trail by the river’s edge, and follow it to the peaks of Mount Robie Reid thousands of feet above. But this alpine adventure will have to wait for our return to Alouette. This time we turn around, soon to enjoy one of the best parts of paddling a freshwater fjord: not having to rinse our gear when we get home!

Quiet rapids on river — Gold River flows into Alouette Lake beside a beautiful sandbar. You can paddle into the river mouth to the rapids, watching salmon and trout swim in the clear waters below. | Photo: Paul German

How to get to Golden Ears Provincial Park

From Vancouver, take Highway 7 to Maple Ridge and turn left on the Dewdney Trunk Road. Turn left again on 232nd Street and follow the signs to Golden Ears Park.

[ Further reading: Kootenay Lake Trip Guide: A Backyard Paddling Paradise ]

Golden Ears Provincial Park campsite reservations

You can reserve your campsites at Cold Creek, Alouette and North Beach campgrounds and purchase backcountry camping permits here.

Special considerations

Tree stumps, relics of pre-flood logging, lurk at or just below water level in some near-shore areas—keep a watchful eye, especially in rough water. Inflow and outflow winds can pick up quickly, so plan any crossings accordingly.

Boat rentals

During the summer months, canoes and kayaks are available for rent at the day use area at the southwest end of the lake. Contact Rocky Mountain Boat Rentals.

This article was originally published in Adventure Kayak‘s Fall 2003 issue. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine’s print and digital editions here, or browse the archives here.

Philip Torrens has been an avid touring kayaker, on both fresh and salt water, for more than 15 years.

Looking north from the popular boat launch on a quiet weekday, you can sense the solitude at Alouette’s north end. | Photo: Paul German