canoe
How It’s Made
01.12.2012 // 0 Comments
Have you ever wondered how a Royalex boat gets built? It’s okay if you haven’t, but you probably should. It’s pretty cool: The process involves big machinery, high temperatures, melting plastic and hydrolic molds. Some serious don’t-try-this-at-home stuff.
Cold Comforts
01.06.2012 // 1 Comment
It’s always been my policy to paddle every month of the year by sea kayak, canoe or whitewater kayak, despite the vagaries of cold, ice and snow. Here are some things I’ve learned over the years.
2011′s Top 10 Stories
12.22.2011 // 0 Comments
Google has spoken (or at least its analytics widget has). We tracked the data, looking back at the year that was, and we found the best stories on CanoeKayak.com decided by you, the reader. So here’s our Top 10 Stories of 2011, determined by number of page-views, with a few noted honorable mentions that cracked the Top 25, also listed by number of views.
En Route: Romania!
12.19.2011 // 2 Comments
We paddle through the night, guessing our direction from Orion reclining on the artificial canyon walls. Beyond the last portage in early morning, the water was salt, mussels clung to the rocks and seagulls took to the air at our approach. Beyond the breakwater, the sea pulses with the minute swell of diminishing energies. At this time of the year, titanic storms batter the coastline with 20-foot waves and driving snow. As we turn our tiny canoe north, the Black Sea extends to the horizon in glassy calm before melding with the clear, cold December sky. Fortune smiles.
En Route: Bulgaria
12.12.2011 // 0 Comments
Leaving Belgrade, we charged downstream on the Danube as the Serbian national police had given us seven days to leave the country or face imprisonment. We had made it past the gate, literally: As we crossed into Romania, we were emerging from the Iron Gates, the Portile de Fier, a gorge that stops and starts for over 100 kilometers, and in places shows 3,000-foot granite faces soaring from the water’s edge.
Down The Mississippi
12.08.2011 // 0 Comments
This past summer, California-based paddlers, Peter, Dan and Paul Bragiel, along with their filmmaker friend Tony Corella, canoed the length of the Mississippi River. It took them 61 days, and involved a lot of trial and error.
Delaware River Source to Sea
12.05.2011 // 0 Comments
Located on Delaware River shoreline in the industrial outskirts of Camden, New Jersey, my improvised site was the worst I had ever bedded down in, wedged between an oil refinery and a parking lot, directly under a freight train bridge. Life was not good where I was, 300 miles from the source, 60 miles from the sea. But with a successful run, I would have two rivers down on my quest to paddle the five longest rivers in the Northeast.
En Route: Belgrade
12.04.2011 // 1 Comment
Alexander Martin, 25, completed the first modern-day canoe expedition across America last year. This fall, Martin has been reporting from the field on his latest continent crossing — a two-man, 4,000-km journey across Europe. Martin sent in this correspondence from Belgrade, on the Danube River in central Serbia, at Kilometer 2,800.
Solo Traditions
11.28.2011 // 1 Comment
A passion for the art of solo canoeing is only one of the ways Becky Mason was influenced by her father, the late Canadian canoeing icon Bill Mason. Alone and deftly handling a cedar-ribbed, red canvas-covered canoe on a wilderness lake, Becky is a mirror image of her father. Like her dad, she’s also a gifted painter and visual artist, and a staunch environmentalist who carries on the family tradition of defending imperiled wild rivers. Her most recent creative effort shows that she’s also a skilled filmmaker, following in the footsteps of her Academy Award-nominated father.
Canoe Movie 2
11.15.2011 // 0 Comments
A little Kodak courage provided Tennessee open boaters Dooley Tombras and Matt DeVoe the extra little nudge to fire up some of the Colorado high country’s creekboating proving grounds during the recent filming of ‘Canoe Movie 2: Uncharted Waters.’ The film, premiering at Canoecopia March 9-11, also includes the pair’s first canoe descent of Lower Thompson River near Asheville, N.C.
“one of nature’s greatest and most fleeting phenomena”
11.14.2011 // 0 Comments
Do you know what a murmuration is, and have you ever witnessed such a dazzling display of avian behavior? The accompanying video shows an enormous flock of European starlings — a murmuration — swirling through the sky in a magnificent ballet that almost seems choreographed.
Children of Nature
11.11.2011 // 1 Comment
The Freemans roam the Canadian arctic, the Amazon and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area by canoe, foot and dogsled to inspire students to get outside.
Scene: Paddle Oregon
11.10.2011 // 0 Comments
Arriving to a sunset feast amidst riverside hop fields, I feel right at home. Some 130 paddlers are celebrating at the Chatoe Rogue Micro Hopyard, this night’s camp for Paddle Oregon, a five-day, 100-mile floating festival on the Willamette River.
Flood of the Century: Mississippi I
11.10.2011 // 0 Comments
As the greatest flood in nearly a century neared its apex in the second week of May, it brought a change of weather to my hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi. The typical spring southerlies gave way to an unlikely cool breeze, which blew steady from the north for five straight days.
Flood of the Century: Clark Fork River
11.09.2011 // 0 Comments
On August 28, as Tropical Storm Irene pummeled Vermont with 8 inches of rain in six hours. Ryan Mooney and I paddled Mill Brook, a Class V tributary of the Mad River that pours straight down the local ski mountain.
Flood of the Century: Mad and Winooski Rivers
11.09.2011 // 0 Comments
On August 28, as Tropical Storm Irene pummeled Vermont with 8 inches of rain in six hours. Ryan Mooney and I paddled Mill Brook, a Class V tributary of the Mad River that pours straight down the local ski mountain.
Flood of the Century: Colorado River
11.09.2011 // 0 Comments
As the greatest flood in nearly a century neared its apex in the second week of May, it brought a change of weather to my hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi. The typical spring southerlies gave way to an unlikely cool breeze, which blew steady from the north for five straight days.
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