An arctic interlude

"It is, I suppose, a sort of disease - an arctic fever - and yet no microscope can discover its virus and it remains completely unknown to the savants of science. The arctic fever has no effect on the body but lives only in the mind, filling its victim with the consuming urge to wander again, and forever, through those mighty spaces where the caribou herds flow like living rivers over the roll of the tundra. It is a disease of the imagination... one of great power indeed, for it does not leave such victims as these until life itself leaves them."

Farley Mowatt
People of the Deer

It happened last Thursday

See if you can find any problems with this scenario:

Three adults in their early 20's get into a 12-foot rowboat on Star Lake, Federal Way. They row from their house to the tavern on the other side of the lake, sink a few beers, then clamber aboard the boat for their return voyage. On the way back (after 1:00am), the bow of the boat is submerged and the boat founders. All three of the occupants - none of whom was wearing a PFD - begin swimming for shore. Two of them make it, and the third's body was found by a neighbor, bumping up against the pilings under his dock the next morning. He was 23 years old.

I doubt I need to break it down too much; the mistakes should seem obvious now. And I'm not bringing this up to slam the survivors. I know they are going through enough already without me piling on.

The real lesson here is that we need to get to the point where mistakes are as obvious before they are made as they are in retrospect. Three in a boat, hours of drinking, no life vests... does this not set off bells? It's not the same thing as predicting the future, but with the right level of forethought, it seems like some futures are pretty easy to predict. For the meantime, if nothing else, at least wear the damn PFD. Prevents Frickin' Drowning.

As a friend of mine is fond of saying, "If you're going to be stupid, be smart about it."

Three weeks out

On February 18, I'll be doing a slide show at the Mountaineers Hall in Tacoma. I'll be showing images and telling tall tales from the kayaking trip I took around the island of Newfoundland back in 2000. It was an amazing adventure, three full months of paddling pleasure and pain. It ended up being the trip of a lifetime and the stories I collected there are still a source of pride, and humor.

It's a free show, no charge. The Tacoma Mountaineers do this every month as part of their "Open House." You don't have to be a member to come to the show, and you can contact the Mountaineers Sea Kayaking Committee through their web site for more information. (Or email me, whatever.)

It's going to be a real slide show with real slides, celluloid pictures instead of digital images, real colors instead of millions of ones and zeros. I don't know that this makes much of a big deal either way... for some reason it just seems cooler to me right now. (Ask me how I feel when the first projector blows a bulb and the second one won't advance. I may not be as cool then.)

Anyway, the show is scheduled for three weeks from today. As a public service and to give you time to round up some friends, I'll run a reminder every Friday until the 18th of February. Put it on your calendar and please, bring people with you. Send these reminders to your peeps, get them to turn out for the show. I would love to pack out the hall and set some kind of record.

It's a good story, you won't be disappointed.

Around the Rock; A Newfoundland Kayak Journey
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 7:00pm
Mountaineers Hall - 30th Street, Old Town Tacoma
Books will be available for purchase and signing

Like ships in a harbor

I was sorting through the gear boxes the other day, putting things where they belong.

I have a storage bin full of bags: dry bags, compression sacks, conventional stuff sacks and mesh ditties. Another bin holds the climbing equipment: helmet, biners, harness and crampons. Still others have group gear: plates and bowls, cutlery and cloth napkins, most of it items that get used on the larger summer trips to the San Juans. Sleeping bags are stuffed into large cotton bags on the top shelf, and tents and tarps have their place just below.

I like going through the gear, making sure I have what I need and that it's all in working order, that it's clean and ready to go. It's almost inevitable though, somewhere in the process, I'll start to wish I was really packing rather than just going through the motions.

It also may be that it's January. It's not that cold, but it's not that warm either. The days are getting longer, but they are still none too long. It's that dark season, that raw season, when summer seems impossibly distant and the trees are completely bare. When you start seriously thinking about moving to Costa Rica.

Winter surf

It's been a while since I've been surfing. A few days down in California earlier in the month, but not much around these parts. I had the chance to catch up with Matt and Chris just this past weekend, coworkers and friends from back in the days of Backpackers Supply. It has been too long.

It was obvious that they had been spending more time in the surf zone than I had been lately, especially that first afternoon. A wind had picked up from the west and worked with the substantial rip to make the conditions less enjoyable, even treacherous. Ninety minutes of having my butt handed to me by the steep, irregular waves was enough. I paddled in and went to the camp site and the others came in about a half-hour later.

It was an enjoyable evening, especially considering the time of year. The rain held off and the campfire was a bold one. Not too cold, but still a fresh wind off the bay, the tall trees grumbling in the dark above us. We caught up, told surf stories until bedtime.

The tide was low the next morning and there was no hurry to get out on the water. We could see from the overlook behind our campsite that the waves for that day looked to be shaping up well. Others apparently came to the same conclusion, because when we got to the lot at about 10:00am, there were six other cars ahead of us and more arriving right after we did. The surf was up and the word was out.

(That was kind of a trite line, wasn't it? "The surf was up and the word was out." Sounds a little precious.)

All that aside, the conditions were ideal. The wind of the previous afternoon had faded to nothing and the glassy swells turned to evenly spaced, distinct sets of shoulder-high rollers, long rides and choices. I would guess that by the afternoon, there were about 60 paddlers and board surfers out on the break, but it never really seemed crowded. I caught almost every wave I went for and had some sweet rides, working the 12'1" from front side to back, stalling on the face of the wave, then getting hurled shoreward on the breath of a collapsing barrel.

After three hours, I got cold. The wetsuit I was wearing was decent, but not good enough to allow a longer stay. It's hard to get the warmth back and my hands and feet were the worst; the shivering set in and I knew I was done. It was time. I caught a succession of smaller waves up to the mouth of the creek, and from there I paddled back to the van for a warm change of clothes.

It was good to be back.

The Sports page

Three years ago yesterday, I was in Nanaimo. I'd just started on my winter circumnavigation attempt of Vancouver Island (that particular trip still hasn't been done, by the by. Just saying.) I ended up staying for an extra day, maybe two, because the Packers were playing that year in the NFC Championship against the Giants and I'd found a good bar near the water where I could watch the game. (As I alluded to at the time, I am a Packer fan.)

For those of you who follow a different team or perhaps don't follow football at all, I am sorry if this retrospective is wasting your time. A little sorry. Not that much. But three years changes things: The Packers lost that game on a last-minute Brett Favre interception, which was, mercifully, Favre's last play as a Packer. I paddled back to my campsite after the game, froze most of the night, then headed out two hours before dawn the next morning.

Yesterday, the Pack won, outlasting the archrival Bears, they're going to the Superbowl, and I slept in a warm bed last night and played with Legos for an hour or so with Micah this morning. There are a lot of things that make this Monday better than that one three years back: the warm bed, the playtime with the boy.

And, of course, that Green Bay is going to the big game this time. Now, how to score some tickets...

This would be a good weekend...

I would like to go to the Atlantic Paddling Symposium, put on by Paddle Canada. This year it's happening in Glovertown, Newfoundland, which would make it even more special. I am a member of Kayak Newfoundland and Labrador, the collective voice of kayaking in Canada's coolest province, and I know how much every Newfoundland paddler has invested in this event going well.

There's a level of excitement about the whole paddling thing up there. There are so many different layers to Newfoundland. Just when you think you're getting her all figured out, there will be a new twist. An ecotourism destination? I don't think anyone ever saw that coming. Still, it all makes sense now. And it also makes sense that the people who live there, who paddle the many moods of one of the world's roughest seas, it makes sense that they should be good paddlers, and interested in getting better. Theirs is the best kayaking on the planet and I think they believe it now too.

Justify this

Water. From Fiji. Fiji water. As in Fiji, palm trees and coral, blue waves and sunshine, that remote Pacific island chain where, apparently, the water is fine.

So damn fine that they bottle it up, in tiny plastic bottles, and ship it all over the world. I saw these when I was in Texas last year, in a community where there is no curbside recycling program and where every highway is peppered with litter. Untold numbers of these one-off plastic bottles, that will end up circulating through the macrosystem and never, ever going away. Add to that sobering thought the tremendous cost in transporting this H2O from paradise to the world at large - no small figure. These bottles are petite, but their footprint is huge. To paraphrase Hunter Thompson, paraphrasing Lord Buckley, "They stomp upon the terra."

Not to single out this one breed of agua... it just struck me as being over-the-top in an industry that is already inherently unsustainable and environmentally tone-deaf. (At some point, you have to call the baby ugly, yes?) For all that could be said here - and it is a big subject - there's only one question that really jumps to my mind:

How is this OK?

Your four-week reminder

On February 18, I'll be doing a slide show at the Mountaineers Hall in Tacoma. I'll be showing images and telling tall tales from the kayaking trip I took around the island of Newfoundland back in 2000. It was an amazing adventure, three full months of paddling pleasure and pain. It ended up being the trip of a lifetime and the stories I collected there are still a source of pride, and humor.

It's a free show, no charge. The Tacoma Mountaineers do this every month as part of their "Open House." You don't have to be a member to come to the show, and you can contact the Mountaineers Sea Kayaking Committee through their web site for more information. (Or email me, whatever.)

It's going to be a real slide show with real slides, celluloid pictures instead of digital images, real colors instead of millions of ones and zeros. I don't know that this makes much of a big deal either way... for some reason it just seems cooler to me right now. (Ask me how I feel when the first projector jams and the second one won't advance. I may not be as cool then.)

Anyway, the show is scheduled for four weeks from today. As a public service and to give you time to round up some friends, I'll run a reminder every Friday until the 18th of February. Put it on your calendar and please, bring people with you. Send these reminders to your peeps, get your people to turn out. I would love to pack out the hall and set some kind of record.

It's a good story, you won't be disappointed.

Around the Rock; A Newfoundland Kayak Journey
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 7:00pm
Mountaineers Hall - 30th Street, Old Town Tacoma
Books will be available for purchase and signing

Micro-expeditions

"I would discourage, if not ban, trekking to Everest base camp and flying over the Greenland Icecap. Generally, people should stay home. Forget gaining a little knowledge about a lot and strive to learn a lot about a little."

Harvey Manning
Walking the Beach to Bellingham

Harvey's making that assertion as part of a complex and elegant theory about the differences in the traveling habits between ants and spiders. It gets complicated. In the text above, he's attempting to make a case for why, in an era of international travel and eco-adventures on seven continents, the idea of walking along the beach from Seattle to Bellingham is a different way to look at discovery. Harvey makes it a comedy, a memoir, a gaudy vaudeville story, while also managing to be a soulful and witty commentary on what is, what used to be and what may be coming next.

Thinking about explorations still undone used to always end up at the Press Party Trail for me. For years, it was on my list - this year for sure - and the years went on and I never did retrace the route of that first crew that made it across. Until a couple of years ago, when I finally did it, went from Whiskey to the Quinault in three days, three hot days. I finished with an hours-long soak in Lake Quinault, where the Press Party had first exited the forest over a hundred years before. I was on-trail the whole time, so it wasn't exploring, not in any real sense of the word. But at the same time, I have gained a first-hand view of the route the early explorers took and the Olympic Peninsula makes more sense to me now than it would have, had I not been able to make that trip.

I think that's what Harvey's talking about. The idea that you don't have to go far from home to find new regions to explore. I still think about the Olympic Grand Circle expedition that is on hold after being canceled last summer. In fact, that's where my mind ends up now when I'm pondering those trips still untaken. That's the new number one on my close-to-home list.

It took forever before I finally did the Press Party route; I hope I get to the OGC with a little more of a sense of urgency.

The Captain is back

There are a plethora of possibilities when it comes to information about the tides and currents here in Puget Sound. There's the fishing tide books ("The bigger the dot, the better the fishin'.") You can call the NOAA info number, check the newspaper or even the phone book. There's Washburn's Tables and each Sea Trails chart has current info built in. And with the internet, there're probably dozens of great options. The thing is, Puget Sound, the Straits and the San Juans are tricky places when it comes to current speeds and tide levels... you have to use something.

I use Captn. Jack's Tide and Current Almanac. Best presentation of kayaker-related navigational information you can find anywhere. It features tide levels for nine different locations in the north Sound and nine others in the south, along with a variation table that gives even more localized data. Each page is a synopsis of the day's tide info (presented in table and graph formats), sunrise/sunset times, and specific current readings for six different Puget Sound locations, places like Deception Pass and the Tacoma Narrows, where current is always an issue. It's easy to use, it's intuitive and it will make you a better paddler.

For the skinny on current info, you can't do better than Captn. Jack's Current Atlas. Unfortunately, it has been out-of-print for years now. (The new owners say that the next edition of the atlas will be out this year - but I have heard that before.) For those of you who already have the perpetual atlas, the 2011 Tables are in stock. I won't spend too much time pushing the product; after all, it is only those who use the system already who will be interested in this year's Tables. You know what I am talking about here, and you know I'm right. For the rest of you, however, buy the new Current Atlas when it comes out. Especially if you are intested in paddling the San Juans.

The Tide & Current Almanac is $17.95. The 2011 Current Tables is $12.95. Both are available from Azimuth Expeditions; you can order by email at info@azimuthexpeditions.com or by phone at (253)691-7941.

Refugio

It isn't always beautiful, isn't always perfect. The golden glow of the sunset and the smell of jasmine on the evening breeze... that isn't always how it is around here.

But it was last week. A quick dip south, couldn't stay long. I took the board almost as an afterthought: It was on the car already. Turned out I really needed it. I was never on the water for long - there were other things I had resolved to get done as well in the short time I had there - but each session had its own unique feel and resides in my memory now in its own special vault. The waves were none too big, but there were a few good rides here and there, now that I think of it.

And the best part of it all was the temperature. I don't think it ever got below 60, and the days were in the low 70's. I've been pretty cold this past month, I don't know about you, and this change felt damn good to me. It all felt tropical, and came with the water temperature to match. At least, that's how it seemed to me.

As I look outside now, into the hard, gray and icy Northwest January morning, the last session of the trip is replaying in my head. Shortly after leaving Santa Barbara last Saturday, as the sun was still climbing upward into the impossibly blue sky, I stopped for a couple hours at Refugio State Beach. Intricate little cove, perfect sandy arc of a beach. As I drove along the waterfront parking area, all the camping trips of my youth that were spent here came back to me. I can see the hot dogs on the grill, can hear the sound of children at play, and I can feel the rush of wind flying past my ears, eyes tearing up, as I careen through the gravel lanes on my 10-speed in the easy evening light. I've always loved Refugio.

It even has a decent point break here as well, on some days. (This wasn't one of them.) There were a few lazy kneecappers and small tumblers; it felt sort of like playing tag, catching short rides and dropping off the back side of the little rollers. The sunlight sparkling on the water like fireworks as I paddled out beyond the kelp, my eyes on the muted greens and browns of the foothills behind the beach. Then I would turn and look behind me, find my wave and start to paddle. If everything went right, if I'd timed it all out and I ended up catching that wave, that was pure heaven. If I did it all wrong, it was still pretty good.

Hydrotherapy. Something good before the upcoming 1,100 miles of driving.

Cali

I did surf. Have surfed. Will surf. Never mind that the waves have been small and languid. It is warm here, and the sun on the water is beautiful. Sunshine on my shoulder makes me happy, after all.

I am in SB on family matters, but I have managed to get to the beach for 2 sessions a day. I leave in the afternoon tomorrow, but I'm hoping to get one more session in before I hit the road. There is much about Santa Barbara that has been oversold, hyped. Movie stars and so on. One indiputable item that SB can hold on to, however, is the whole weather thing. It really is amazing, and I really am grateful.

I went out at Ledbetter both sessions today, little 2-footers with no punch and a low tide all day... not the best mix. But parking was free and the swells were all rounded and pleasant. Dolphins rolled just beyond the kelp, a good-sized pod. Fifteen of them, anyway. This evening, the pelicans were feeding, diving beak-first from 50 feet up, hitting the water with a king-hell splash. Other than that, pretty peaceful, really.

It is hard to believe it's January. That it is raining somewhere. That it will be all wood stoves and cinnamon toast in just a few days. This brief taste of summer has been sweet, and will soon end.

Surf's up

I'm going surfing later. Don't know exactly when, but I'm guessing about 3:30. Maybe get a twilight session in, come back to shore just as it's getting dark, warm wind blowing the stars around.

The waves are small, real small. But this afternoon? Who knows?

Upcoming

Just a calendar check, really. No wonderful stories or charming anecdotes today. Sometimes you just need to write things down next to their specific dates, just to give yourself a chance to see them happen.

Feb 18 - Slide Show @ Tacoma Mountaineers Hall Around the Rock; A Newfoundland Sea Kayak Journey
Feb 25-27 - La Push Surf Pummel
March 5-6 - Crescent Beach Surf Festival
March 12 - Great Big Sea @ the Moore Theater in Seattle
March 20 - Great Place Paddle Race in Tacoma, sponsored by the Surfrider Foundation
April 15-17 - Port Angeles Sea Kayak Symposium

There is more, I'm sure there is. But these should get you started.

Copper Creek revisited

One of the reasons I started this blog - it seems like a dozen years ago or more, but it's not - is that I wanted a place to write that would serve as an "idea well," a place where I could put down some thoughts and go back and draw from them later. It's had mixed results to this point, but there are times when it feels like it's coming around.

A month or so ago I posted an entry about a trip I'd taken to the Copper Creek Hut, part of the Tahoma Trails system. After going over it a few times and reworking it ("tweaking," the kids would call it), I had something I felt that was worth sending in to visitrainier.com. And now it sounds better, flows more easily and has a new home.

One particular harbor

Because I am interested in (you might even say "addicted to"), the Olympic Peninsula and the happenings there, I often read the online version of the local newspaper, the Peninsula Daily News. Just to keep a finger on what's happening out that way, to check the real estate market for what I hope may someday be my country estate, things like that.

An article in a recent edition caught my eye. The writer brought up the idea of specific places that have special meaning, locations to which personal attachments are formed, for whatever reason. He went on to describe a mountain near Phoenix, which is not the point, but I was struck by how automatically I grasped his premise.

Some wild places are more special than others, at least on an individual level. What is more, it is surprising how rarely it is that these are places that have universal appeal, like a National Park or some other officially designated locale. More likely, these meaningful spots are out-of-the-way and nondescript, and although they may have a great view or some other feature in common with more well-known places, they will usually be overlooked by others who pass through.

I have several of these: that certain bend in the road on West Camino Cielo that overlooks Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands, the south slope of Mount Scio with views of Memorial University, Signal Hill and the old city of St. John's. (Photo above) Then there's that little cove, that "one particular harbor," on Sucia Island in the San Juans, where, on a cold winter's night, I once built a sweat lodge on the beach - and will do so again, I swear.

As we move through nature, nature will inevitably move through us.

Wow!

At 6040 feet, Mount Wow is tied for 122nd place on the height chart for Washington mountains. Located just inside the southwest boundary of Mount Rainier National Park, the name apparently arises from the involuntary expression that climbers give out when they take in the view from the summit ridge.

It isn't a heavily visited mountain, mostly due to the lack of trails in the area. I haven't been there yet, but I believe I'd like to see it.

A River runs over it

The local paper ran a piece about a month ago that detailed the threats to the roads of Mount Rainier, and began with the following: "The greatest threat to the busiest road in Mount Rainier National Park is the mountain itself."

It was a good article and I don't want to restate the whole thing here, but the item that really jumped out at me was the fact that debris flows from repeated flooding have raised the level of the Nisqually River to the point where its streambed is now 38 feet higher than the road to Paradise, which runs right next to it.

The Park is looking at a $30 million repaving project on that particular road, along with a bunch of other road repair issues (Route 410, on the other side of the mountain, for example, is almost 12 feet below the active channel of the White River), and nobody has the first sweet clue what all these projects will end up costing by the time it's all said and done. If that day ever comes.

There's a lot of science and geomorphology in the article that I'm not sure I entirely understand, but I am left wondering about something the article didn't even mention: perhaps driving and Mount Rainier just don't mix. Maybe they are an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp or compassionate conservative. Perhaps they go together like the Minnesota Vikings and Super Bowl rings. Some things are just not meant to be.

It's just a thought.

Baidarka tales

In the waning days of 1986, I was living in Ketchikan, Alaska, in a decrepit old house on Front Street with about 27 roommates. (Ah, those carefree days of intense poverty and random all-nighters.) I remember picking up a book that was laying around and thumbing through it for a while, a picture book about the skin kayaks of George Dyson. It was a coffee table kind of book, lots of lush photographs and short prose, and it was absolutely captivating. The name of the book was Baidarka... I have a copy of my own now and I still get it out from time to time, when I'm looking for inspiration.

Another book that covers some of the same territory - albeit without the photos and with a great deal more biographical depth - is the one that I'm in the middle of re-reading right now: The Starship and the Canoe, by Kenneth Brower. It's a tale of the intertwining lives and destinies of George Dyson and his father, the genius mathematician Freeman Dyson, set largely in the wilderness of the Inside Passage.

This isn't a book review and, in any case, this is a book that has been around for 30 years or more, so reviews should not be hard to find. If that's what you're looking for. I only bring it up now because, as I turn through its pages, I am struck again by the way that kayaks - and kayaking - are presented. This is a tale of the freedom and the adventure that sea kayaking has to offer, the amazing lineage that kayaks claim and the future possibilities that await this most noble of seagoing designs. It's the kind of book I don't see enough of, and I'm not exactly sure why.

There is no talk of skills training, off-side rolls, edging technique or certification programs. ("Not that there's anything wrong with that," to quote Jerry Seinfeld.) Indeed, there's no reason why the world of The Starship and the Canoe can't be part of a continuum that includes the more recently published kayaking holy books and the relentlessly erudite micro-topics of some popular paddling texts. It just seems to be above them somehow, at least to me. It reminds me of why I love the whole concept of kayaking.

And that is reason enough to read it again, for the umpteenth time. If you haven't done so yourself, it is high time that you did.

Big blue boats

I'm not really a rafter. I've done it a couple times before, as a passenger, but this time was the first that I'd ever been the guy in charge.

Marc Mahoney was guiding the other raft and his advice to me consisted mainly of telling me that I would know what to do and, in retrospect, he was right. It wasn't that hard. It probably didn't hurt that we were on the Skagit River - the eagle section, between Marblemount and Rockport - which never really gets up much past Class 1.5. It's a fast moving river, but there's no real white water to speak of, on this particular segment anyway. I've done it several times in a canoe, and it was much like I remembered it.

It was Micah's first raft trip though, and even though it was 2 1/2 hours long and cold, he was a trooper... and actually fell asleep near the end.

The eagles were out, about 100 of them I'd guess, though I lost count pretty early in the trip. They congregate here each winter to feed on the spawned-out carcasses of the returning chum salmon that litter the river bank and gravel bars. Because of all the rain we'd been getting lately, I was concerned that there wouldn't be as many dead salmon laying around but apparently there were enough. At one turn in the river, I counted more than 35 birds, some down low on the rocks, others watching from the bare branches of the overhanging trees.

The rain held off until right at the end, and even then it was a gentle mist rather than a downpour. All-in-all, a fine raft trip. (I even got a few tips!)

Brrrr

A perfect day for a paddle!

I didn't get the exact head count, but there was a group of about 20 that made it on the water today for the second annual Polar Bear Paddle... the frigid weather undoubtedly kept some away, but for those who did brave the temps, we had a great out-and-back to Gig Harbor. If you were one of the ones who let the cold keep you off the water, you missed out. (truth is, once we got out of the shadows and into the sunlight, it was actually quite comfortable.)

And, for now at least, we can all say we've been paddling every day this year.

PS. Pretty cool photos on the Tacoma News Tribune site here. And this morning's press piece here.