Flappers and card sharks, gangsters and molls, hippies and celebrities. At the Ladies of the Lake Symposium, held every August in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the question of what to wear applies as much to the Saturday night costume party as it does to paddling gear.
Themes for the all-women event’s Werner Paddles party have included the Roaring ‘20s, Las Vegas, Prom, Woodstock and the Oscars. Each year, the costumes increase in creativity and complexity.
Shopping at thrift stores and raiding closets is all part of the fun says West Coast paddling instructor Cindy Scherrer, a regular coach and carouser at the event. “It’s usually a cooperative effort with several friends,” she reveals, “We pool the things we find and have a great time putting it together.”
Ladies of the Lake founder Bill Thompson credits Werner Paddles’ marketing manager Danny Mongno for the unusual tradition. It all started, Thompson says, when Mongno was welcoming participants to the 2007 symposium in Manistique.
“He told them, ‘By the way, tomorrow night we’re having the Werner Paddles party and it’s a pajama party,’” Thompson recalls. “Nobody knew he was going to do that, and we thought, we can’t do that! That’ll never fly. But I went out and bought a nightgown and, lo and behold, all the ladies showed up in nightgowns and pajamas.”
It’s that spontaneity and adventurous spirit that Mongno loves about the event. “There is a bit of a feral attitude amongst participants,” he says, “they paddle a bit harder, they laugh a bit harder. The boundaries of the everyday are thrown to the curb.”
THE BIRTH OF LADIES OF THE LAKE
The ladies have been surprising Thompson, co-owner of Marquette outdoors store Down Wind Sports, since he first dreamed up the idea of an all-female paddling event. Inspiration struck while he was thumbing through a special women’s issue of Paddler magazine at the 2003 Great Lakes Sea Kayak Symposium. He mentioned the idea to Jo Foley, one of the female coaches. Within hours, another female coach approached Thompson to inquire about the new event. The first Ladies of the Lake was held the following summer.
LOL is a traveling symposium. From Munising to Marquette, the Keweenaw to the Straits of Mackinac, it’s hosted in a different location in the Upper Peninsula every year.
In 2013, the event celebrated its 10th anniversary in swash-buckling style with a Pirates of Drummond Island theme. Marooned on the remote Lake Huron isle, the motley crew danced, swilled grog and marauded late into the night.
Thompson says the annual theme party is every bit as important as the kayaking. “As silly as that sounds,” he admits, “Ladies of the Lake is really all about friends getting together and letting loose and having a good time.”
When she’s not playing castaway, Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin is a co-founder of Chicago-based Have Kayaks, Will Travel (havekayakswilltravel.com).
This article first appeared in the Adventure Kayak, Spring 2014 issue. Subscribe to Paddling Magazine and get 25 years of digital magazine archives including our legacy titles: Rapid, Adventure Kayak and Canoeroots.
