Paddle: Kayaking, Canoeing & Rafting
From classic whitewater rafting to river slalom runs to new school skyaking, today’s paddle sports landscape is a constant evolution of style, adaptation, and exploration.
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“[K]ayaking is about taking journeys: trips around the bay on a sparkling summer’s day; exposed passages along lines of cliffs with dark sea caves to explore… The physical list is endless. And there is also the inner journey.” – Chris Duff, On Celtic Tides
Stories
Katie Siber of The New York Times explores the paddling opportunities on the Colorado River above Lee’s Ferry (“sandwiched between Lake Powell and the Grand Canyon” in northern Arizona), where river permits are much easier to come by, the water is flatter, and the couple-day kayaking legs are perfect for beginners.
“One of the remarkable things about the Colorado is that no matter how many people have traveled it and no matter how many have tried to plunder it, from railroad builders to miners and even Hollywood movie crews (parts of “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” “Broken Arrow” and “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” were filmed here), it retains a palpable sense of wildness.
River trips on peaceful stretches like this invite laziness and lingering, so the next morning we lounged about and sipped coffee, did some cursory yoga and inspected the tracks of ringtails and centipedes circling our tents and the bushes.”
The passing in April of the 100-year-old man whose dams plugged up the Colorado and other majestic western rivers suddenly got plenty of attention this week, from sources as different in scope as the High Country News and the Wall Street Journal.
In The New York Times, Douglas Martin quotes Marc Reisner, who in his 1986 book Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water said Mr. Dominy cultivated Congress “as if he were tending prize-winning orchids.”
Here’s Dominy in an interview with Outside magazine in 1999, talking about the push to build Glen Canyon Dam: “‘Of course we covered up some delightful country: country that was inaccessible, country that would never be visited by very many people, which we turned into one of the most beautiful lakes in the world.’”
But our favorite coverage of Dominy’s legacy came yesterday from NPR’s Elizabeth Arnold, whose three-minute podcast includes the surprising reminder that the Sierra Club supported Glen Canyon in return for the bureau passing up on other damming projects.
Kenneth Fletcher of Smithsonian Magazine spends a weekend canoeing some of the Okefenokee Swamp’s 400,000 acres–a 7,000 year-old peat bog (38 miles long by 25 miles wide) along the Georgia and Florida border.
“As the sky darkened, I heard an orchestra of night sounds. Pairs of cranes sang together, a trumpeting that reverberated across the swamp. Choruses of frogs chimed in. Night fell, and owls hooted and howled from trees dotting the prairie. The stars reflected brightly off the inky water while the Milky Way glowed in the sky.”
Executive Pursuits: Harry Hurt III of The New York Times writes about running the “boiling cauldron” that is the Nantahala River (the “Natty”) in western North Carolina, as he learns to kayak for the first time with whitewater kayaking instructor Jon Clark of Nantahala Outdoor Center.
“Over the preceding 24 hours, Jon and his colleagues at the Nantahala Outdoor Center had given me a crash course in the basics of whitewater kayaking. I’d practiced on a flat-water section of the Chattooga River, where the movie ‘Deliverance’ was shot, and I’d run some Class II rapids on the Nantahala River. But Nantahala Falls was a full-fledged Class III rapids, and I was still a rank novice.”
Rogue River Rafts
Bonnie Tsui of The New York Times writes about the growing trend among whitewater rafting companies in offering culinary cooking camps in addition to their standard river experience. ROW Adventures’ Culinary Whitewater Series (rafting the Snake and Salmon Rivers in Idaho, or northeast Oregon’s Grande Ronde) and O.A.R.S. adventure rafting company’s Wilderness Gourmet trip series (Oregon’s Rogue River) are just two such examples.
“Peter Grubb, president and founder of ROW Adventures, said the company started the Culinary Whitewater Series last year in response to the growing interest in culinary travel… ‘we thought it would be fun to do with some guides on our staff who are experienced cooks and natural teachers. We wanted it to be experiential, so that people could learn how to do gourmet camp cooking at home or on their own camping trips.’”
Dan Frosch of The New York Times weighs in on the rafting vs. private land development wars brewing this summer in Colorado’s Gunnison Valley
“Now, the dispute over the Taylor is reviving an old battle in Colorado, long a mecca for white-water rafting. At issue are the state’s water and property laws, which say that while the water in local rivers and streams is public, the beds and banks belong to whoever owns the adjacent land.”
Stephanie Simon in The Wall Street Journal explores the recent angst between Colorado rafters and fisherman: fisher folk hoping to bar passage of local rafting companies through private stretches of river; rafting companies, on the other hand, feeling it’s their right to float public waterways (through private property) without being sued for civil trespass.
“This may sound like an obscure dispute. But it has been a thorny issue in Colorado for a century—in keeping with an aphorism, often attributed to Mark Twain, that out West, whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.”
Matt Shepard of Virginia Beach, Virginia, landed a 166-pound bluefin tuna, fishing 40 miles off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina–and all of this from a 13-foot sea kayak.
“During his 90-minute fight with the fish, Shepard and his 13-foot ocean kayak were towed three miles, at times sideways and backwards, at speeds of up to 7 knots,” Field & Stream.
Unable to find common ground between rafting companies and private landowners, Colorado handed its new river access bill to water rights development managers–apparently the only “impartial” witnesses in the argument.
“Some senators questioned the wisdom of sending the issue to the Colorado Water Congress, but Sen. Bruce Whitehead, D-Hesperus, said it would get a fair hearing there. ‘There are problems with the bill … in regards to water-rights development in the future,’ said Whitehead, who opposed the bill.” Charles Ashby in the Grand Junction Sentinel.
Katie Siber of The New York Times explores the paddling opportunities on the Colorado River above Lee’s Ferry (“sandwiched between Lake Powell and the Grand Canyon” in northern Arizona), where river permits are much easier to come by, the water is flatter, and the couple-day kayaking legs are perfect for beginners.
photo credit: Wolfgang Staudt
