Kayaking Down An Arctic Glacier...While We Still Can

Last month, Ben Stookesberry kayaked down a glacial waterfall at the edge of the Braswell Glacier shelf. Check out the photos here.

Royak

The September 1974 issue of Popular Mechanics featured a story of a sit-on-top surfing kayak called a Royak.



Royaks are still in production today -- check out their website.

Rolling Clinic

Louise and I zipped down to Thetis Lake after work last night for a rolling clinic with Yves of Go Kayak.
Louise has never felt terribly comfortable if her kayak was anything but upside-up, but she certainly gave it her all.

Yves was a terrific teacher, and we learned a lot. Now that Louise has a boat that she really likes, it's time to get a little more serious about practicing again, and this was a good way to start.

Trip Length: .23 km
YTD: 153.34 km
More pictures are here.

2012 Kayak For a Cure

The blazing sun of the last week gave way to clouds this morning as Louise and I headed down to Willows Beach for this year's Kayak For A Cure. We were worried about conditions as we knew there would be a number of newbie and inexperienced paddlers taking part and higher winds were supposed to be blowing in later in the day. But the winds never arrived.
We hit the beach at Willows ready to paddle. The route was from Willows Beach to Cadboro Bay, a short paddle we've done numerous times, but usually we go from Cadboro to Willows and back. I don't think we've ever done it the other way.


After the pre-paddle ceremonies and safety talk....

...and the official portrait (taken by Gwen Ewart)...

....44 paddlers hit the water. Many were cancer survivors or cancer patients.

Louise and I have never paddled in a group this big. Herding kayakers makes herding cats look easy.

A little while later we hit the beach at Cadboro Bay where everyone abandoned their kayaks and headed straight to the washrooms.

Well, no, not really. But somehow I managed to get a shot of all the kayaks with no one in them.

Returning, everyone tried to raft up so a photographer on our accompanying safety boat could get some group shots. I go back to my earlier "herding cats" comment.



Local media covered the final landing. Check out the video embedded at the end of this post. Look carefully, you can see Louise and I three different times in the piece. After the paddle, we joined our fellow kayakers for a barbecue lunch.


Louise and I didn't paddle just for the burgers, although they were really, really good.
We didn't paddle just to raise money, although this year's event raised over $21,000.

We paddled for Sam, Jaan and Bobby.


Trip Length: 7.11
YTD: 153.11 km
More pictures are here.

Kayak for a Cure!

There was good weather today for the Kayak for a Cure paddle, from Willows Beach to Cadboro Bay and back. Unfortunately, when I took some time away from the computer the flotilla hadn't arrived yet in the bay. I hung around Spurn Head for a while, looking at the sea and sky, with a harbour seal looking at me. The wind picked up a little when I turned back to shore and got back to writing.

Gorge@Dusk

Another warm late summer day here on the We(s)t Coast, but a change in the weather is coming, so Louise and I invited Paula to a dusk paddle on The Gorge tonight.


We launched at high tide slack. The Gorge was the smoothest we've ever seen it.


It was so calm that we paddled under the Tillicum Bridge, not something that can be done all the time. Often it's a bubbling rapid, but today it was flat and gentle.



We puttered up The Gorge towards Portage Inlet, past a heron looking for a late evening snack.


In Portage Inlet, the water was dead flat. The only other time we've seen it this flat was when it was frozen over.


We watched the sun go down, then we headed back.


Trip Length: 6.25
YTD: 146.00 km
More pictures are here.

Esquimalt Shores

It might very well be summer's last gasp, but you wouldn't know it from the sunny weather this week. Today's daytime high temperature was a smidge off the record, but we'll get another crack at it tomorrow. Then we'll cool off to more normal temperature readings over the weekend. That figures.
Louise and I are also enjoying our last gasp of vacation time and today we headed out from Albert Head, one of our favourite launch points. Usually we head southwest along the coast towards to Witty's Lagoon, but today we decided to head northeast towards Esquimalt Harbour.


But before we headed that way, we watched an otter family playing in the water.

The otters finally noticed us and swam away. It was only then that we realized that one of the otters was actually a small baby seal. It nervously checked out Louise's boat before sliding beneath the surface and swimming away.

A couple of seals watched us from shore.


We discovered what the otters were fishing for. No, not the jellyfish, although that was pretty cool, but the little fish. The little cove was swarming with them. No wonder the otters were out!


The otters climbed the rocks headed into the brush. We think there were five of them in all.


From there, we began our paddle towards Esquimalt in earnest. Mind you, we had to paddle past a few seals first.



The shoreline is mostly a long pebbly beach. Eventually the shoreline behind the beach gives way to Esquimalt Lagoon, and across the lagoon is world-famous Hatley Castle, which you may recognize as Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters in the X-Men films.


At the Fort Rodd Hill lighthouse, we were planning to turn into Esquimalt Harbour....

...but as I looked across the entrance, I realized that we have never paddled along the Esquimalt shore on the other side. So instead, we crossed the harbour mouth...

...and puttered around some of the small islands on the other side. The water was crystal clear and we watched a seal swim around under our boats.

We get to check another couple of kilometers of the world's slowest circumnavigation of Vancouver Island.

As we headed back....

...the currents turned right on time. The gentle flood that pushed us out became a gentle ebb that guided us home with some gentle swells that we had fun riding, which was a welcome distraction from the man who was sitting on a log in a secluded area of the beach working on his tan. His "all over" tan.

We pulled in back at Albert Head and looked back and saw Mount Baker rising over the city. Wow.


Trip Length: 13.65
YTD: 139.75 km
More pictures are here.

Practice Makes Closer to Perfect

This morning Louise and I headed out to Thetis Lake so that she could get a practice session in her new boat under her belt. This meant that we were going to get dunked in the water.
Doesn't she looked thrilled with this idea?

However, I was keen to start.


Before we began our practice in earnest, we went for a quick little jaunt along the shore, and we spotted a heron.

Since the point of today was to spend more time in the water than on it, I hadn't brought my main camera, only my back-up Pentax Optio W90 which was a shame as this heron was totally calm and unperturbed as I approached. I got in fairly close and would have got some awesome pics with the big camera. Ah, c'est la vie.

First we practiced our edges and bracing....

...then we tried something we saw in Gordon Brown's latest DVD, a balance exercise where the kayaker sits on the deck just behind the cockpit and slowly shuffles themselves around in a circle. Sometime it went well....

....often it didn't.

It is not as easy as it looks. Gordon Brown makes it look easy, but of course he's probably done it 14,000,000 times. One thing we noticed while watching the DVD last night in preparation for today was that his Valley kayak sits a lot lower in the water than our thermoformed Deltas, but that's just the nature of these boats. I presume these sorts of balancing skills are slightly easier in a boat that rides lower in the water, the same with rescue skills. Which isn't to say they are easy.

Then we moved onto rescues as Louise tried to figure out how to get back into her new boat. I have to say the paddle float rescues weren't pretty, but they worked.

We also tried some assisted rescues which went well, then I tried some solo rescues of my own.


Then, battered and bruised, it was time to get warm. To the coffee shop!

Trip Length: 1.42
YTD: 126.10 km
More pictures are here.

Master and Commander

Academy Award-winning actor Russell Crowe got lost kayking on the weekend off New York's Long Island. He and a friend were kayaking but lost their way, then headed for shore when the sun went down. They hailed a passing Coast Guard boat which gave them a lift back to their starting point.

Bird Sightings on the Red Deer River

This August I had an excellent opportunity to do birdwatching while kayaking in a new place! Here's a google map I made using the SPOT messages I sent while on the Red Deer River.

The first day of four I spent on the river, though the direction of flow was generally heading south from Content Bridge there were several bends in its direction. If I stopped paddling, the current would gradually turn the kayak sideways. I turned round during the late afternoon to look back upstream at the approaching weather front. Over the river, an osprey was soaring and turning. I’m pretty darned sure it was an osprey (Pandion halietus) because its white underside and dark wings were visible against the sky. And as I was watching, it stooped suddenly and plunged down to the river. If it caught a fish, then the fish was too small for me to see without my glasses as the osprey flew away. This was the only time I nearly fell out of my kayak, as I was leaning back to watch the osprey and was abruptly reminded about balance and so on just before tipping.

This photo of an osprey is from the National Geographic website.

A little later, I heard thunder rumbling and turned round again to look at the weather approaching from the north-west. It was thunder, and lightning flashed in the clouds. There was rain falling from a cloud that should take about half an hour to reach me. It was time to find a place to set up camp for the night! Luckily, there was a nice level place above the river shore just at that bend of the river. I pulled up onto the shore, walked across the level ground to another rise, calling out to the cabin that stood there. The fire pit smelled like a fire had been burning yesterday. But no one came out of the cabin. With no one around for me to ask permission, I resolved to  camp here above the high water mark and try to leave no trace.

Quickly, I set up Lila’s tent close to the trees and put my gear inside. Then I moved the kayak higher on the bank and rolled it upside-down. The nearest tree to tie the kayak to was sixty feet away, by the tent. It took using both the throw bag rope and my stern line, but I got that boat tied down! Strong gusts of wind are common and can easily roll a boat around. There were no gusts of wind that night, just lightning, thunder, and rain for the early evening.

Wikipedia had this great photo of an American white pelican like I saw.

On the evening of the second day, I saw a pelican. An American white pelican, or Pelecanus erythrorhynchos, according to the Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America. Astonishing! A bird that’s as long from beak to tail as I am tall – well, an inch shorter, but wow! It’s as long as the Mute Swans that we see swimming and nesting in Portage Inlet. At 108 inches of wingspan, a white pelican has wings that are getting close to twice as wide as its length. It flies more quietly than a duck, with great swoops of its wings like a heron. The next morning, it flew past my camp again on its way downriver past Tolman Bridge.

This photo is from the Wikipedia page on cinnamon teal ducks.

The third day, there were ducks galore between Tolman Bridge and Morrin Bridge. Several small ducks looked like cinnamon teal ducks, little round bobbing things that get deftly out of the way when a paddler comes near. They weren’t crowded or in flocks like at Cadboro Bay… these seemed to be living here for the summer and spread out thinly here in the Badlands. 

This was the stretch of the river most isolated from humans, and there were few trees except the scrubby willows where the banks were lower. Some of the bluffs were almost like cliffs, and there were holes like those where cliff swallows or purple martins like to nest. Some holes were bigger, and set apart or entirely alone. Could a few of these holes held Wood duck nests? I’m guessing that some of these bigger holes held owls or maybe bats, though I saw neither. By the time the evenings were dark enough for owls or bats to come out, I was tucked away inside the tent and only came out to feed the mosquitoes. Any reports that mosquitoes are endangered species are not to be believed. This summer I was a participant in a Blood Donor Drive for mosquitoes and gave at least two units of whole blood... one tiny bite at a time.

It's amazing how many bird listings there are in Wikipedia!

On the fourth day there were no birds visible in the foggy morning. A beaver slapped the water, but I couldn’t see him or any birds. Back to bed with a Dick Francis novel and a granola bar. When the fog lifted I got packed up and on the water. I couldn’t identify the few birds visible from the river that day, as they were small dark blurs that didn’t hang around. There were more nesting holes in the bluffs, though, so I’m guessing these were swallows. Was sad not to see any magpies, as they’re pretty and smart birds common in farmland in Central Alberta. Maybe next time.