6 S I T- O N - T O P K A YA K S R E V I E W E D SHUTTLE RIG ESSENTIALS

T H E
P
I S
RKS
S U E
AMERICA’S BEST PADDLING PARKS

YELLOWSTONE:
LOVE IT OR LEAVE
IT ALONE?
THE RANGER LIFE
THE FIGHT FOR
THE SOUL OF
THE GRAND CANYON

OLYMPIANS
TO WATCH
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 FOREWORD
Earning It
One hundred years ago this month, President Woodrow Wilson
signed the National Park Service into law, establishing a system of
parks that now protects some 84 million acres. Ken Burns famously
called it America’s Best Idea—a concept “as uniquely American as the
Declaration of Independence and just as radical: that the most special
places in the nation should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but
for everyone.”
The park service is charged with two missions that seem naturally at
odds. On the one hand, the Park Service’s role is to protect America’s
natural treasures. On the other, it’s to provide public access to them.
Access has come to mean roads and lodges and interpretive trails. That
doesn’t always jibe with paddling, which has a singular ability to carry
people into wild places without roads or other infrastructure. In some
parks paddling plays a central role in the access mission; in others it’s
an afterthought, or even anathema.
That’s the case in Yellowstone and Grand Teton, where for 60 years
the Park Service has denied access to a mother lode of unexplored
rivers and creeks. A group of wilderness paddling enthusiasts has found
an unlikely ally in Wyoming congresswoman Cynthia Lummis, who has
4 | canoekayak.com
Zak Podmore (left)
and Will Stauffer-
Norris on the
South Rim of the
Grand Canyon.
Will Stauffer-Norris
introduced legislation to overturn the paddling ban. As Scott Willoughby
writes, the proposed law has driven a wedge between paddlers and
conservationists, and raised profound questions about how best to
protect our natural heritage (“Love it or Leave it Alone,” p 24).
Nowhere is the divide between access and protection more stark
than in the Grand Canyon, where a proposed tramway could shuttle
10,000 tourists per day to the canyon floor. The developer argues that
the billion-dollar resort, to be built on Navajo land just outside Grand
Canyon National Park, would allow anyone to experience the canyon,
not just a handful of backpackers or well-heeled river-runners.
To investigate, C&K online editor Zak Podmore and photographer
Will Stauffer-Norris paddled a flash flood to the proposed tram site at
the confluence of the Little Colorado and Colorado rivers—a place the
Navajo and Hopi people hold sacred (“The Confluence,” p 50). There
are easier ways to report a story than paddling into the heart of the
Grand Canyon and then carrying a 100-pound kayak back out, but Zak
and Will’s approach pays deference to another great American ideal,
meritocracy. If you want to see the Grand Canyon for what it really is,
you’ve got to earn it. –Jeff Moag
MAKE YOUR ESCAPE.
Wherever there’s water, there’s an opportunity to get away from
it all. Just you, the outdoors, an Old Town NEXT, and the rhythm
of it all. It’s the canoe-kayak crossover that lets you escape
civilization, even when you’re smack dab in the middle of it.

To learn more, escape to

PADDLENEXT.COM
 FA L L 2 0 1 6

REVIEW

FEATURES
OUR FAVORITE PARKS
In celebration of the 100th Anniversary of
the National Park Service this month, C&K
staff and contributors share their favorite
park paddling experiences
Canoe & Kayak (ISSN 1077-3258) FAll 2016, Volume 44, Issue 4, is publilshed quarterly by Canoe & Kayak, Inc, 261 Madison Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016-2303. Copyright © 2016 by Ten: The Enthusiast Network Magazines; LLC; Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to
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64 // SIT-ON-TOP KAYAKS
THE CONFLUENCE We put these six beginner-friendly kayaks
to the test, and discover that sometimes it’s
A grueling trip to the canyon floor reveals
nice to be on top. By Darren Bush
how profoundly a planned cable tram would
change the sacred heart of the Grand Canyon.
By Zak Podmore

PUT IN
DEPARTMENTS 24 // YELLOWSTONE: LOVE IT, OR LEAVE IT ALONE?
4 FOREWORD // 12 LETTERS // 14 GALLERY // 30 ASK EDDY // 32 NEW PRODUCT The fight to lift Yellowstone’s 60-year-old ban on paddling
PREVIEW // 62 GEAR // 72 JON TURK UNFILTERED // 74 DIRTBAG DIARIES has gone all the way to the U.S. Congress.
By Scott Willoughby

ONLINE AT ON THE COVER: Kayakers and

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THIS PAGE: Sea kayaking Jackson
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Photo by Justin Baile / Tandem Stock
AQUAPHILE
32 // THE PARK AT THE END OF THE WORLD
With the millennial clock about to strike midnight, five
friends decide to take refuge in Everglades
National Park. By David Hanson

Payment in advance, U.S. funds only.

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 VOLUME 44 // ISSUE 4 FALL 2016

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 LETTERS@CANOEKAYAK.COM
Go outdoors. Paddle.
Sleep in a Hilleberg tent.
Repeat as often as possible.

LETTEHRE
OF T
MONTH
RE: MILLENNIALS
“Where Have All the Young People Gone?” asks John Nestler, com-
menting on the advancing age of canoe-trippers (Spring ‘16). Well,
hereabouts they’ve mostly gone to the extravagantly outfitted,
climate-controlled gym, wearing (of course) camo shorts and tees.
Weekends they bike around Central Park, which appears to be as
much of the outdoors as they can tolerate. For office use they’re for-
saken attaché cases for backpacks, preferably “assault” or “techni-
cal” backpacks, which seems to be code for extra zippers. I hesitate
to posit a creation myth, but this seems
to originate in the 1960s and ‘70s, when
the idea that cushy vehicles with muscu-
lar names such as Bronco, Land Cruiser,
Cherokee and Scout were necessary to
survive the treacherous curves and grades
of suburban country-club driveways. I
wish Nestler all the best in his efforts to
turn young people from the virtual to the

keron gt authentic, but it may be too late. Consider

— Thanks Bill. We
the “mancave”—not a dirt-floored refuge
couldn’t have put it
Very strong, versatile, and roomy all season tent where, as you might think, rugged young
in our black label line. Perfect for year round, better ourselves. We’re
men share old legends around an open
gear-intensive adventures in any situation. sending you a new
fire, but rather a warm haven for couch po-
Available in 3 & 4 person versions. NRS Vapor PFD (only
tatoes binge-watching “Game of Thrones”
one zipper!) to wear
on 60-inch flat-screen TVs.
on your next real-
–Bill M., New York, N.Y. world adventure. –Eds.
Jennifer Gosselin/wildravenadventure.com

RE: LIFE & LEGACY

for 45 years, Hilleberg has been making the highest
quality tents available. Conceived and developed in
northern Sweden, Hilleberg tents offer the ideal balance
of low weight, strength, and comfort. Order our catalog
for more information!
This, from your story about the accident that claimed the life of Doug Tompkins
(Life & Legacy, Summer ‘16), is probably the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever read:
“Nobody on the trip wore a drysuit. In hindsight, it’s easy to finger this decision as a
fatal mistake, but every decision in the backcountry is a calculation of practicality, and
a drysuit would be one more piece of gear burdening what was supposed to be an
escape from that controlled, protected, suffocating industrial world.”

–Paul C., Bend, Ore

–The statement reflects the mindset of Tompkins and his companions at the outset
of the trip, a philosophy that was central to Tompkins’ extraordinary career in pad-
dling, mountaineering and conservation. The balance of the story, which details
how a group of experienced adventurers were unable to save Tompkins’ life after
he capsized in 40-degree water, speaks volumes about importance of dressing for
immersion. –Eds.

Order a FREE catalog online at

WHAT Write us at letters@canoekayak.com.
HILLEBERG.COM DO YOU Letters may be edited for clarity and length.
or call toll free 1-866-848-8368 THINK?
follow us on facebook.com/HillebergTheTentmaker
 EXPERIENCE THE
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 gallery

JON THORPE
ALEX BAILDHAM
NEWCASTLE ISLAND, BRITISH COLUMBIA

14 | canoekayak.com
canoekayak.com | 15
 gallery

16 | canoekayak.com
J.P. VAN SWAE
DAVE SHIVELY
BANGKOK, THAILAND

canoekayak.com | 17
 gallery

BRADEN GUNEM
CLAIRE CRIPPS
KHAMMOUANE PROVINCE, LAOS

The Xe Bang Fai River emerges

after flowing some nine miles
through Tham Khoun Xe in
central Laos, one of the world’s
largest caves.

18 | canoekayak.com
canoekayak.com | 19
 PUT IN OLYMPICS Olympian Casey Eichfeld at the
first round of U.S. Olympic Trials in
Charlotte, North Carolina.

Streeter Lecka / Getty

ONE
Olympic paddling is a tough business. Strict limits on

the number of entries means that merely qualifying

SHOT
for the Games is a champion’s labor. A few hun-

dreths of a second can be the difference between

FOR
the podium and next time. For slalom racers, that

razor-thin margin plays out on a dynamic course,

GLORY
where a random current or untimely breath of wind

can crush a dream four years in the making. Predict-

ing the winner nearly as improbable as the athletes’

FOR OLYMPIC SLALOM PADDLERS, A LIFETIME OF
quest—but that also means anyone who leaves the
WORK BOILS DOWN TO TWO LAPS OF THE COURSE. starting gate stands a chance. Slalom paddlers race
HERE’S WHO TO WATCH THIS MONTH IN RIO. for medals August 9, 10 and 11. Flatwater sprint finals

BY JOE POTOCZAK are August 16, 18 and 20.

20 | canoekayak.com
MEN’S SINGLE CANOE
THE FAVORITE: DAVID FLORENCE – GREAT BRITAIN
The absence of past Olympic champions starts Florence, who won silver in
both C-1 and C-2 at the 2012 London Olympics, that much closer to the
winner’s circle.
THE DARK HORSE: MATEJ BENUS – SLOVAKIA
Benus has already conquered one improbable feat, besting canoe slalom
legend Michal Martikan in national selection. Next, the Olympic field.
THE AMERICAN: CASEY EICHFELD – USA
The 26-year-old provides veteran leadership to the U.S.
squad. Eichfeld will be performing in his third Summer
Games, having raced C-2 in Beijing and C-1 in London. In Rio the
Pennsylvania native will compete in both events. Eichfeld holds a
resume of strong finishes throughout his career. The best, a 4th
place finish in the 2015 world championship, shows him peaking at
just the right time. He’s capable of a podium finish.

Kayaker Ashey Nee racing competing in the

second round of U.S. Olympic Trials at the brand
new whitewater facility in Oklahoma City.

Zoie Clift

WOMEN’S KAYAK
THE FAVORITE: JESSICA FOX – AUSTRALIA
The 2012 silver medalist has been one of the most dominant
competitors in the sport over the past few years, and she is just
getting warmed up.
THE DARK HORSE: MELANIE PFEIFER – GERMANY
Holding the 2014 and 2015 world championship bronze medals,
Pfeifer may just be the one to outfox Fox.
THE AMERICAN: ASHLEY NEE – USA
Third time’s a charm for Nee. The Maryland
native narrowly missed out on the trip to
the 2008 and 2012 Games. Even after qualifying for
the US women’s top spot this year her fate remained
in the hands of the sport’s governing body. Now she
is claiming her race bib and taking her place at the
starting line.

canoekayak.com | 21
 PUT IN OLYMPICS
MEN’S KAYAK
THE FAVORITE: JIRÍ PRSKAVEC – CZECH REPUBLIC
Momentum is an understatement. Prskavec is the 2015 U23
and senior world champion, and the 2016 European champion.
Don’t expect his train to come off the rails in Rio.
THE DARK HORSE: LUCIEN DELFOUR – AUSTRALIA
Born in French Polynesia and groomed in the powerful French
system, the current world number 3 now races in Australian
colors, and is always a threat in big competitions.
THE AMERICAN: MICHAL SMOLEN – USA
America’s best chance at a canoe/kayak medal is
in Smolen’s capable hands. Unable to compete in
London while acquiring American citizenship, the Polish-born
American has awaited his shot at the 2016 Games with much
anticipation. The 22-year-old hasn’t wasted a moment in the
mean time – winning a 2014 U23 world championship and a
2015 senior world championship bronze. Smolen has shown he
has the ability to win it all.
22 | canoekayak.com
Regina Nicolardi
MEN’S DOUBLE CANOE
THE FAVORITES: GAUTHIER KLAUSS/
MATTHIEU PECHE – FRANCE. The well-oiled French
paddling program is bound to collect a gold medal. Might as
well start with the 2015 top ranked C-2 team.
THE DARK HORSES: DAVID FLORENCE/
RICHARD HOUNSLOW – GREAT BRITAIN. It’s difficult
to call the 2012 Olympic silver medalists anything less than
the favorite. Regardless, the battle-tested pair knows what it
takes to win.
THE AMERICANS: CASEY EICHFELD/
DEVIN MCEWAN – USA. The Olympics have always been a
part of McEwan’s life – his father raced in the 1972 and 1992
Games. Now the 31-year-old will write the story of his own as
he appears in his first Olympics, accompanied by Eichfeld, his
canoe partner of five years. The pair has found varied success,
the highlights being gold at the 2014 Oceania Championship
and most recently the 2015 Pan-American Games.
 Explore Key Largo’s wild side.

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 PUT IN POLITICS

MIke Fiebig paddles past a

waterfall tributary on the South
Fork of the Shoshone, Wyoming.
He took out at the Yellowstone
Park boundary just downstream.

24 | canoekayak.com
 LOVE IT, OR
LEAVE IT
ALONE?
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK CONTAINS A
TROVE OF UNEXPLORED RIVERS. WHETHER TO
OPEN THEM TO BOATING HAS CAUSED A RIFT
BETWEEN PADDLERS AND CONSERVATIONISTS.

BY SCOTT WILLOUGHBY

Since the Corps of Discovery first mapped the Missouri River drainage
in 1805, the doors have been wide open on river exploration in the
American West. Open, that is, just about everywhere except the wild
heart of Lewis and Clark country in what is now Yellowstone National
Park.
Rivers radiate like spokes of a wheel from America’s first national
park, rotating from the Clarks Fork and Shoshone to the east, the
Snake to the south, Fall River to the southwest, Madison and Gallatin
to the northwest and the namesake Yellowstone to the north. Between
them lie arguably the most abundant opportunities for whitewater
exploration in the nation.
Paddlers would be tempted to assume that all of Yellowstone’s
7,000-plus miles of rivers and creeks have been thoroughly investi-
gated long ago, and many of the most navigable segments have. But
for more than 60 years, river runners have been banned from all but
five river miles within Yellowstone National Park. For the modern recre-
ational paddler, there may be no larger collection of unexplored rivers
remaining in the continental United States.
“For years I’ve been paddling rivers that flow into the park, and
right now you have to take out at this arbitrary line at the boundary,”
says Forrest McCarthy, a founding board member of the American
Packraft Association based in Wilson, Wyoming. “The attraction for me
is the opportunity for these kinds of wilderness backpacking trips with
a packraft—a real Alaska-style wilderness trip. Aside from Yellowstone,
the Bob Marshall Wilderness may be the only other place in the lower
48 where you can do that kind of wilderness travel.”
After years of frustration, McCarthy, the APA and a group of boat-
ers in the region have been rallying support for the Congressional
efforts of Wyoming Representative Cynthia Lummis to reopen several
hundred miles of rivers through legislation known as the Yellowstone
and Grand Teton Paddling Act (H.R. 974). Proponents point out that

Jim Harris

canoekayak.com | 25
 PUT IN DESTINATIONS
FORBIDDEN FRUIT: The Grand Canyon
of the Yellowstone is off-limits to paddlers.
hand-propelled boating — defined as canoes, kay-
aks and rafts using paddles — is allowed in federal
wilderness areas and all U.S. national parks outside
of Yellowstone.
The bill would maintain the ban on commercial
boating while opening some 700 miles of rivers and
streams in Yellowstone and nearby Grand Teton
National Park to recreational paddling. The bill was
approved by the House Natural Resource Commit-
tee in October and was awaiting consideration by
the full House as C&K went to press. If passed into
law, it would open 37 segments of river to regulated
paddling in Yellowstone and 13 stretches in Grand
Teton. Those stretches, considered the most desir-
able to paddlers, comprise about 10 percent of the
paddleable rivers in the two parks.
Lummis says the bill would remove the 60-year-
old federal ban on paddling in Yellowstone, which
was originally implemented to protect the park’s
streams from overfishing. “If passed, the end result
26 | canoekayak.com
will align Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park
with other national parks across the country that of-
fer this low-impact way for the public, and especially
America’s youth, to have truly unforgettable experi-
ences,” Lummis says.
The unconventional tactic of attempting to
legislate access to rivers in these iconic parks has
proven divisive among the conservation commu-
nity, with outspoken critics arguing that legislation
overrides the authority of land mangers responsible
for maintaining the character of Yellowstone and
Grand Teton national parks. Opponents of the bill,
including the National Park Service and a who’s-
who of influential conservation groups, contend that
paddling would intrude on pristine wilderness, above
and beyond activities such as fishing, backpacking,
and horseback riding, which are currently permitted
in the parks’ backcountry.
Conservationists also say that allowing paddling
in Yellowstone would set a dangerous precedent for
David Spiegel
other special interest groups, such as snowmobil-
ers. That suspicion is bolstered by Lummis’s record
of enthusiastic support for legislation favorable to
ranching, timber and energy interests. McCarthy
acknowledges that the Republican lawmaker is an
unlikely ally of wilderness-loving paddlers, but points
out that Wyoming only has one Congressional
representative.
Backers of the bill say legislation is the only way
to get Yellowstone managers to consider, or even
discuss, paddling in the parks. They point out that
virtually all of the rivers included in the bill are either
roadside or trailside, and park managers would have
the final say in drafting river regulations, permit
processes and seasonal closures.
“I don’t like the idea of legislation at all. This
should be a conversation about how we can come
up with a plan that works for everyone,” said Aaron
Pruzan, owner of Rendezvous River Sports in Jack-
son, Wyoming. “But to say that it’s legal and okay to
 MORE LIKE THIS: Moe
Witschard on the South Fork
of the Shoshone, upstream of
Yellowstone National Park.

Jim Harris

walk down the riverbank in waders to fish,

EVERY OTHER or to lead a pack train of 20 horses through

the Upper Snake River or a troop of Boy
NATIONAL Scouts on a backpacking trip along the river
— to say you have the ability to manage
PARK UNIT all that, but not paddling, is just lazy. Every

HAS FOUND A other national park unit has found a way

to make paddling work, but at Yellowstone

WAY TO MAKE they refuse to even study it.”

McCarthy points to Montana’s Glacier
PADDLING National Park as an area with similarly
exotic fauna, including wolves and grizzlies,
WORK, BUT AT where legal paddling has not had any

YELLOWSTONE discernible impact on wildlife. Likewise, Yo-

semite National Park in California opened

THEY REFUSE TO portions of the Merced and Tuolumne rivers

to regulated paddling in 2015, recognizing
EVEN STUDY IT.” a phrase coined by advocacy group Ameri-
can Whitewater: “A river is a trail and a boat
– AARON PRUZAN is a backpack.”
“To open up the river was an effort,
but a worthwhile effort as long as we can
protect the values that the Park and Merced River
Plan were established for,” Yosemite’s Chief Ranger
Kevin Killian said on the inaugural float of the Merced
last summer.
Killian’s philosophy of inspiring advocacy through
the intimate experience of paddling stands in stark
contrast to the “hands off” preservation policy applied
to would-be paddlers at Yellowstone. But on this
100th anniversary year of the National Park Service,
Killian is not alone in his conviction.
“River paddling has long been recognized as
an appropriate use of wilderness in our national
parks and monuments,” McCarthy said. “Yellowstone
shouldn’t be managed as a drive-through zoo. It
should be managed as a wilderness experience, and
Jim Harris
that includes paddling rivers.”
 PUT IN PROFILE
At 43, Michael Curtis has been living and working in national
parks for more than half his life. A typical workday finds him in

FIVE G OOD M I N UTE S WITH the seat of his sea kayak, patrolling on Yellowstone National

YELLOWSTONE
Park’s Shoshone Lake. An NPS ranger’s duty runs the gamut
from education to law enforcement and, as Curtis puts it “any-

KAYAK RANGER
thing else that needs done, from trail maintenance to waste
management.” – Jeff Moag

MICHAEL CURTIS When I was 17 I spent a summer with the Youth Conservation
Corps, living here in Yellowstone and doing a wide variety of resource
management, maintenance, and other projects. I did that for a couple
summers and then I ended up running crews for them a few more years.
NICE WORK IF YOU CAN FIND IT:
Curtis in his patrol gear at Yellowstone Lake.
You kind of start down a path and sometimes that path chooses
you as much as you choose that path.

I just came out of Shoshone Lake this morning. Generally, we’re

out eight or nine days, basing out of patrol cabins. We paddle anywhere
from ten to 22 miles a day. It’s a great part of the job.

I’ve seen grizzly bears swimming across both arms of Yel-

lowstone Lake and portions of Shoshone Lake. That’s pretty neat just
because most people don’t get to see bears swimming big large bodies
of water.

Kayaks can handle most conditions that we encounter on the

lakes, so that’s our primary patrol vessel. We have a fleet of canoes as
well, which come out more for project work—they’re great for freighting
equipment—or sometimes just to mix it up a little bit.

We get a lot of afternoon thunderstorms where the lake can go

from more or less calm to 3-foot waves in a matter of minutes. That’s
generally the weather that ends up getting people in trouble.

I would guess that a kayak is faster than a swimming bear but

they move pretty fast.

Part of our role is to help folks out when they are in trouble.
We’re not considered rescue though, and a lot of the time we’re not
right there when an incident happens. So we encourage folks to be
self-sufficient.

There’s just a personal enjoyment of being able to work in a

place where you can get in a boat at the beginning of your day and
paddle all day long and be in an amazing place. So that part is really
rewarding. From a professional point of view, it’s neat to share that with
our visitors and see that they’re just really enjoying being in Yellowstone.

There are definitely physically arduous days but it’s hard to

define a day as tough. There really aren’t many negatives other than the
mosquitoes, and waste management. The composting toilets have to be
David Stubbs stirred once a week.

28 | canoekayak.com
 PUT IN ASK EDDY
EDDY THE (LEGAL) EAGLE
Can I sue the Park Service if I get attacked by a
wild animal?
Sorry, the National Park Service is already a step ahead
of you. The Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946 limits gov-
ernment liability, says Portland, Oregon attorney Eddie
Medina. That law was tested in 1976 when the estate
of a 22-year old dude who was killed by a Yellowstone
griz sued the Park Service. The feds won, and even
though there have been more than 50 bear attacks and
a dozen bison gorings in Yellowstone since then, no one
has been able to beat them in court. The law protects
government employees from liability as long as they
are “exercising due care or performing a discretionary
function or duty,” says Medina. The problem for those
itching to get litigious is that the Park Service itself sets
the parameters for how it meets those duties. In the
case of a wild animal, says Medina, the park meets the
duty of protecting people by posting signs and handing
out flyers that say those animals are dangerous. (Still, a
woman was caught on film this past summer petting a
bison on the head as it lay near a pathway.) Fencing off
30 | canoekayak.com
all the animals would run contra to the Park’s other duty,
which is keeping the place in a pristine state, though it
might protect the bison from clueless tourists stuff-
ing animals into the trunks of rental cars, which also
happened this past summer. Lastly, says Medina, legally
speaking, “a wild animal is by definition not owned by
anyone, and therefore no one, even a Park Ranger, can
be responsible for what it does.” Same goes for gators
in the Everglades and sharks in the Channel Islands, but
not, apparently, for a Forest Service intern in a Smokey
the Bear costume going berserk with a shovel at an
overcrowded boat ramp, which according to Eddy’s
internship director certainly isn’t “exercising due care.”
And that, dear readers, is why Eddy’s wages are a little
garnishy to this day.
Why can’t we just kill all the mosquitoes?
Mosquitoes spread malaria, west Nile virus, yellow fever,
and more than a dozen other serious diseases, including
this new Zika virus we keep hearing about. Malaria alone
causes half a million deaths every year. So why not just
GOT A QUESTION FOR EDDY? Email it to AskEddy@canoekayak.com
Eddy’s got answers
kill all the mosquitoes? Who is going to miss them? Well,
for one thing, it’d be hard to do. There are more than
3,000 species of the bug, and they live pretty much
everywhere on earth and can breed in places like old car
tires and, according to what Eddy has read, a freaking
bottle cap filled with rainwater. DDT would do the trick,
but also might collapse the entire world ecology, which
would be bad. Biologist Olivia Judson tells the New York
Times, however, that if we took out just 30 specific spe-
cies, we could knock out most of the worst diseases like
Zika and malaria. How? Release genetically modified,
sterilized male mosquitoes. When those mosquitoes
mate with uninfected females, their eggs won’t hatch,
leaving fewer offspring. Over a few generations, the
species might die off entirely. Sounds cool, but as other
nerds point out, nobody knows what taking out an entire
species might do to all the critters that eat the mosqui-
toes. Maybe nothing, but also maybe more extinction.
Again: bad. Also, what else is going to keep all the soft-
bellied, lilly-dipping, suburb slugs off of Eddy’s favorite
canoe routes? Not bison and bears, apparently.
Illustration by Aaron McKinney
Sometimes Our Deals Are Too Good...

WWW.PADDLEVA.COM
800.442.4837
 AQUAPHILE ESSAYS FROM THE FIELD

THE PARK AT
THE END OF
THE WORLD
BY DAVI D HAN S O N

Illustration by Martin Simpson

On December 29th, 1999 Ryan an accountant, Jim pre-med, Angus a painter greatest party, but I’d rather spend three days stuck

O
we strapped two canoes
onto Jim’s mom’s mini-
van and drove south from
Georgia toward the end
of the world. I had a hunch
that Y2K would not bring
its much-ballyhooed apocalypse, but I wanted to be
on an empty Caribbean island just in case.
Since I was a college student and couldn’t af-
ford proper Caribbean travel, I recruited my girl-
friend, Danielle, and close buddies Jim, Ryan and
Angus to join me for a wilderness canoe trip into
Everglades National Park. We were all seniors look-
ing over the cliff of adulthood at very different fu-
tures: Danielle as an environmental studies major,
and sound artist. My plan was to somehow write or
photograph my way through the world.
This was pre-Google, so I’d seen in a magazine,
maybe this one, pictures of azure water and snow-
white beaches on sandy islands called “keys.” Since
Danielle and I were the only ones who’d ever been
camping without our parents, we were the leaders.
That was the expedition’s first mistake.
Surprisingly, we were not the only college kids
hell-bent on reaching the Everglades for New
Years. Eighty thousand people were en route to-
ward three days of neuro-chemical experimentation
at the Phish concert in Big Cypress National Pre-
serve. None of our friends believed that we were
opting for canoes and silence over the millennium’s
in a WalMart royalty-free music loop than listen to a
jam-band in a flat field of human dancing noodles.
So our minivan, replete with a counter counter-
culture sense of pride in its wholesome endeavor,
turned off Tamiami Trail to the Everglades National
Park visitor center. It was as close to the Everglades
as we’d get. Apparently, there is a limited number
of paddle-in campsites in Everglades National Park
and other, more organized people had reserved
them months before.
A helpful park ranger pointed to an area on the
map just north of the Everglades boundary, Collier
Seminole State Park.
“It’s basically the same brackish water, man-
groves, alligators and sandy keys as the Ever-

32 | canoekayak.com

SINCE DANIELLE
AND I WERE THE
ONLY ONES WHO
HAD EVER BEEN
CAMPING WITHOUT
OUR PARENTS,
WE WERE THE
LEADERS.
glades,” the ranger told us. ning on fumes.
“We want to get to a beach-fringed island with There’s something about that first instant when
an anti-mosquito Caribbean breeze,” I said. the car is locked, the boats packed, and you finally
She looked at the five of us in our frat t-shirts sit in the stern, letting the water take all the weight.
and baseball hats. “Are you in sea kayaks?” We were in the Everglades, on a mission. The world
“No, two canoes,” I said. could end and at least we’d be doing something
“How many miles can you cover in a day,” she rugged and cool. Then the first paddle stroke felt
asked. like pulling on concrete, and I remembered the
I had no idea. Three of us hadn’t paddled since grown man sitting in the center of my canoe amidst
summer camp, and I’d never dealt with tidal cur- the cooler and overstuffed dry bags. Danielle, Jim
rents or twisting, shallow, mud-flat-choked man- and I had the three-person canoe for day one.
groves. She proceeded to give us the standard My ulterior motive for this trip was to get a
ranger-danger warning about the long distances to photograph of the night sky with New Year’s star
the keys, getting lost, winds, currents and canoe- streaks beginning in the last minutes of 1999 and
flipping chop on open-water crossings. We headed extending into the first minutes of 2000. Not for
toward Collier Seminole with our confidence run- any astrological research or doomsday evidence
gathering reasons. It just seemed like something
worth documenting with my Minolta and Fuji slide
film.
We paddled out of the park marina and into a
mangrove-lined channel. The water was the color of
black tea and it disappeared into the tangled man-
grove roots. The winter sky was crisp, free of any
hazy summer heat. The bright sun left the forests
black behind their curtain of green leaves.
The letter-sized map from the state park of-
fice showed a narrow passage leading to Mud Bay.
Soon the mangroves peeled back and a mile of glis-
tening mud flats lay in front of us. Since we luck-
ily arrived near high tide, there was enough brown
water to float our canoes. Paddle tips dripped dark
mud with each stroke, and we occasionally had to
drag the canoe, our steps sinking calf-deep.
We finally made it to Grocery Place, a camp-
site that, like most high-and-dry outposts in the Ev-
erglades, was once a raccoon-fur outpost. It later
became a small sugar plantation, confirmed by a
couple freshwater cisterns with inscriptions dating
back to the 1920s. As the sugar industry grew, it
drained vast portions of the Everglades. Less than
a year after our New Years trip, President Bill Clin-
ton and Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed a bill to
redistribute more, cleaner water and hopefully bring
the Everglades back from the brink.
We, of course, didn’t know any of this as we set
up camp for two days. We ate lunch on the mud
flats and swam skittishly in the dark water, imagin-
ing gators. Angus painted. We swatted mosquitoes.
Something bit Jim in the eyeball and it swelled to
twice its size. We wished he were already a doc-
tor. Three couples paddled by in sea kayaks. The
man smoking a cigar said they were headed to the
Caribbean beach on Gullivan Key, just five miles
further.
At that point, New Years Eve, we were commit-
ted to the mangroves. We had all the eager curiosity
of youth but no experience and not enough reck-
lessness to push our limits. So we stayed on Gro-
cery Place. We spent the magic hour in our tents,
the mosquitos a buzzing pattern against the blood-
orange sunset sky.
As the stars emerged, we crawled out of the
mesh doors, built a fire, and drank tequila at the
edge of mangrove and water. The final hours of the
century passed slowly in that dark quiet. I set the
tripod away from the fire light and opened the shut-
ter, the only way I knew to capture time.
canoekayak.com | 33
 2017
NEW PRODUCT PREVIEW
A SNEAK PEAK INTO WHAT YOUR FAVORITE
BRANDS ARE WORKING ON FOR NEXT SEASON

34 • 2017 PRODUCT PREVIEW

 2017 PRODUCT PREVIEW

ABITIBI ADVANCED ELEMENTS

MAGTOGOEK AF EXPEDITION ELITE
From $1,730; abitibico.com $850; advancedelements.com
Magtogoek, meaning Walking The AdvancedFrame Expedition Elite is the natural evolution
River, is one of the oldest names of inflatable kayaks. A hybrid of a folding frame kayak and
for the mighty Saint Lawrence an inflatable kayak, the Expedition incorporates Advanced
River. Now, the name also refers Elements’ proven aluminum rib-frame technology in the bow
to a graphic design available and stern, as well as drop-stitch technology in the floor, to
on all of Abitibi’s Scott and provide paddling performance that rivals that of a hard-shell
Bluewater model canoes—one of kayak. The design combines the two technologies to deliver
three new color schemes from the optimal paddling performance: the aluminum ribs form a
Canadian canoe builder that call sleek hull profile that cuts through the water, while the drop-
attention to endangered waters. stitch floor provides hull chine and unparalleled rigidity in
(The others are Timiskaming, an inflatable. At 13 feet long with plenty of storage space, the
after the lake bordering Ontario Expedition Elite is ready for any adventure.
and Quebec; and Kinojevis,
commemorating the river of
the same name.) The choice of
graphics fits the philosophy of
Abitibi canoes, which prides itself
on “design made affordable” with
an emphasis on custom-designed
canoes and sustainability from
start to finish.

DANUU
WINGMAN ACCESSORY PACK
$70; danuu.com
Danuu’s WingMan keeps everything a paddler could need
organized, secure and within reach. Stitched of tough Cordura
fabric, the WingMan turns any high-back kayak seat into a well-
ordered base station. The pack attaches easily to metal-framed
kayak seats by means of four pull straps, placing the WingMan’s
twin holsters—ideal for water bottles, sunscreen and tools—in easy
reach of the paddler. Two vertical tubes accept nets, gaffs or rods,
and a large zippered pocket is perfect for tackle boxes, lunch and
valuables. Quick-release clips allow the paddler to easily remove the
loaded WingMan after a day on the water, keeping it ready for rapid
redeployment whenever the urge to paddle strikes.  porch. Palatial indeed.
HILLEBERG
KAITUM 4 AND 4 GT
$1,025; $1,195 for GT version; us.hilleberg.com
The new 4-person version of Hilleberg’s acclaimed Kaitum
all-season tunnel tent brings palatial comfort to the gnarliest
conditions. The vertical walls create plenty of elbow room, even
with four full-grown adventurers inside. The to-the-ground outer
tent is constructed of fabric that is multiple times stronger than
the most common tent-fly material, providing ample muscle for
all-season use. Amazingly, all that toughness comes with minimal
weight penalty: At less than nine pounds, the Kaitum 4 is light
enough for any portage. The GT model features an extra large
vestibule, and its front can be rolled away to create a covered
 2017 PRODUCT PREVIEW

PELICAN PELICAN
ANTIGUA 106 CATCH 120 NXT
$649; pelicansport.com $879; pelicansport.com
Pump and go with the new Made from tough Ram-X
Pelican Antigua 106 inflatable Premium polyethylene, the
SUP. This ultra-light board Catch 120 NXT is the exciting
weighs just 27 lbs., making evolution of its light, stable
it easy to car top and carry, predecessor, the Catch 120. This
and comes in an eye-catching jack-of-all, 11’8” sit-on-top fish
color arrangement of bright kayak comes with one of the
orange, piercing red and best price points in its class,
concentrated baby blue. while offering rigging tracks, two
Additional features include Quick Lock hatches for storage
an anti-slip cushioned deck and an anti-slip carpet for when
pad for comfort and moving you want to stand to scout, cast
around, elastic bungee cord or reel. Serving up tremendous
for secure storage, multiple value and performance whether
carrying handles for easy you’re sitting or standing, the
portability, and a removable venom-colored craft also comes
10-inch fin for tracking when with adjustable footrests, molded
it’s deep, and gliding when it’s paddle holder, deck-mount rod
shallow. The Antigua comes holders, bungee storage, dual-
with its own SUP carry bag, position seat and more.
pump and leash.

SEA EAGLE SEATTLE SPORTS

QUIKROW FRAME
$500; seaeagle.com
Rowing is a terrific full-body workout, and one of the most efficient
ways for a human being to move a boat. Now Sea Eagle’s QuikRow
system brings that efficiency to kayaks and standup paddleboards,
at a fraction of the cost of a traditional rowing shell. Take Sea
Eagle’s 300X Explorer Kayak, a white water worthy inflatable. Just
attach the frame to the kayak’s factory installed D-rings and pin the
7’10” aluminum oars into the locks, where they’ll stay put, even if
you let go of the oars. That feature, together with the swivel seat and
optional Scotty Rod Holders, makes the QuickRow a great choice
for anglers.
BOAT CARTS
From $75; seattlesportsco.com
The portage just got smoother. Seattle Sports has given its line
of canoe, kayak and SUP portage carts a makeover. Four models
(Center, End, SUP, and Scupper) now sport black matte paint
with cobalt blue accents. More importantly, they roll better. Seattle
Sports now specs flat-free tires on its Nemo Extremo, Scupper
Swift, Original End, SUP SoulMite and ATC carts. The solid
urethane treads dampen vibration and roll over bumpy terrain
with less effort, so no matter how long or rough the portage trail,
the carry will be that much smoother.

36 • 2017 PRODUCT PREVIEW * Pictured Nemo Extremo

A U G U S T 4 , 2 0 1 6 S A L T L A K E C I T Y

T H E B E ST I N PAD D L I N G,
D E C I D E D BY YO U

PADDLE WITH PU R P OSE

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 NPS Ranger Luke Mallon
patrolling on Shoshone Lake
38
in Yellowstone National Park.
 39
Aaron Black–Schmidt
 GRAND TETON
NATIONAL PARK:
Paddle amid
the grandeur of
Wyoming’s Teton
range on the Oxbow
Bend section of the
Snake River.

40
 Aaron Black–Schmidt
JOURNEY THROUGH TIME
THE MISSOURI NATIONAL RECREATIONAL RIVER, SOUTH
DAKOTA AND NEBRASKA BY NORMAN MILLER

I time travel. I know you don’t believe me,

but it’s true.
I acquired a love of history at an early age. My
imagination ran wild with stories of explorers,
adventurers, fur traders and trappers. Later, in my teens,
I discovered canoeing. The thrill of navigating my own
craft and the ability to explore waterways captivated me. I
realized that by combining my two passions I had created
a time machine.
The Missouri National Recreational River (MNRR) is a
100-mile section of our country’s longest river system, the
Missouri-Mississippi. It lies between Fort Randall Dam
and Ponca State Park along the border of South Dakota
and Nebraska. Historically this water system was a major
transportation route. Native tribes lived along its banks,
trappers accessed the Rocky Mountains via the river and
eventually steamboats brought supplies to settlements.
This stretch of the Missouri River appears much the same
as it did 200 years ago.
When I am paddling the river I read the current and
choose my route using the same skills as the explorers
before me. I see the sandbars, smell the willow and hear
the waterfowl just as they did. I become immersed in the
environment. The longer I am on the river the easier it is
to imagine people of the past, the easier it is to become
lost in time. I swear that I have heard voices on the breeze.
Native tongues speaking at some long ago council, orders
shouted out to 40 men under the command of Capt. Lewis
and Lt. Clark, songs of the French trappers, the thud-
thud-thudding of a steam wheeler plodding its way up
river.
Early evening brings the magic light. I become
overwhelmed with the sense of awe and the
interconnectedness of the natural world and those who
came before me. The sun’s glow on the water looks like
the embers of a fire that burns in the heart of every river
traveler. I invite you to experience your own journey
Peter Holcombe
through time. Grab a paddle and open your senses to the
reality of time travel.

WATER AND ICE
WRANGELL ST. ELIAS NATIONAL PARK,
ALASKA BY CHUCK GRAHAM
Kayaking within the long, chilly shadows
of the world’s largest coastal mountain
range and one of the most seismically
volatile regions on the planet can force one
to contemplate that size really does matter,
especially in America’s largest national park,
Wrangell St. Elias in southeast Alaska.
The St. Elias Mountains tower above the
many ice floe-choked fjords, with Mount St.
Elias looming higher than all the rest at 18,008
feet. It’s the second highest peak in North
America, straddling the Yukon and Alaska
border.
The massive peak was cloaked in storm
clouds when Alaskan guide Carl Donohue and
42
I nosed our kayaks between the floes of Icy Bay.
The ice eerily moved counter clockwise to the
dark, gray clouds engulfing the daunting peaks
above.
When Captain James Cook explored this
coast in 1788 in search of the elusive Northwest
Passage, a single, massive glacier walled off
the entrance to Icy Bay. Since then that glacier
has receded approximately 15 miles into three
much smaller glaciers, the Tyndall, Guyot and
Yahtse.
Minding the tides and the ebb and flow
of shifting ice was the biggest challenge to
exploring this seldom-visited national park by
sea kayak. The floes creaked and cracked, as if
threatening to crush our tents pitched in the
fragrant, dewy Nootka lupine. Every now and
then ice floes would congregate into congested
masses, then implode in cannon-shots that
Chuck Graham
resonated across the expanse of Icy Bay.
On the glassy water the air in the rear of
the fjords was thick with the pungent scent
of natural seepage, the water an oily smooth
emerald green. The fjords were continually fed
by cascading waterfalls, frigid sheets of water
sliding down sheer cliff faces for hundreds
of feet. The revolving glacial ice offered
convenient haul-outs for puppy-faced harbor
seals with their teary-eyed pups, and strikingly
beautiful long-tailed ducks.
On the cobbled shorelines juvenile bald
eagles scavenged on what the tide provided,
their mottled feathers blending with the
coastal landscape. Nimble western sandpipers
delicately picked their way along the steep
berm and breeding pairs of agitated parasitic
jaegers were relentless in their dive bombing
tactics on two weary paddlers.
 HORIZON LINES
GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK, TENNESSEE
AND NORTH CAROLINA. BY CHARLI KERNS
The Sinks is a swimming hole at the base of a 10-foot
falls on Tennessee’s Little River, on the road from
Townsend to Gatlinburg. When I was a girl, my family spent
many a summer day there swimming, drying on the sun-
baked rocks and picnicking. My sister would jump over and
over from a cliff into the water below. I, however, shied away. I
hated even looking over.
I remember the first time I mustered the courage to curl
my foot over the rough rock at the edge, my 10-year-old heart
pounding in my chest—THUMP—my younger sister and
parents yelling from below—JUMP! The sounds battled from
the inside out—THUMP, JUMP!, THUMP, JUMP!—until after
what felt like hours I finally lunged off the cliff, falling 18 feet
into the cold, clear water.
A decade later, I faced the same heart-pounding feeling
on the same Class III-IV creek, this time from the seat of my
canoe. My friend Randy told me the line, then peeled into the
current and dropped out of sight. THUMP, THUMP, THUMP.
All of my paddling up to this point had been on rivers like the
Ocoee, where you can see around the next bend. Now I was
alone for the first time. I just had to trust that I was ready. I
remembered the cliff, peeled out of the eddy and entered the
rapid.
Here’s the thing about paddling in the Smokies. There’s
almost always a horizon line or a sharp bend in the flow; try
as you might, you just can’t see that far ahead. So you have
to trust yourself and keep moving. You’ll always be rewarded
with some awesome rapid ahead and a deeper understanding
of how far you can go.
Going deep in the Sinks.
William Britten
ACADIA NATIONAL PARK, MAINE: Set
in the middle of the Maine coast, this starkly
beautiful park boasts excellent sea kayaking
in Somes Sound and Frenchman and Western
bays.
ASSATEAGUE NATIONAL SEASHORE,
MARYLAND AND VIRGINIA: Kayaks and
canoes are an ideal way to experience the
beaches, bays, and wetlands of this barrier
island on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and
Virginia.
BIG SOUTH FORK NATIONAL RIVER
AND RECREATION AREA, TENNESSEE
AND KENTUCKY: This 125,000-acre park
features the Big South Fork of the Cumberland
River and all its paddling options, from easy
meandering sections to harder whitewater.
BISCAYNE NATIONAL PARK, FLORIDA:
Within sight of downtown Miami, yet worlds
away, Biscayne’s aquamarine waters, islands
and coral reefs let you paddle through 10,000
years of human history.
BLACK CANYON OF THE GUNNISON,
COLORADO: For those with the skills and an
appetite for tough portages, this is a Class V
whitewater adventure through a very deep and
committing gorge.
BUFFALO NATIONAL RIVER, ARKAN-
SAS: Our country’s first national river offers
135 miles of Ozark paddling, from Class I day
trips to longer wilderness excursions.
CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK,
UTAH: Multi-day canoe trips through the heart
of canyon country on the Colorado and Green
rivers, which meet just above Class IV Cataract
Canyon.
CAPE COD NATIONAL SEASHORE, MAS-
SACHUSETTS: The cape’s inland waterways
offer prime paddling on a variety of sloughs,
ponds and marshes.
CONGAREE NATIONAL PARK, SOUTH
CAROLINA: The 16-mile Cedar Creek Canoe
Trail leads through an otherworldly old-growth
forest.
 The Kesselheim clan at
Pictured Rocks, circa 1998.

Alan Kesselheim

THE BEST WAY

PICTURED ROCKS NATIONAL LAKESHORE,
MICHIGAN. BY ALAN KESSELHEIM

I’ve done a lot of paddling on Lake Superior.
The Apostle Islands, the entire Canadian
coastline by sea kayak, and Pictured Rocks. In
every case, it’s been clear that the best vantage to
enjoy the coast is from the water. On the water I
have poked up tributaries to waterfalls, wound
through islands, arches and magical channels, en-
joyed sand beaches, looked down at shipwrecks,
marveled at sunsets. Sure, the inland trails are all
well and good, but there is nothing like the open
lake and the panoramic coastline beckoning with
possibilities. This was never more true than dur-
ing a 40-mile traverse of Pictured Rocks National
Lakeshore by canoe with our two boys, when they
were mere toddlers.
To begin with, we couldn’t have hiked with
them at that age. The canoe was the only way we
could have pulled off the trip. From the put-in
near Au Sable Lighthouse our 17-foot canoe took
us, two toddlers, and gear for a week down the
spectacular coast, punctuated by sheer sandstone
cliffs, high waterfalls, long sand beaches, forested
campsites. We lucked out with calm weather for
the sheer-cliff sections, which we had allowed
extra time for.
The only price we paid for the calm weather
was the scourge of sand flies, which can be mur-
derous at certain times during the summer.
What stays sharp in my memory is the image
of our red canoe rocking in the thundering spray
of waterfalls, and our two little boys tipping their
heads back, mouths open, mesmerized by the
river of water pounding down over the cliffs.

ISLE OF THE FORGOTTEN

CHANNEL ISLANDS NATIONAL PARK, CALIFORNIA.
BY CHUCK GRAHAM

It’s a lonely square-mile in the Pacific, 40 miles south of Santa Cruz Island
and 26 miles northwest of Santa Catalina Island. A mere speck on the map,
Santa Barbara Island is the forgotten volcanic slab in the Channel Islands National
Park.
It’s a hard place to get to, and sometimes to escape from. I once spent 10 days
windbound on the treeless island. On another occasion, while kayaking from Santa
Chuck Graham

44

A SECRET WORTH
SHARING
OZARK NATIONAL SCENIC RIVERWAYS,
MISSOURI. BY MIKE BEZEMEK
“If there is magic on this planet,” writes
Loren Eisley, “it is contained in water.” Toss
in lush hardwood forest, riparian wildlife, any
craft that floats, and light beer—voilà: Ozark
National Scenic Riverways.
During my first visit—a college canoe
trip—we imbibed too much in the latter and
didn’t even notice we were in a national park.
I’ve since returned—and matured?—enough
to confirm Ozark Riverways is very real, with
narrow borders resembling rabbit ears overlaid
on two Missouri classics, the Jacks Fork and
Current rivers.
Established in 1964, it’s the first national
park unit to protect a wild, dam-free river
system. The main draw is day-floating sections
along 134 clear-flowing miles. Multiday trips
are possible, with primitive camping allowed
on most gravel bars. Fishing for trout and bass
is popular. While the headwater sections—the
Prongs on the Jacks Fork or Baptist Camp on the
Current—are rain-dependent, the majority of
the lower sections can be paddled year-round.
The trick? Limestone karst topography pro-
duces a 3D watershed, with pervasive ground-
water, countless caves, gaping sinkholes, gush-
ing waterfalls, and some of the biggest springs
in the country. So many springs, in fact, finding
enough names proved a challenge. Among oth-
ers, there’s Gravel Spring, Fire Hydrant Spring,
Watercress Spring, two Ebb & Flow Springs, two
Blue Springs, two Cave Springs, and, of course,
Big Spring with an average 450 cfs bursting
from under a cliff.
Options abound to beach the boats and
explore. Tour Round Spring Cave with a lantern-
toting ranger. Visit the historic sites of Alley
Mill and Welch Hospital. Horseback ride or
hike, including on the nearby Ozark Trail. Swim
below Rocky Falls. Descend into Devil’s Well,
a creek-fed sinkhole, then follow a trail along
bluffs to the discharge point at Cave Spring on
the Current River.
All told, the lesser-known Ozark National
Scenic Riverways is a secret worth sharing.
CANAVERAL NATIONAL SEASHORE,
FLORIDA: A wildlife-filled barrier island for
whatever boat you float, along on the longest
expanse of pristine shore in Florida. Plus,
rockets.
CAPE HATTERAS NATIONAL SEA-
SHORE, NORTH CAROLINA: From
nesting shorebirds to sea turtles, these ever-
changing salt marsh islands are best seen
from a kayak or canoe.
CAPE LOOKOUT NATIONAL SEA-
SHORE, NORTH CAROLINA: A watery
wonderland of barrier islands provide prime
conditions for paddling, camping, fishing and
watching wildlife.
CUMBERLAND ISLAND NATIONAL
SEASHORE, GEORGIA: Where history and
nature meet, Georgia’s largest and south-
ernmost barrier island—home to 9,800 acres
of designated Wilderness—offers pristine
maritime forests, undeveloped beaches and
wide marshes to explore.
DENALI NATIONAL PARK, ALASKA:
Gaze at the reflection of North America’s tall-
est mountain from a canoe in Wonder Lake,
or float the glacial-fed rapids of the Nenana
River.

DINOSAUR NATIONAL MONUMENT,

COLORADO AND UTAH: Two of America’s
best multi-day river trips—Yampa Canyon and
the Gates of Lodore on the Green River—flow
though Dinosaur.

DRY TORTUGAS NATIONAL PARK,

FLORIDA: Explore a 19th century fort and
Kbh3rd / Wikipedia Commons
seven offshore islands in this 100-square-
mile park in the Gulf of Mexico, 70 miles west
of Key West.

Cruz Island, I nearly missed its windswept terrace cloaked in dewy fog. The saving grace was EVERGLADES, FLORIDA: The ‘glades are
Sutil Island, a colossal sea stack 200 yards southwest of Santa Barbara Island, which was free packed full of great paddling, including one of
of fog and silhouetted in moonlight. America’s oldest and best paddling trails—the
Blessed with toothy sea grottos, medieval, craggy archways, spewing blowholes and 99-mile Everglades Wilderness Waterway.
towering sea stacks caked in frost-colored seabird guano, kayaking around Santa Barbara
Island’s crowded shore is bliss. That’s right—this ‘uninhabited’ islet is absolutely packed with GATES OF THE ARCTIC NATIONAL
life. Squadrons of hardy seabirds fill the sky, legions of raucous California sea lions torpedo PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: This
through the water, and herds of rotund northern elephant seals wallow on the island’s only 8.4-million acre swathe of central Alaskan
wet patch of sand. So in essence you’re never really alone on Santa Barbara Island. It only wilderness includes the Noatak River, which
feels that way when the wind howls. has been called the most ecologically intact
river valley in the world, with wildlife ranging
from golden eagles to grizzles, Dall’s sheep
and caribou.
 RIVER RITUAL
GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, ARIZONA.
BY JEFF MOAG

The Grand Canyon is masterpiece of nature 277 CANYON LIFE: A Grand trip means three
weeks outdoors, in sunshine and storm.
miles long, more than 6,000 feet deep and some 2
billion years in the making. Within its embrace another
world waits, full of red rock, hidden grottoes and mas-
sive, though ultimately forgiving, whitewater. At the
canyon’s heart lies the confluence of the Colorado and
Little Colorado Rivers, a place sacred to Navajo, Hopi
and Zuni, as well as my own tribe of river people. Like
all things sacred, a sense of ritual surrounds it.
That starts with the permit, which for private boat-
ers is hard enough to come by that it’s impossible to
take the Canyon for granted. It’s as if Christmas came
only once or twice in a lifetime and lasted for three
straight weeks, each day longer, slower and more satis-
fying than the last. River runners experience the Grand
as a group, 16 friends traveling together through the
center of the earth, always at the pace of the river. That,
after all, is the ritual: The sweet, gradual surrender to
river time. James Q Martin

OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK: This park in the heart of the

Northwest offers prime paddling for canoeists and sea kayakers
on Lake Ozette and Lake Crescent. Hint: bring your rain jackets.
46
NO BETTER PLACE
APOSTLE ISLANDS NATIONAL PARK, WISCONSIN.
BY DAVE COSTELLO
The sun is setting, but we can’t see it
inside the cave. Twilight spills in from the
cavern’s east-facing entrance. It reflects off the
water and illuminates our boats, along with the
red and black sandstone walls around us. The
sandy bottom is made visible by a shaft of clear
blue light filtering through an opening beneath
the water into an adjacent, apparently better-lit
sea cave. Through the low, tunnel-like opening
in front of us, I can see both Bear and Devil’s
Islands; small lines on the horizon surrounded
by a seemingly unending sheet of glassy water.
Behind us, to the West, I know from the chart
strapped to the deck of my kayak that there’s a
small speck of forested rock called Eagle Island,
and then nothing but open water for more than
40 miles.
“And this is supposed to be a lake?” I hear
my brother, Ryan, say. It’s his first time paddling
in the Apostle Islands, a chain of 21 heavily
forested and isolated islands rising up just a
few miles off the South Shore of Lake Superior
in Northern Wisconsin, and one of only four
National Lakeshores within the National Parks
System.
The sea caves we’re paddling through are on
Sand Island, just a three mile crossing from the
Ranger Station on the mainland in Little Sand
Bay. Years earlier, when I had worked as a guide
here, I had paddled to nearly all of the islands
farther out—each slightly different than the
last, and each one more remote and remarkable.
Our crew isn’t looking to make miles this
trip, however. We’re here with three other
friends for a bachelor party-of-sorts: my own.
Thoughts of Vegas never crossed my mind. The
Apostles is one of the best places in the world to
paddle, or in my opinion, just to be.
Dave Costello
GLACIER BAY, ALASKA: The fjords of Glacier
Bay in southeast Alaska offer some of the best
tidewater glacier sea kayaking in the world.
GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, MONTANA: Not
to be confused with its Alaskan cousin, Glacier
features clear glacial lakes among towering
peaks, as well as multi-day trips on the Flathead
River.
GULF ISLANDS NATIONAL SEASHORE,
FLORIDA AND MISSISSIPPI: This two-part
park offers miles of sandy beaches in its Florida
section. The Mississippi side includes several
islands accessible by sea kayak that offer primi-
tive camping, great fishing and the occasional
alligator sighting.
FIRE ISLAND NATIONAL SEASHORE, NEW
YORK: This 30-mile-long sandbar guarding the
south shore of Long Island provides plenty of
great paddling opportunities, including back-
country camping in the Otis Pike High Dune
Wilderness.
ISLE ROYALE NATIONAL PARK: Sprinkled
with islands, bays and coves, Isle Royale is one of
the best inland sea kayaking haunts in the coun-
try. Just be wary of changing weather and water
conditions on Lake Superior.
KENAI FJORDS NATIONAL PARK, ALASKA:
The Harding Icefield spills out of the Kenai Moun-
tains into the Gulf of Alaska, a rugged outer coast
best seen from a sea kayak.
NEW RIVER GORGE NATIONAL RIVER,
WEST VIRGINIA: One of the oldest rivers in
the country (contrary to its name), this Class IV
West Virginia canyon is for whitewater purists,
plain and simple.
NIOBRARA NATIONAL SCENIC RIVER, NE-
BRASKA: Flowing through Nebraska’s Sandhills,
the Niobrara is simply one of the best canoeing
rivers in America.
PADRE ISLAND NATIONAL SEASHORE,
TEXAS: Forget everything you ever heard about
Spring Break in Texas. That’s South Padre Island.
The National Seashore protects Padre Island
proper—the world’s longest stretch of undevel-
oped barrier island, and a safe nesting ground for
the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle and a haven for 380
bird species.
 CHAIN OF PARKS
LEWIS AND CLARK NATIONAL AND STATE
HISTORICAL PARKS, WASHINGTON AND
OREGON. BY NEIL SCHULMAN
“It would be distressing to a feeling person
to See our Situation at this time,” wrote
William Clark on November 12, 1805 at the
mouth of the Columbia River.
We’re having a much better day than
Captain Clark. Our kayaks are pulled ashore
in Deadman’s Cove, a small nook in the cliffs
of Cape Disappointment, protected from the
rebounding swell and currents where the Pacific
and the Columbia River meet. We’ve been
following a chain of small parks created around
the Corps of Discovery’s rain-drenched history:
Fort Clatsop, Station Camp and Dismal Nitch
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, CALIFORNIA: Marvel at cascading waterfalls and the
geologic wonders of Yosemite’s massive cliffs from the seat of your kayak or canoe on
the Merced River in the heart of Yosemite Valley.
48
and a patchwork of sites at the river’s mouth.
At first blush, the Lewis and Clark National and
State Historical Park lacks the unified feel of
Yosemite or Zion. But the unifier is the water.
The junction of America’s fourth-largest
river and the mighty Pacific also marks
the terminus of the Lower Columbia Water
Trail, which starts 144 miles upstream in the
Columbia Gorge. It’s some of the most varied
sea kayaking on the planet. Young’s Bay, the
Chinook River and Cathlamet Bay are quiet
meanders through tidal marshes. Baker Bay,
Adams Bay, Rice Island and Tongue Point offer
an intermediate-level proving ground of shifting
weather, tidal currents, and mid-channel
islands. The mouth itself has ocean surf, sheer
cliffs, sea caves and adrenaline. The area is rich
in salmon, seals, sea lions, and bald eagles.
A visitor to Lewis and Clark often won’t know
whether the area they’re paddling through is
administered by the National Park Service,
Oregon or Washington State Parks, Division of
State Lands or other agency. Nor should they
care. The paddling is great everywhere, and
this little confederation offers a glimpse of the
future of parks: networks of protected areas
near cities. As America urbanizes, people—in
this case, paddlers prominent among them—
demand parks close to their homes. Lewis and
Clark doesn’t have the remote rarity of Glacier
Bay, but it gives paddlers of all levels access
to one of the mightiest rivers in the world. “It
would be distressing to a feeling person to see
our situation” if a place so close to 2.5 million
people were to fall off the paddling map.
Peter Holcombe
Entering Santa
Elena Canyon
in Big Bend
National Park.
RIVER ON THE EDGE
BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, TEXAS.
BY JOHN MANUEL
We were already a bit tense, having
spooked a big rattlesnake while tamping
down the grass for a lunch spot, when across
the Rio Grande came three vaqueros. They rode
up the bank past our canoes and reined their
mustangs to a halt.
“Buenos dias,” said the lead vaquero, bad
teeth flashing beneath his black moustache.
“Tienes un cigarillo?”
Burt shook his head. “We don’t smoke.”
“No?”
The vaquero eyed Jane in her tank top and
cut-off shorts. We were half-naked, unarmed,
miles from civilization. These men could do
anything they wanted to us.
“Que pena!” the vaquero said. “Too bad.”
And just like that, they were gone, swallowed
up by the tamarisk and the tawny canyons.
This is what I love about paddling through
the Big Bend National Park. So much of what
Whit Richardson
one encounters is crazy different—the land-
scape, the vegetation, the animals, and, some-
times, the people.
The Rio Grande, which borders the southern
edge of the park for 118 miles, is by itself unim-
pressive—shallow, muddy and mostly slow. But
over the millennia, it has carved its way through
the backbone of the Sierra del Carmen, creating
one spectacular canyon after another. Soaring
as high as 1,500 feet above the river, the canyons
are endlessly varied—sheer, fluted, pockmarked
with small boquillas, or mouths.
Between the mountains, the low-lying
Chihuahuan Desert spreads across much of
this 800,000-acre park. The desert is home to
more than 60 species of cactus—prickly pear,
pineapple, horse crippler, strawberry hedgehog.
Each sports a devilish arrangement of thorns
that can stab the unwary traveler. The animals,
too, are suitably armed—the peccary with its
sharp tusks, the scorpion its stinging tail, the
tarantula and rattlesnake their venomous fangs.
“It’s all good,” as the river guides say. “Watch
your step, be polite, and you’ll do fine.”
POINT REYES NATIONAL SEASHORE,
CALIFORNIA: One of the best places in the
country to explore Pacific coastal estuaries
by sea kayak. Hotspots include Tomales Bay,
as well as Drakes and Limantour Estuaries.
Expect kelp beds, seals, and more.
RIO GRANDE WILD AND SCENIC RIV-
ER, TEXAS: Big Bend National Park gets
the lion’s share of the attention (and about a
third of the Wild and Scenic River lies inside
the park) but don’t forget the lower canyons
downstream.
ST. CROIX NATIONAL SCENIC RIV-
ERWAY, MINNESOTA AND WISCON-
SIN: The St. Croix and Namekagon rivers
serve up 255 miles of prime wilderness
canoeing, accessed from a variety of put-ins
and take-outs.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL
PARK, NORTH DAKOTA: Canoeing the
Little Missouri is an ideal way to experience
the beauty and solitude of North Dakota’s
Badlands. The 107-mile float links the park’s
south and north units and takes about five
days—if the fickle flows hold.
VIRGIN ISLANDS NATIONAL PARK, U.S.
VIRGIN ISLANDS: This park encompasses
the majority of the island of St. John, including
historical sites, the mountainous interior, and
dozens of miles of sandy beaches, reefs and
mangroves.
VOYAGEURS NATIONAL PARK, MIN-
NESOTA: Named for the canoe-paddling
explorers who plied these waters centuries
ago, Voyageurs National Park boast a similar
topography to the nearby Boundary Waters
Canoe Area Wilderness—with far fewer regula-
tions.
YELLOWSTONE, WYOMING: America’s
first national park offers superb paddling on
Lewis, Shoshone and Yellowstone Lakes. Hint:
beware of high winds in the afternoons.
ZION NATIONAL PARK, UTAH: If you have
a Class V skill set, and if there’s water in the
North Fork of the Virgin, there’s no better way
to see this iconic park.
IN DEEP:
Zak Podmore
paddles the
surging Little
Colorado River
into the Grand
Canyon.

CONFLUENCE
TAKING THE HARD WAY INTO THE SACRED, THREATENED HEART OF THE GRAND CANYON
P H O TO S B Y W I L L S TA U F F E R - N O R R I S
This is a place where distance twists. I
awoke this morning only one mile from the
nearest road, legs cramping as I stepped
out of my sleeping bag and watched the
sunlight slide its way down the canyon
walls. One mile, but a tortuous, inverted mile
of ledges, boulders, cliffs and rust-stained
layers of millennia. One mile as the raven
flies, but a mile so riddled with downdrafts
and vertical gain that it seems it would be a
daunting ascent even for the winged.
This is where measurements fall to
dust. This is the Grand Canyon.
I’m taking an unusual route into the
national park. Over two trips I’ve ridden
flash floods nearly 60 miles down the
Little Colorado River, which flows across
the Navajo Nation to join the Colorado
River deep in the canyon. I’m now just a
few turns from the confluence. Yesterday,
I paddled past a bubbling travertine-rich
spring where, according to Hopi tradition,
THE
STORY BY ZAK PODMORE
humankind first emerged into this world.
For much of the year, the lower Little
Colorado flows powder blue from these
springs, standing in stark contrast with the
red walls of the canyon and the parched
desert beyond. Though heavy rains have
temporarily turned the river into a muddy
soup, this sheer-walled sanctuary seems a
fitting setting for the birthplace of humanity.
Others are determined to tap its
potential as a lucrative tourist attraction.
Developer R. Lamar Whitmer, of Scottsdale,
Ariz., is determined to build a billion-dollar
resort here. The so-called Grand Canyon
Escalade development would include
boutique hotels and restaurants on the
canyon rim and a cable gondola capable
of whisking more than 10,000 people per
day to a “River Walk” development near the
confluence. Tourists would be able to order
corndogs and ice cream within spitting
distance of this place—held as sacred in
51
Navajo, Hopi, Pueblo and Zuni traditions—
which today is most commonly reached
on a river trip of more than 200 miles, or a
tough multi-day hike.
Like many river-runners, I’d followed the
Escalade proposal closely for several years.
It was on my mind when, a few months
earlier, I watched a flash flood moving down
the Little Colorado from the window of an
airplane. As I looked down onto the ribbon
of water cutting through Navajo country I
began to wonder: What would it be like to
paddle the Little Colorado into the heart of
the Grand Canyon? Twenty-five thousand
boaters float past the confluence each year
on the Colorado proper. But how many—
five? ten?—wait for the rain and ride its little
sibling to the same place?
When the plane landed, I told a few
kayaker friends that I was going be
keeping an eye on the weather in northern
Arizona. Then only ten days later, NOAA

issued a storm warning for the area. High in the
Little Colorado basin the rains hit hard, bringing the
river from 10 cfs to several thousand cfs almost
instantaneously. Based on past hydrographs, I
estimated it would take 46 hours for the water
to reach the Cameron, Ariz., put-in. I called Will
Stauffer-Norris, with whom I’d paddled 1,700-miles
down the Green and Colorado Rivers in 2011, and
900 miles from the source of the Colorado to Lake
Mead the following year. Mid-week before the
Super Bowl wasn’t the ideal time to drop everything,
but the river wasn’t going to wait.
T
wo days later, after frantic packing, nine
hours of driving and two hours of sleep, Will
and I are standing on the bank of the Little
Colorado, watching 1,000 cfs of milk-chocolate
colored water swirl past. Just hauling our kayaks an
eighth of a mile from parking lot to the water is an
ordeal. They are almost laughably heavy, weighed
down by camping gear, camera equipment, drysuits,
18 hardboiled eggs and $25 in gas-station Slim
Jims. We also carry four gallons of water, meant
to last us nearly 60 river miles and the 3-mile,
3,000-vertical-foot climb back to the rim.
The drinking water is a recent addition. On the
jewelry stand in western Navajo Nation.
way to the put-in our shuttle driver, Brady Black,
shot us a boyish grin half-veiled behind a long
mustache. “Did you guys pack any water?” he
asked. The Little Colorado’s water was so full of silt
that it couldn’t be filtered, Brady warned, even after
settling overnight. We could boil it grit-and-all and
face the consequences of sand-blasting our guts,
or we could pack it in.
As we shove off and the highway bridge
vanishes behind us, I’m gripped with a sense of
apprehension. We could run out of water in two
ways: Our four gallons of drinking water could be
too little, or the rain-fueled pulse of river water
could dry up beneath our kayaks leaving us knee
deep in mud at the bottom of the canyon. Or both.
Will doesn’t seem to share my concern. He’s
already slipped into his characteristic it’ll-all-be-
fine mindset, which is so pronounced at times it’s
become a running joke between us. The worse
things get, the more vocal his optimism. I assume
the role of expedition cynic, if only to even things
out.
Soon enough though, Will’s ease becomes
contagious. After so much last-minute preparation,
it feels good to be floating. “It looks like we’re going
into a mini Marble Canyon,” Will remarks as the river
52
Anti-Escalade art graces the side of an abandoned
Zak Podmore
carves through the layers of rock—cliffs of Kaibab
limestone, crumbing slopes of the Toroweap
formation. When we enter the harder Coconino
sandstone, the canyon becomes a twisting
channel just 20 feet across. On his famous 1869
exploration of the Colorado River, John Wesley
Powell named the 61-mile stretch below Lee’s
Ferry Marble Canyon. What was then known as the
Big Canyon begins at the confluence with the Little
Colorado at the proposed tram site. Powell would
promote the adjective from ‘Big’ to ‘Grand’ several
years later.
It seems unthinkable that 146 years after Powell
made the first known descent of the Grand, 97
years after it became a national park and 50 years
after conservationists succeeded in preventing
a series of dams that would have flooded it, the
gateway to America’s most iconic park would face
the threat of an enormous development project on
the canyon floor. Indeed, most people I talk to about
the plans have the same question: “Seriously? Do
you think the tram could really happen there?”
There’s little chance that the park service would
allow such a project within their jurisdiction, but from
Lee’s Ferry to the confluence only the north bank
of the river is national park land. The south side
belongs to the Navajo Nation, the largest reservation
in the United States. Some 200 miles downstream,
the western third of the Grand Canyon is similarly
divided between park and tribal jurisdictions. In 2007,
outside developers partnered with the Hualapai tribe
to build the Grand Canyon Skywalk, a glass-floored
steel horseshoe that extends 80 feet over the canyon THERE’S SO MUCH POTENTIAL
rim. The Skywalk draws some 300,000 tourists a
year, many on package tours from nearby Las Vegas. HERE FOR ECONOMIC REMUNERATION
A steady stream of helicopters ferries visitors to the
Skywalk, to the canyon floor for a 15-minute boat ride AND PROFIT THAT THE DEVELOPERS
on the Colorado River and back to the Strip in time
for dinner. Lamar Whitmer, the developer behind the
AREN’T GOING TO GO AWAY. IT WOULD BE
Escalade proposal, was instrumental in lifting the FAA
ban on helicopters flying below the rim in the western
IRRATIONAL. – KEVIN FEDARKO
canyon, according to Roger Clark of the Grand
Canyon Trust. The area now sees tens of thousands of Will Stauffer-Norris drops into Atomizer Rapid on the Little Colorado River, and (below) Podmore searches for a campsite.
flights each year. “From Diamond Creek down it’s like
the opening scenes of Apocalypse Now,” says Sinjin
Eberle of the conservation group American Rivers.
Boaters have taken to calling this stretch Helicopter
Alley.
“The developers have very cannily perceived
that there is a giant loophole in the protections that
have been thrown around the park,” says writer Kevin
Fedarko, an outspoken critic of the Escalade and other
development schemes in the Grand Canyon region.
“They’re leveraging the economic disadvantages of
Native Americans who live next to the Grand Canyon
in order to transform beauty into cash.”
The Escalade project would be far more invasive
than the Skywalk. It wouldn’t just be a manmade
anomaly on the canyon rim, but a conveyor belt of
traffic right to the canyon floor. In addition to the
25,000 rafters who currently float the Grand each
year, the Escalade could carry up to 10,000 people
per day into the canyon—up to 2.5 million visitors per
year. Every two and a half days, the confluence could Zak Podmore
see the same number of visitors it now receives in 12
months. And if the Las Vegasification of the lower
canyon is any indication, once the tram is built it would
open the doorway to a flood of development, not just
at the confluence but all up and down the river. The
developers already suggest on their website that there
could be “river-excursions” from the tram. That could
mean day-trips on large motor-driven rafts—impossible
now because of the lack of exit points—which would
light off a surge in traffic through Marble Canyon. “The
tram is the beginning of a whole litany of horrendous
things that would forever change the upper third of
Grand Canyon National Park,” Fedarko says. “It’s just
the tip of the iceberg.”
Floating down the Little Colorado, we couldn’t be
further from that reality. When the river isn’t flowing,
Artist Martin Simpson’s
rendering of the proposed
Grand Canyon Escalade, a
tram which would carry up
to 10,000 people per day
to the floor of the canyon.

54
ILLUSTRATION BY MARTIN SIMPSON
55

mud and quicksand deter most backpackers from
hiking the route. Will and I have yet to hear of any
paddler who’s floated the canyon more than once,
owing to intermittent flows and the brutal hike out.
When we pull over for lunch or to take pictures, we
see no footprints on the ground. No fire rings. No
signs of campers. It’s like having your own private
Grand Canyon, I keep thinking as the sheer walls
grow above us, in places stretching from river to
rim in 2,000 feet of unbroken grandeur.
We do, however, see plenty of trash riding the
river with us: drink bottles, oil jugs and basketballs,
a mind-boggling number of basketballs circulating
in eddies or caught in strainers. As we launched,
one faded and partly deflated ball floated past,
a Wilson of course, and it serves as a reference
throughout the first day. Since letting the flood
outrun us is a real concern, we find Wilson a useful
companion as he roughly marks the speed of the
current. We pass him in slack water and watch him
bob past when we stop for breaks. The three of us
are making good time despite a late start and short
February days. By the time we make camp on a
small beach, we’ve floated 23 miles.
Will and I have only seen each other in passing
over the last several years, as I’ve settled into a
full-time job and he’s traveled from Idaho to
China making paddling films. Having once spent
four months living out of kayaks on our Colorado
source-to-sea, though, we quickly find a familiar
rhythm: brew coffee over a twig fire at dawn, pack
boats, step into drysuits and paddle. And paddle.
We hit our first Class IV rapid before noon
on Day 2. From the eddy above, I can see a
large hydraulic sending distinct spouts of water
skyward. Normally a hole like that would churn
the river frothy white. But this is no normal river.
The jets of water shoot from the hole in sluggish,
56
After nearly 24 hours of hiking, Podmore
pauses near the top of the Hopi Salt Trail.
opaque ropes, casting shadows behind them in the
sunlight.
In fact, it’d be a stretch to call the liquid
beneath our boats water at all. It’s so muddy, so
viscous that it behaves like no water I’ve ever seen.
As we encounter more rapids, we quickly learn
the visual cues we’re accustomed to processing
subconsciously—indicating tongue, rock, or wave—
are confused. Rocks lay invisible just beneath the
surface waiting to knock us off line. Pour-overs
churn in dark pockets, appearing only when we’re
on top of them. A single splash to the face leaves
a fine film of earth in our eyes, so that everything
seems veiled in a brownish-red fog—the color of
the river, the color of the canyon. When it dries in
the winter sun, it paints us with a second skin that
pulls and cracks when we speak.
Pausing for a lunch of nuts and meat sticks, Will
jumps into one of his lectures. As an environmental
 science major, but also a student of Zen, he enjoys
analyzing the world through theories that border
on the preposterous. “My drysuit was starting to
wear out and seep water a few weeks ago, but I
think the LCR fixed it,” he says, trying to keep a
straight face. “Now all the holes are clogged up
with dirt.”
All afternoon the canyon grows deeper. We
paddle through more rapids and under a wall
that rises 2,000 feet straight up, painted with
blacks, golds and tans. Darkness is falling by the
time we collapse on a brushy sandbar, but we’ve
made another 25 miles. That only leaves us two
miles to the Hopi Salt Trail: our exit point. There
we plan to stash our boats and hike six miles
to the confluence with the Colorado to see the
proposed tram site. No problem.
But we haven’t paddled five minutes the next
morning when the river disappears. A perfect
horizon line crosses in front of us and a low roar is
all the indication we have of what’s downstream.
The river is flooding into the bushes and we
have to wade and bushwhack our way to solid
THINK OF YOUR
MOST HOLY
PLACE, A PLACE
THAT YOU
CHERISH. AND
THEN IMAGINE
AN OUTSIDE
INFLUENCE
COMING IN
AND WANTING
TO CHANGE IT
FOREVER.
– RENAE YELLOWHORSE
ground. We’ve entered the travertine zone of the
canyon below the blue water springs and found
the run’s crux: Atomizer Rapid. The minerals in
the water have left dam-like deposits across the
river that break Atomizer into a series of ledges
with no single channel down the center. Running
the rapid is a matter of scraping your way off the
drops, trying not to get caught in the holes that
lurk below, and avoiding at all costs the travertine
caves on both sides. I take one look and decide to
walk. Will, who has been paddling Class V several
times a week, styles the line.
Downstream there are half a dozen more
horizon lines. The rapids are easier, but the
scouting is time consuming. We hack our way
through tamarisk, climb up sharp travertine
boulders and plot our course through the drops. It
takes us five hours to paddle the final two miles
of our run. It’s well past noon when we explode
our gear at the “takeout,” a deserted Department
of Fish and Wildlife basecamp at the foot of a
steep side-canyon.
We change, eat, and begin half-jogging toward
57
the confluence in an effort to pull out the 12-mile THE CONFLUENCE:
round trip hike before dark. That idea doesn’t last Podmore floats past the
proposed tram site on his
long. With the river high, the trail is mostly flooded second trip into the canyon.
out and we’re forced to dodge around, or crawl
through, thicket after thicket of thorny mesquite.
We cut over to the boulder fields along the cliff
edge and back again to the riverside brush in a
zigzag of frustration. As the light starts to soften
on the canyon walls, we bow to the inevitable
and turn back. Our dwindling water supply and
Will’s nonrefundable ticket home keep us from
extending the trip another day. Despite timing the
flood perfectly, the confluence will have to wait for
another trip.

T
hat night we take stock of the hike ahead
of us: three miles, 3,000 feet, one gallon of
water each. “It’ll be hard,” Will admits, “but
it shouldn’t take more than six hours to get to the
rim.” That sounds like a reasonable pace to me. For
the third time in 24 hours we vastly overestimate
our own abilities.
Once, in a moment of youthful indiscretion, I
went to a gym. I got on the StairMaster, put it on the
hard setting and plugged into a rerun of Seinfeld. I
worked out for 10 full minutes before swearing off
indoor exercise for good. Climbing out of the Grand
Canyon is like being on one of those machines.
The difference is each step is larger, and instead
of flat plastic pedals, you’re walking up loose scree
and crumbing limestone ledges covered in small
round pieces of gravel. That, and you’re balancing
100 pounds of kayak on one shoulder. Also unlike
the stair machine, one misplaced step could mean
being dragged a few hundred feet down the cliff
by your overloaded boat. The biggest difference,
however, is that you can’t get off.
Soon Will and I are forced to rethink our
strategy. We unpack our boats and haul them a
quarter-mile up the trail, then return for our gear.
The climbing is easier this way, but the distance
triples: nine miles, 6,000 feet up, 3,000 feet down.
Three quarts of water.
We were traveling the same route people
have used for thousands of years to reach the
Sipapu on the Little Colorado and a salt seep just
downstream from the confluence, both of which
have religious significance to the Hopi. Local tribes
and pueblos still use it to access the sacred sites
in the canyon, and native activists have been on
the front lines of the battle to stop the Escalade
David Spiegel

project. The opposition group Save the Confluence

is run by a group of Navajo women. The governors
of Zuni Pueblo, Acoma Pueblo, Laguna Pueblo and

58
the Hopi Tribe have all come out against the Escalade
proposal as well.
“Think of your most holy place, a place that
you cherish. And then imagine an outside influence
coming in and wanting to change it forever,” says
Renae Yellowhorse. An outspoken member of Save
the Confluence, Yellowhorse grew up on the rim,
where developers plan a 420-acre complex that
would include hotels, restaurants, an RV park and a
Discovery Center.
Not all Navajo oppose the project. From the
beginning, Whitmer has courted influential tribal
members and crafted a message of economic
opportunity and sovereignty designed to appeal to
rank-and-file Navajo. The company created to manage
the project, Confluence Partners LLC, includes four

IT’S LIKE
Navajo partners, and the Navajo Nation will own the
land and buildings. The revenues are a different story.

HAVING YOUR OWN

According to a draft ‘master agreement’ leaked to
the Navajo Times newspaper in 2014, the tribe will

PRIVATE GRAND CANYON,

receive between 8 percent and 18 percent of gross
revenues depending on the volume of visitors. The

I THINK AS THE SHEER

deal also requires the tribe to finance $65 million in
offsite infrastructure including a road to the site.
Still, the promise of jobs resonates strongly in
Navajo Country, where unemployment stands at a
staggering 44 percent and almost half of the tribe’s
300,000 enrolled members live below the poverty
line. In an open letter to regional media, Confluence
Partners claimed the Escalade will create 3,000
direct and indirect jobs, and generate $70 million in
annual payroll and $90 million in yearly revenue to the
tribe. Critics say those numbers are overly optimistic.
Neither Whitmer nor Confluence Partners responded
to my requests for comment.
Yellowhorse is among the unconvinced. “Who are
going to be the managers? Who’s going to be making
the decisions? The Navajo? No, they’re going to be
minimum-wage busboys or, who knows, they may
bring people from all over the world to work and not
employ the local people.” The $65 million the Navajo
government is being asked to put up for the new road
is roughly double its entire annual budget for roads,
Yellowhorse adds.
“The more the local communities look at how little
the Navajo Nation might receive from the Escalade,
the less people seem to be supporting it,” says Clark,
WALLS GROW ABOVE US,
STRETCHING FROM RIVER
TO RIM IN 2,000 FEET OF
UNBROKEN GRANDEUR.
Tired and Happy: Stauffer-Norris (top) and Podmore.
remuneration and profit that the developers aren’t going to go away. It would be irrational. The
proposal has already made its way out there into the ether and there’s no reverse gear on the idea
itself.”
As this issue went to press, Escalade proponents were lobbying Navajo Tribal Council members,
attempting to gain the two-thirds majority needed to override Begaye’s veto. If they succeed—and
they seem to be making progress—the fight would likely move to the courts. The Hopi have been
clear that they will sue to block the development, on the basis of an inter-tribal compact between
the Hopi and Navajo that prevents either tribe from infringing on the other’s sacred sites. According
to Yellowhorse, the Navajo who live on the canyon rim near the development site have not been
consulted on the project. She says they may sue as well. “It’s ridiculous is that it’s going to be Navajo
paying for lawsuits against their own people. It’s going to devour millions of dollars.”

of the Grand Canyon Trust.
New Navajo President Russell Begaye is a vocal
opponent of the Escalade development. When he was
elected in April 2015, replacing the pro-Escalade
President Ben Shelly, many saw his presidency as the
final nail in the project’s coffin. Fedarko thinks that’s
naïve. “There’s so much potential here for economic
I
wish there was a tram in here,” I say to Will as I pass my kayak up a ledge of Redwall Limestone.
It’s hot. My feet are swollen. Both shoulders are rubbed raw from carrying my kayak, and we’ve
already missed our planned 2 o’clock rendezvous with Brady. We decide to stash our boats and
make a break for the rim with our bags of gear. That way we have a chance of getting out before
Brady calls in search and rescue at dark, as we’d agreed before we left.
At 4 p.m., the trail we’d been following disappears into a near-vertical boulder field under a
towering wall of sandstone. We swallow the last of our water and check our GPS. It tells us we’re
2,200 feet—less than half a mile—from the trailhead. Looking at the climb ahead of us, we crack up

59
 The Path Less Traveled:
Looking down the Hopi Salt
Trail canyon toward the Little
Colorado River.
with laughter. Then, out of options, we keep going.
We stumble onto the two-track road at dusk,
just as Brady comes ripping around the corner in
his truck. He hands us each two chimichangas from
the reservation gas station and tells us he’s been
driving the web of unmarked roads since noon.
“Sure is a bitch to get here,” he says. Wolfing down
the greasy goodness, I nod agreement, though
the ordeal is not over yet. At 3 a.m., Will and I mix
instant coffee with cold water and hike back into
the canyon by moonlight. We find our boats and
haul them back over the scree and rock, cresting
the rim at sunrise. I drop Will at the Las Vegas
airport minutes before his flight starts boarding,
then drive straight to In-N-Out Burger, limp to the
counter and order two double-doubles.
T
wo months later I’m finally standing at
the confluence. I’ve hiked back down the
Hopi Salt Trail with a packraft and floated
the final six miles of the Little Colorado—past
where Will and I were forced to turn back, past the
bubbling, sacred Sipapu spring, and down to the
Colorado.
I spend all day alone at the confluence watching
canyon shadows make their slow dance opposite
the moving sun. The only sounds are the gurgles
of the river, the occasional caw of a raven. The
Colorado moves by with its steady pulse, begging
to be followed.
Brady was right. It’s a bitch to get in here. The
developers like to emphasize the same point; they
want to make the confluence as accessible as
airport terminals and burger stands. They want
to open the canyon to everybody. But as I sit at
the confluence looking up to where the Escalade
would cross the cliffs from the rim, I wonder what
makes this place so unique. Is it the way it ushers
a river through a dry land? The way it opens the
earth, laying bare hundreds of millions of years of
time? Or how it plays with light and color amidst
a conspicuous absence of green? Those are
certainly all factors, but after everything I’ve done
to get here I find myself thinking that neither rock
nor river has the final say. Instead it is inaccessibly
that defines the Grand Canyon. Getting here takes
time. It takes effort. But so does so much we value.
Being whisked to the canyon floor on an aerial tram
is like being allowed to play in the NFL because
you scored a touchdown in high school. Yes, we
could change the rules and make this place easy to
get to. But it would lose its meaning in the process.
In a world where distances have been shrinking
for centuries, where interstates and airplanes allow
60
us to cross thousands of miles in smooth similarity,
where an Internet’s worth of information is always
one click away, space has been steadily losing its
command over the present, almost to the point of
becoming irrelevant. Now more than ever we need
to be confronted with the inaccessible. We hunger
for space that resists easy consumption. And
nowhere better feeds that hunger than the Grand
Canyon, whose rim is as accessible as Disneyland
but whose borders fall away to golden depths
that laugh back at all our systems of seamless,
mechanized transport.
Even if all we ever do is stand on the rim
and look in, this canyon shows us a place where
human bodies maintain their meaning, a place that
can only be accessed patiently by foot or boat. If
a tram were built here and 10,000 people a day
could pay to ride to the confluence in 15 minutes
of cushioned comfort, discussing work or politics
as they glide across previously unscalable canyon
walls, they might arrive at the same coordinates
where the blue waters of the Little Colorado have,
for millennia, filled pilgrims of all kinds—from salt-
gatherers to rafters—with wonder. But they would
not be arriving in the same canyon. How could
they? That place, defined by distance, realized by
depth, would vanish.
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FIGHT THE FUNK
Whether you’re on an endless road trip or just sneaking sessions before
work, it’s not easy to paddle everyday. The biggest challenge, after you get
your work/life priorities straight, is managing the piles of wet gear that
inevitably detonate inside your shuttle rig. For that, you need to develop
a system. Here are a few of our favorite funk-fighters to get you started.
RINSE KIT: File this one under genius–a self-contained shower system
that fills up at your hose spigot and retains the same water pressure you
get at home. There’s no pumping and no moving parts. The Rinse Kit just
uses basic physics (air compresses in volume; water doesn’t) to provide
about three minutes of rinse time, no matter where you are. ($90; rinsekit.
com)
BOX STORE BIN: Fill this ubiquitous plastic container to the rim with life-
jackets, sprayskirts and booties dripping swamp water and river mud. You
won’t get a drop in your rig. We like the low-sided versions that won’t trip
you up when you stand in them to change.
IKEA BAG: We’re no fan of disposable furniture and tortured vowels, but
our Swedish friends’ blue plastic totes are perfect for containing moist
gear. ($.99; ikea.com)
62 | canoekayak.com
BY JEFF MOAG
SCRUBBA WASH BAG: This masterpiece of dirtbag innovation looks like a drybag on
the outside (and can be used as such) but it’s actually a miniature clothes-washing
system. The inside has a patch of plastic nubs that work like a washboard. Our test-
ing backs up the company’s contention that the Scrubba is twice as effective as
hand washing, and more hygienic than a gas-station sink. ($55; thescrubba.com)
CLOTHESLINE: A throw-rope works for weekend duty, but if you’re drying gear every
day don’t risk the UV exposure—get about 25 feet of paracord at your local hard-
ware store.
SURF GRASS MAT: Takeout surfaces vary from uncomfortable (gravel) to painful (hot
asphalt), slightly messy (sand) to totally gross (tidal muck). One thing you’ll almost
never see at the end of a paddling trip is a perfectly manicured bit of lawn. So why
not bring your own 20 x 25-inch patch of suburbia with you? The Surf Grass Mat’s
synthetic turf brushes loose sand or dirt from your feet, and handles a full spray
down when needed. Plus, it makes a fine front lawn for your tent.
($40; surfgrassmats.com)
SOAP: Yeah, talking to you paddler dude. Make sure it’s biodegradable, like Sea to
Summit’s Trek & Travel line of bodywash, shampoo and laundry soap.
($4.50; seatosummit.com)
PHOTO: AARON BLACK-SCHMIDT
 GEAR
REVIEW

EASY
RIDERS
When it comes to pure fun, sit-
on-top kayaks are hard to beat.

W O R D S & P H OTO S BY
DAR R E N B US H

Too often, sit-on-top kayaks are the

Rodney Dangerfields of the paddling
world. They don’t get no respect.
That’s too bad, because when it
comes to getting out on the water
safely and with a minimum of fuss—
which is what most paddling should
be about—sit-on-tops are hard to
beat. What they concede in efficiency
they give back in comfort, stability
and an easy learning curve. So I
grabbed a bunch of friends, including
some first-time paddlers, and
headed to the lake with a mandate
to just mess around in boats.

64 | canoekayak.com
 EDDYLINE
CARIBBEAN 14
When I unwrapped the Caribbean, the first word that came to
my mind was beautiful. In a world where sit-on-tops are limited
to utilitarian aesthetics, Eddyline took the time and opportunity
to make a pretty boat. It’s not surprising, since the Eddyline
team undertook more than a year of research and development
before entering the sit-on-top market with the acclaimed Carib-
bean 12. The Caribbean 14 is that boat’s big sister, longer and a
few inches narrower.
The first thing that struck me is the color: a lovely avocado
green. In the land where most sit-on-tops are bright colors or
muddy browns, it was a nice change. Thanks for that, Eddyline.
Way to buck the safe trend.
The material is a proprietary thermoformed material, much
like the Hurricane Skimmer. Polycarbonate plastics are stiffer
and lighter, but more expensive, so the Caribbean doesn’t sell for
an entry-level price point. That said, I believe it is a great value.
The outfitting is well executed, attractive, and solid. The front
hatch is not the standard oval; its trapezoidal shape accentuates
the design and is easy to open and close. Eddyline paid atten-
tion to details. I loved the small touches like the carbon-fiber
grab handles, an awesome bit of up-cycling using leftovers from
making paddles in Eddyline’s factory north of Seattle.
The seat clips on with stainless marine-quality bolt snaps, a
nice touch of quality. The seat snaps in easily and intuitively, and
the quality of the seat itself is quite nice. Footbraces are easily
adjusted and sturdy.
Usually pretty kayaks paddle well, and the Eddyline is lovely
on the water as well as off. It fit my 200 pounds perfectly, and
my friend Liz enjoyed it too, though she is literally half my size.
The Caribbean tracked effortlessly, gliding through the water
with efficiency. I swung my legs over the side and sat there with
the kayak on edge and it showed no signs of wanting to dump
me into the water.
Listening to the chatter among the testers is always enlight-
ening. “My mom wanted to try kayaking, this would be perfect
for her.” Liz went on to explain how her mother had one bad
experience in a kayak with a cockpit, and had sworn off kayak-
ing since then. “I think she’d like this.” That is music to a paddler’s
ears.
The downside of the Caribbean? Just one, and that is the
price tag. AT $1,699, it’s the most expensive kayak in the test,
but as usual, you get what you pay for.

L: 14’; W: 29”; 50 LBS.; THERMOFORMED PLASTIC. $1,699, EDDYLINE.COM

canoekayak.com | 65
 GEAR
REVIEW
EVOKE VUE 120
Evoke is a new branch from an old established tree, Sun Dolphin,
which produces entry-level kayaks sold in big box stores. The
Evoke line is a different animal altogether, designed specifically
for outdoor specialty shops.
The look of the VUE 120 is spartan, with a design that is
simple and utilitarian. It’s lines recall one of the all-time classic sit-
on-top kayaks, and I’m not the only one who noticed the similarity.
When a kayak fishing friend saw it, he said, without prompting,
“Oh, that looks just like a Tarpon 120.” It’s true that all kayaks are
basically things that float and have pointy ends, so looking like
another model isn’t the same as being that boat. After all, a Kia
Amanti looks a lot like a Jaguar S-Class. The proof is in the test
drive.
The VUE 120 features three water-resistant hatches that
are easy to open and close. I found the hatch covers to be a little
insubstantial, looking similar to the hatches on the Wilderness
Systems Ride, but not as beefy. Still, our water testing yielded just
a few drops inside the hatches. (It’s worth noting that nothing is
completely waterproof, and whatever you carry in a kayak should
be in dry bags.) I liked the hatches’ ease of use, especially the
9-inch hatch between your knees which gives you easy access to
L: 12’3”; W: 30.5”; 55 LBS.; ROTOMOLDED POLYETHYLENE. $849, EVOKEPADDLESPORTS.COM
66 | canoekayak.com
larger items.
The VUE also featured two small waterproof pockets attached
to the side of the cockpit below the paddler’s knees. Frankly,
they’re cheap-looking and unnecessary, and I wouldn’t trust my
cell phone in them. My recommendation is that if you’re not going
to do it right, just leave it out.
The seat is perfectly adequate and simple, and that keeps the
weight down. I found it to be a little lacking for me, but I’m a big
guy. And the smaller paddlers who reviewed the VUE found it to
be sufficient. If you’re tall or over 200 pounds, you might prefer a
little more padding and back support.
The VUE paddles nicely. Like most sit-on-tops, we’re not go-
ing to break any speed records, but it feels efficient under power.
Stability is excellent, as expected. One of our testers remarked
that the VUE paddled better than she thought it would, and was
more stable than she thought it would be. This, from an avowed
sea kayaker.
At $849, the VUE 120 is fairly inexpensive for what you get.
It’s a good choice for a first timer who might branch out into fish-
ing, as the VUE has tracks for adding fishing accessories should
you choose to do so.
OCEAN KAYAK TETRA 12
Ocean Kayak has a long history in the sit-on-top
arena, going back to 1971. Many people’s first
kayaking experiences were on Ocean Kayak Scup-
pers, the first mass-produced rotomolded SOT
made popular at beach resorts all around the world.
If I had any previous complaints about the
Ocean Kayak line, is was that their boats came it
two categories; large, and huge. The Tetra 12 is
neither. It’s a nice, smaller-sized kayak, which means
it’s lighter, and lighter is better.
The construction is typical Ocean Kayak, which
is to say it’s robust. The molding is clean and there’s
no evidence of deformities or molding mistakes,
and the hull is true. The front hatch is a large oval,
featuring a super-dry gasketed hatch borrowed
from sister company Old Town kayaks. It opens with
a twist from a lever in the center of the hatch. Water
testing revealed no leakage.
The seat is simple and nice; my only complaint
is that it is not easily removed. It snaps into place
on the bottom and the webbing terminates in a
captive buckle. Yes, you could remove the seat, but
L: 12’1”; W: 28”; 53 LBS.; ROTOMOLDED POLYETHYLENE. $850, OCEANKAYAK.COM
you have to basically disassemble it. Now that can
be a good thing if you’re the forgetful sort, or it can
be a bad thing because it leaves the seat exposed
to UV rays and critters who like to chew on seats. It
happens.
Performance-wise, the Tetra 12 is a low-profile
boat that doesn’t catch the wind, and moves
through the water quite nicely. We took it out on a
day with an occasional gust and the Tetra 12 per-
formed admirably. One of the smaller paddlers liked
it better than the longer boats, feeling it was easier
to paddle. I felt like my 200 pounds was weighing
it down a little too much, but then I looked over the
side and there was plenty of freeboard—it was the
slope from the top of the cockpit to the water that
made Tetra seem shallower than it actually is.
The Tetra 12 is $850 retail, but a quick Google
search shows the “street price” to be as much as a
hundred dollars lower. The Tetra 12 is a good value
at $850, so any discount above that is a bonus. It
can be upgraded to an angler model if you want to
paddle with the fishes.
canoekayak.com | 67
 GEAR
REVIEW
HURRICANE SKIMMER 140
The Skimmer 140 is the longest and the narrowest in the
group, weighs in at just over 50 pounds, and is lovely to
look at. I like pretty boats. So sue me.
There’s plenty of storage in the Skimmer, and loading
the front hatch is easy, thanks to the 16-inch oval hatch. I
put two 20-liter and two 35-liter dry bags in the hatch, and
still had room to spare. A big 70-liter bag fit nicely on the
Skimmer’s recessed rear deck. I would feel comfortable
camping out of this kayak.
The Skimmer drains via two large scuppers; one in the
cockpit and one in the rear recess. A quick measurement
showed the bottom of the hull is a full four inches below
the deck, which means there wasn’t much water coming up
through the scupper.
Two 5-inch hatches allow access to the hull. They were
probably placed there for ease of assembly, but Hurricane
added a plastic pail insert, which gives you a nice place
L: 14’; W: 29.5”; 52 LBS.; THERMOFORMED PLASTIC. $1,349, HURRICANEAQUASPORTS.COM
68 | canoekayak.com
to put your keys and other small items you want to have
accessible. The seat is well-made and snaps in and out
quickly.
How does it paddle? Four different paddlers tried it
and all were pleased with its performance. All of them
commented that it was more stable and faster than they
expected. That said, the smaller paddlers felt it caught the
wind and tended to leecock (turn away from the wind), and
since the seat isn’t adjustable it wasn’t possible to trim the
kayak to compensate. Adding a drybag with some water in
it up in the front hatch dropped the bow a little and helped.
It’s not a fatal flaw; it’s just something to be aware of. If you
are paddling on a long day-trip or overnighter, be sure to
pack a little bow-heavy.
At $1,349, it’s the same price as the Ride, but 30
pounds lighter. Basically, you need to decide if you want
light or you want luxury, and make your choice.
WILDERNESS SYSTEMS RIDE 135 MAX
Usually seen in its Angler version, the Ride 135 is the most
stable kayak in the fleet we tested. The Ride has been around
for over a decade, and last year it benefited from a complete
redesign that is quite an improvement over the old hull design.
The quality and attention to detail is typical of boats from Wil-
derness Systems; no loose screws or scraps of polyethylene in
the hull. Water testing the hatch showed no leaks.
The big upgrade in the new Ride is the AirProMax seat. It is
a veritable La-Z-Boy. It features an aluminum-framed seat with
cool and comfortable mesh fabrics to virtually eliminate sweaty
bum, and if it does get wet, the material dries quickly. I really
like the high-low seat adjustment, which you can make quickly
without undoing buckles or straps. Put it up for better visibility,
pop it down for stability. The entire seat is also removable for
transport, or to use as a chair when you arrive at your campsite.
All this luxury comes at a price. The Ride 135 weighs in at
a hefty 83 pounds. I loaded it myself on top of my truck and it
was not something I’d want to do regularly, or on a windy day. It
is best loaded with a friend.
I took some of the pictures for this review from the Ride
135, and though the camera equipment I was using cost three
times the price of the kayak, and I was not worried about
tipping over one bit. The visibility from the high position on the
AirProMax was great, and I imagine a lot of photographers
would be delighted with the large amount of storage available.
Of course, anglers can add their bits and bobs and fish, but this
is a versatile kayak. Think Ford F-350 and you can imagine the
capabilities of the Ride 135.
Is the Ride 135 a fast kayak? Of course it isn’t, but it’s no
pig. It moves along at a nice easy walking pace, but if you push
it, the Ride pushes back. Back off the power and enjoy.
All the folks who paddled the Ride liked it as well. Tom, one of
the test paddlers, tipped the scales at 250 pounds, and was
comfortable with the stability with the seat in both high and low
positions. Even though it’s a big boat, the Ride was popular with
paddlers weighing 100 pounds less than Tom.
It’s not inexpensive at $1,349, but it’s a good value. The
seat alone is worth a few hundred dollars, since your behind is
going to be in it for a long time. Amortized over a few hundred
hours of paddling comfort, the extra cost will seem well worth it.

L: 13’6”; W: 31.5”; 85 LBS.; ROTOMOLDED POLYETHYLENE. $1,349, WILDERNESSSYSTEMS.COM

WATE R
TE STI N GS
H ATC H E
Rather than
trust the
manufacturer’s
claim that a hatch
is waterproof, I
wanted some sort
of objective test.
My technique was
simple. I put one
of those pistol
grip nozzles on
the hose, turn
the pressure on
full, and shot it at
the hatch for 60
seconds.

canoekayak.com | 69
 GEAR
REVIEW
HOBIE REVOLUTION 13
The Hobie Revolution 13 is the bright shiny apple in this basket
of oranges. We say that not merely because the one we tested is
a brilliant shade of crimson. No, what makes the Revolution stand
out in this crowd—and live up to its moniker—is the Mirage Drive
pedal system that propels it.
More about the pedals in a moment. First let’s talk about the
lines. At 28.5 inches wide and 13 feet 5 inches in length, the
Revolution is one of the sleekest and fastest pedal-drive kayaks
on the market. C&K’s offices are just a couple of exits south of
Hobie’s California factory, where we picked up this red rocket
to put it through its paces. In sheltered water, our moderately
fit testers could maintain a cruising speed of about 5 miles-
per-hour. That’s comparable to the fastest sea kayaks, and a
testament to the efficiency of Hobie’s patented Mirage Drive
system.
According to kayaking legend (or maybe it was a press
release) Hobie engineers were inspired to create the Mirage
Drive after watching penguins swim. A sturdy pedal-and-chain
mechanism drives a pair of plastic flippers beneath the hull,
propelling the kayak at surprising speed. The pedaling motion is
an alternating push-push, rather than the circular pedaling motion
of a bicycle. We loved the steering mechanism, a small tiller in
easy reach of the kayaker’s left hand that controls a retractable
rudder on the Revo’s stern. The steering is calibrated so that
it’s easy to steer with two fingers, yet just tight enough that you
can set a course and let go. Combined with the pedal drive, this
allows the hands-free operation that has made Hobie kayaks a
favorite of anglers and photographers.
Hobie has built a number of big kayaks around the Mirage
Drive system, using the power of pedals to move hulls that you’d
L: 13’5”; W: 28.5”; 88 LBS. WITH MIRAGE DRIVE; ROTOMOLDED POLYETHYLENE. $2,349; HOBIECAT.COM
70 | canoekayak.com
AARON BLACK-SCHMIDT
really not want to paddle. The Revo is the exception. It performs
just fine under paddle power, though we seldom felt the need.
For the most part, we kept the included two-piece paddle
snapped into the convenient holder on the right side of the hull,
using it only for close-quarters maneuvering and very shallow
water. The Mirage Drive has no reverse, and the flippers start to
touch bottom in water less than about 12 inches deep.
A large front hatch allows access to a roomy bow
compartment, though on-water access is somewhat inhibited
by the pedal mechanism. Hinged 8-inch hatches are located
between the kayaker’s knees and behind the spacious tankwell.
These are secured with a twisting T-grip that’s easy to open and
close, even with frozen fingers. Two molded fishing rod holders
are positioned just behind the seat.
Though the Revolution has been around since 2006, Hobie
engineers have continued to improve the design. Our favorite
update is the luxurious Vantage CT seat—pardon, seating
system—which boasts breathable mesh construction and multiple
adjustments for height (high, medium, low), recline angle and
even seat tension. It’s also removable, so you’ll always have
the comfiest seat in camp. Starting last year, Hobie also added
new roller bearings to the Mirage Drive, claiming a 10 percent
reduction in pedaling effort compared to earlier models.
So what’s not to love about this pedal-powered missile?
Despite it’s relatively trim lines, the Revo is no lightweight—the
hull alone tips the scales at 70 lbs., and the seat, paddle and drive
brings the total to 88 lbs. The $2,349 price reflects the materials
and production cost of the pedal drive, and includes a serviceable
paddle. It’s a lot to pay, but if you like hands-free kayaking and easy
speed, you might just be ready for the Revolution. –Jeff Moag
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 UNFILTERED

J O N TU R K
EXPEDITIONER, AUTHOR, SEEKER

INTERVIEW BY JEFF MOAG

Trained as an organic chemist, Jon Turk realized early on that he wasn’t cut out for the buttoned-down life of a research scientist. So he put his PhD in a drawer and
worked whatever odd jobs gave him the flexibility to pursue his passion for the outdoors. He framed houses, worked on fishing boats, raised chickens and, eventu-
ally wrote 27 college science textbooks, a fortunate gig that afforded him the luxury of New York wages without having to live anywhere near a city. Turk has also
written five books rooted in his lifelong pursuit of what he calls Deep Wild. That quest has been the impetus for a number of groundbreaking expeditions, including a
two-year kayak crossing of the North Pacific, a healing journey among the Koryak people of Siberia, and a 104-day circumnavigation of Ellesmere Island by ski and
kayak. The latter, completed in 2011 when Turk was 66 and his expedition partner Erik Boomer was 26, is a central theme in his thoughtful new memoir, Crocodiles
and Ice (Oolichan Books), which makes a strong case for living your passion, whatever it may be.

At a very early age, as early as I can remember,
I would just disappear into the forest. There
was a deep peace when I went into the forest. I found
something there that’s indescribable.
I just love the feeling of remoteness and that
feeling can come in many ways. It can be way
out there in the middle of Ellesmere, it can be in the
middle of a Class V rapid, it can be climbing a big wall
where you just have to suck it in and go, ‘Okay, I can’t
screw up.’ I love that feeling.
You can go into the desert and fast for 40 days and
seek it, but I’m not that kind of guy. I really like having fun.
I’m kind of a preacher about this, but when you
get into the fancy house you have to realize that it’s so
expensive it’s going to cost you your freedom.
I literally had my car packed and my canoe on top
and walked out of my PhD exam. We floated the
Mackenzie River and then carried over and went down the
Yukon. I never worked one day as a chemist.
You have things happen that you could
interpret statistically and mathematically as
a probability function, or could interpret as some
kind of deep communication with the cosmos.
Why does the polar bear not eat you?
Your brain and the polar bear’s brain, basically
98 percent of the DNA is the same, and there
becomes this communication and the polar bear
decides not to eat you and you decide not to shoot
the polar bear. That’s really cool.

We had a day on Ellesmere where we’re
sleeping and all of a sudden there’s a polar bear’s
head inside the tent. Why didn’t that polar bear eat
us?
My PhD work was trying to envision how
electrons behave. You can’t see an electron; no
one has seen or ever will see an electron, but the
behavior of these electrons affects everything—how
you cook an egg or how you build a rocket ship,
everything.
I had instrument time from 10 p.m. until dawn
and I’d be down in the basement by myself,
vaporizing molecules and blasting them with electrons
and trying through my instrumentation to visualize
something no one will ever see. I had a lot of fun
down there.
So now you get into adventuring at a high
level and there’s the physical element. You’re
pushing yourself into this world that you can’t see, a
dimension that you can’t really pin down.
My first big trip was around Cape Horn. Nobody
would do it with me and I wasn’t really experienced enough
to attempt it, but I did. I smashed up right at the end of
Tierra del Fuego and walked back to civilization and went
back when I was 50 and repeated the journey and actually
got around Cape Horn.
Extreme athletes talk about this ‘second person’—
some other spirit that gives them a power and focus
beyond the ordinary. But as soon as you say, ‘spirit,’ people
think about fairies and goblins, and I don’t want to get into
fairies and goblins.
Nobody had to die that day. Two of us skied and lived.
Will and Chris, my wife, took more aggressive lines and
they died.
Sometimes I blame Chris for skiing the boldest line
and sometimes I blame myself for being there at all.
A lot of my friends are dead and a lot of the dead
ones were better than I ever was. There’s no magic,
only luck that kept me alive.
You know, I’m 70 or something now and I
look at things other people have an incredible,
deep passion for. For us it’s skiing powder or
boating or expeditions. For some people, it’s music
or gardening. I don’t want someone to think that
our way is the only right way.
I’d like to have a lot of faith in the human
race that we’re going to pull this out, but
there’s a lot going against us right now. We know
technically how to solve our problems, but we’re
not solving them. In spades, we’re not doing it.
The big problems of climate change and
overpopulation and over-extraction of
resources are kind of scary, but the theme of
Crocodiles and Ice is that there are ways
to live a sustainable life and maintain some kind
of sanity.
It’s okay to ignore 99 percent of what
culture tells you and live your passion. I think
that by itself is an important contribution.

72 | canoekayak.com
 Go to canoekayak.com to read an excerpt from
Crocodiles and Ice, and to read a transcript of Turk’s
conversation with Erik Boomer about life, adventure
and their Ellesmere circumnavigation.

73PHOTO : E R IK B O O ME R CANOEKAYAK.COM | 73
 TAKEOUT
DIRTBAG
DIARIES
THE
DIRTY
DEVIL
B Y W E S T H O W L A N D
Most of the time, the Dirty Devil River is a muddy
trickle meandering through 80 miles of slickrock
desert to its confluence with the Colorado. A se-
ries of thunderstorms over the past few days had
brought that trickle to life, prompting me to fire off
messages to every desert boater I could think of.
Kristen replied in minutes: “I’m in.”
A veteran Grand Canyon backpacker, Kristen
is happiest in the quiet slickrock of canyon country.
She had just under 96 hours to plan, pack, drive to
Utah, paddle 80 miles, and get home to Arizona. We
hastily pulled together what random bags of back-
A Cessna 206 makes a fine shuttle rig.
74 | canoekayak.com
sand bars changed and shifted before our
eyes. Channels that looked deep enough
when we entered them filled with sand be-
fore we could travel their length. Attempting
to step out of our boats and walk to deeper
water, we sank up to our waists in loose
sand.
Night fell as we left the broad flat valley
and entered the canyon. Rain began falling
as we crawled into the tent, and didn’t relent
until morning. Then, as if it were Christmas,
or a powder day, the 800 cfs we’d floated
the prior afternoon had more than doubled
overnight. We hurried to get on the water
before it dropped.
The canyon walls grew until we were
Photos: West Howland surrounded by sandstone streaked with
desert varnish. Eventually we stopped won-
dering where we were, or how far we had
packing-type food we had on hand, and came to the come, and just floated, reveling in the splendor rising
conclusion that we wouldn’t starve. Our distinct lack up from the water around us. We paddled until the
of maps, however, was slightly worrying. So was the sun disappeared below the rim.
water level. The Devil was dropping, fast. First light revealed that our lovely, wide, muddy riv-
We left the next morning before dawn, pursued er had shrunk overnight. We were indeed floating on
by lines of thunderstorms. As we drove, my roommate an ephemeral desert stream. The ace in our pocket
Chris reached out to a pilot friend who agreed to fly chirped to life as a request for our location pinged off
us from the airstrip at Hite to Hanksville for $300. of satellites to Chris, back in Flagstaff. He responded
We hustled our gear into the Cessna and flew the with the efficiency of a seasoned expedition coordi-
serpentine canyon at rim level, 3,000 feet above the nator: “5 miles above Poison Spring. Water level 800
water. and dropping. Weather clear. 30 Miles to confluence.”
A short hike from the airstrip brought us to the Time to move.
river, where we inflated our packrafts and donned dry- Twisting, turning, winding, dislodging any sense of
suits under the bemused stares of a highway crew. direction we thought we had, our muddy brown ribbon
Starting downstream on 800 cfs, it quickly became pulled us onward. Down into the recently deposited
clear that the Dirty Devil was unlike any other river we mud banks of Lake Powell, the river’s pace slowed
had ever floated. Water acts predictably, following the to a near-standstill. Eventually we left the river and
rules of gravity and physics. This wasn’t water. commenced a 4 mile mud-slog-turned-bushwhack-
Described by John Wesley Powell as a “dirty devil turned-slickrock hike depositing us at the truck
of a river,” the stream was so thick with sediment that bathed in moonlight, sweaty, sandy, and exhausted.
The Devil’s muddy water carried us through a slickrock maze.
SEE MORE PHOTOS AND READ AN EXTENDED ACCOUNT OF WEST AND KRISTEN’S ADVENTURE ON CANOEKAYAK.COM
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