Kayaking The Great Bear

What do you think guys, a trip to BC and the Great Bear Rain Forest?


KAYAKING THE GREAT BEAR, a Search for Wilderness from Kayaking the Great Bear on Vimeo.

The Fishing Bet

This is a great video about some friendly competition between father and son on a fishing trip. As a group of fathers, Northstar Expeditions approves!



www.loonislandoutdoors.com

The Shuttle, Explained

Most of NSE's trips have been circuit trips requiring no shuttle, except that year with the infamous bike shuttle. However, we may want to expand our repertoire so this video by Paul Mason may offer some helpful tips.

p.s. Not to brag, but I met Paul on Tuesday of this week and watched him playboat in the icy Ottawa river for a while. I also met Becky Mason and Joyce Mason this week, and stayed in the home of Joyce and the late Bill Mason (OK, so I am bragging).

Scarred For Life

(I suspect her dropping her paddle didn't make a lick of difference.)

Time Sequence Down Otter Rapids

I love this series of photos of  +Bryan Sarauer & +Jay Stark  "running" Otter Rapids on the Churchill River at the end of our 2007 trip. Photos taken by Rod on shore.

So far so good....

At this point we are doing just fine, but the trough between the waves is large enough to completely hide us.

I think Jay just wet his pants.

We might have taken on a few ounces of water here.

Floating a little lower now.

You can't see it here, but there was some valiant bracing occurring in an effort to save our sinking ship.

While Jay does the "Gunnel Grab", Bryan is still reaching for water to brace with and pulling hard on that left knee.

The gunwale can just barely be seen in this photo.

Maybe a bit of extra floatation in the canoe wouldn't hurt.

+Bryan: "You got it Jay? OK, good, I'm going to leave it in your capable hands while I swim to shore now."

All participants involved in the above survived, except for +Rob Kunz's bailer which was never seen from again. Some day we'll have to get Jay to tell the story of his epic swim at the end of the rapids.

Dreaming of Summer

It's -36°C outside (colder with the windchill considered) and time to dream of summer paddling. While sorting photos on my computer I came across this photo that Rod took on our trip in 2007. It's an awesome reminder of warmer season paddling.

Corner Rapids, Churchill River, SK. Rod Smith photo.

So, with those warm paddling thoughts in mind where should NSE head in 2013? Three of us are turning 40 this year so I think it would be a great year to take a couple extra days and do something more ambitious. I think I'm going to lobby for a fly-in trip on the Paull River (see here for the route description [trip 36] and here for a map) or maybe the Wapiskau and Reindeer Rivers (see here for route description and here for a topo/satellite map), or maybe the Sturgeon-Weir River (here is the route description for the upper S-W river [trip 14] and here is the lower S-W [trip 44], and here's the map), maybe we should just start at #1. Time to start scheduling some trip planning meetings.

Drope Lake Timelapse

This was shot on the last night of our canoe trip this fall on the Churchill River.  We were camped at Big Stanley Rapids overlooking Drope Lake in Lac La Ronge Provincial Park.

Drope Lake Time-lapse from Rob Kunz on Vimeo.

2012 Canoe/Kayak Trip Photos

2012 Canoe/Kayak Trip, a set on Flickr.

Hey folks, here are the photos from our NSE Canoe trip from September 28 - October 1, 2012. We camped on Nistowiak Lake and did day trips to Nistowiak Falls and Potter Rapids. It was a great trip with great fall weather.  Enjoy!

You can also check out the timelapse that Rob put together on the last night of the trip at it's own blog post.

Gnarly Sailing

On the recent Northstar Expeditions trip to Nistowiak Falls from Stanley Mission, we did a little downwind sailing for a few kilometers. Our sail rig was as simple as it gets: with the canoe in the centre and a kayak on each side, we held the a tarp erect with paddles to catch the wind. Sometimes hard to hold, hard to see where we were going, and with strictly downwind capability, this tarp sail was rather limited in it's efficiency. We sailed a little slower than we would have been paddling, but didn't need to paddle (that's not to say we weren't working at it).

It looks like we could learn a lot from Mr. Gnarlydog. Check out this post on the Gnarlydog News blog to see some fantastic sailing in small paddle craft. http://gnarlydognews.blogspot.ca/2012/08/video-kayak-sailing-in-bay.html

Kayaking in Some Hairy Stuff

This is way beyond NSE, but it's pretty exciting to watch. Interesting to see how they got out in the end. This is from Neptune's Rangers who are the California coastal kayak equivalent to Northstar Expeditions. (No, not really.)

Potato Gun + GoPro

Don't show this one to Rod.

Where To Go, Version 12.0

The 2012 NSE trip got pushed back a month, which is why you haven't seen the photos and trip report yet (not that that actually makes a difference). As every year, we have been asking each other

"So, where should we go this year?"

This year I'm suggesting we strap the kayaks to the roof of the van and head for Wawa and the Gales Storm Gathering. It would be pretty awesome to ride the rough water of Lake Superior. The cast of instructors (here & here) that are going to be there is pretty remarkable too (hey, if I went maybe I could add myself to the list).