international
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.
Made in Mexico
12.07.2011 // 0 Comments
I’ve been in Mexico 13 days and haven’t been tired, hungover, sore, or nervous on the way to the river. Today I am all of those things as our driver, Israel, nonchalantly guides our rented SUV through the clogged main artery of the bustling Veracruz capital of Jalapa. Finally, it feels like a kayaking trip. I find the words in Spanish to ask Israel to stop for a lechero at the edge of the big city, a last-chance caffeine break before we enter the sparsely populated countryside where the Rio Alseseca and its narrow bedrock slides await.
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.
Cast your vote
11.16.2011 // 1 Comment
National Geographic just released its annual Adventurer of the Year nominees. It was no surprise that two of paddling’s hardest, and most ambitious expeditions from the last year accounted for two of the 10 nominated adventures. Cast your vote for Jon Turk and Erik Boomer’s bold, 104-day, 1,495-statute-mile circumnavigation of Ellesmere Island, or Sanu Babu Sunuwar and Lakpa Tsheri Sherpa’s tandem paragliding flight off Mount Everest and ensuing paddle down the Ganges River to the Indian Ocean.
“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.
The Ultimate Source to Sea
11.14.2011 // 1 Comment
It’s not easy to set a record on the roof of the world—especially one that involves paddling. Everest has been climbed more than 3,000 times since the first ascent 58 years ago, so you’re going to have to do something very, very different if you want a record on the world’s tallest peak. It’s been skied down, climbed by a blind man, an amputee, a 13-year-old and a 76-year-old.
En Route: Deep in the Black Forest
11.04.2011 // 2 Comments
The rain turns to sleet as we gain elevation; ahead and across the valley, clear accumulation shows the depravity of an early October snowstorm in Germany’s Black Forest. Sweat still rising from furrowed brows, we cross the snow line, coughing into stiff hands and stretching sore muscles. We get back into our positions, the canoe between us, and continue our portage.
Running Brazil’s Rio Mambucaba
10.11.2011 // 0 Comments
I knew I had forgotten something when coming to Brazil. I realized what it was—to learn Portuguese—when I tried to ask how long the drive would be. Thanks to my book, Beginning Portuguese, which I’d glanced at on the plane, I could at least ask our driver where the laundromat was and count to 999 as his Land Rover bounced up the long, insanely bumpy driveway to his farm, Fazenda Bonito.
Bros. Seiler in Pucon
06.15.2011 // 0 Comments
Recently from TheDemshitz — “The Seiler Brothers GoPro footy from Pucon [Chile] 2010. Rivers Palguin Nevado and Puesco in that order. Enjoy.”
Video: Ben Stookesberry talks ‘Kadoma’
06.14.2011 // 1 Comment
‘I would do anything in my power to change what happened… but I would never change that 7 weeks with Hendri’
Alone Around Ireland
05.25.2011 // 0 Comments
Just as Brit Jeff Allen and Irish paddler Harry Whelan were completing a rocket-fast 25-day circumnavigation of Ireland in early May, a solo sea kayaker from Northern Ireland was getting started on her own attempt to paddle around the Emerald Isle’s 1,000-mile perimeter. Elaine “Shooter” Alexander, a British Canoe Union instructor and former world-class surf kayaker…
Record Breaker: 25 Days ‘Round Ireland
05.17.2011 // 0 Comments
Just when they thought they couldn’t push it any harder, Britain’s Jeff Allen and Irish paddler Harry Whelan dug deep, emptied the tanks and crushed the 20-year-old speed record for sea kayaking around Ireland. They completed the circumnavigation in 25 days; the previous record was 33 days.
Boomer, Turk Off to Ellesmere Island
05.12.2011 // 0 Comments
Erik Boomer and Jon Turk officially departed for their 100-something day attempt to circumnavigate Ellesmere Island on May 2, from Ottawa, Canada. As Boomer describes it, they will be linking together various puddle-jumping flights, including a stop-over on Baffin Island, until they reach the real “put-in.”
Pluck of the Irish
04.15.2011 // 0 Comments
Among the many challenges awaiting sea kayakers Jeff Allen and Harry Whelan in their attempt to set a new speed record for circumnavigating Ireland, two stand out: The fickle weather and unforgiving cliffs of the Emerald Isle’s west coast, and the temptation of pints of Guinness in countless coastal pubs. Next week, Allen, a Brit, and Ireland-native Whelan will set off to try to break the 33-day circumnavigation record set in 1990 by Mick O’Meara, Dermot Blount, Brian Fanning and Karl Heery.
Bashkaus Expedition Signs Book of Legends
04.10.2011 // 0 Comments
One of this video’s opening narrations says it all: “Day one, we found a dead body… It’s the second one we’ve found.” That sums up the intensity of Siberia’s Lower Bashkaus Gorge high in the Altai Mountains just north of Mongoia, tackled last summer by Sickline Adidas Team members…
Paddler Completes South Island in NZ Circumnavigation Attempt
04.04.2011 // 0 Comments
By Tim Mutrie Tim Taylor of Tauranga, New Zealand just completed paddling around New Zealand’s South Island, and now he’s about halfway through completing his kayak circumnavigation of the North Island, too. Taylor, a 23-year-old tractor driver and former winemaker, is attempting to complete the first continuous solo kayak circumnavigation of New Zealand—the north and [...]
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