[Paddlewise] Three addicts get a winter fix

The month of December was the snowiest on record in these parts;
accompanied by several subzero nights and cold days. It seemed like
everything had frozen up solid by the middle of the month. Early in
January, we had a little thaw -- nothing to write home about, but in the
back of my mind I hoped that the thaw might get enough water moving to make
a quick kayaking trip to our winter fallback position, a channel on the
Coldwater Chain that's always one of the last places around here to freeze
and one of the first places to thaw. Our discovery of this channel had kept
us kayaking through two winters, but a call to our friend at Dink's Channel
Stop, the convenience store along the channel, brought the report that it,
too, was frozen solid. With that dismal news, it looked as if my string of
kayaking at least once a month that had lasted over 34 straight months was
going to come to an end.

So, I was a little surprised on Saturday afternoon to get a call from my
friend Tom: "You want to go kayaking?" I figured he'd hit the lotto and we
would be off to Florida -- but no, he'd discovered open water in a stream
between two lakes not far from where he lives. It's a nice paddle in the
warmer months, but we'd both figured it would be frozen solid like
everything else.

"Darn right," I said. "Call Glenn and give him the news." Glenn, we knew,
had really been suffering from the lack of liquid water to paddle on. We
set a time for the morning; I shut off the computer, grabbed the snow
shovel, and headed up to the storage shed where I keep the Heron and the
trailer for the winter. I soon discovered my suspicion was right; they
hadn't done too good a job of plowing the place out, and there was two feet
of snow up against the overhead door. I was glad I had a nice Saturday
afternoon to clean it up, rather than having to do it in a rush in the
morning. The snow was that crusty, compacted type that would have been just
perfect for building an igloo, but I wasn't up to messing around with it,
and besides, didn't think the lady that owns the storage building would
think too much of an igloo in the middle of the driveway.

With the kayak accessible, I went back and started grabbing paddling gear.
This was an easy job, since it had been in a big pile in the shop. In fact,
one of my projects for the weekend had been to go through that pile of
gear, sort it out, do some maintenance, sand out and varnish some scratches
on a couple of paddles and other such chores that are best relegated to the
dead of winter when there isn't anything useful to do. 

It was a long evening and a longer night. I was up earlier than I intended,
but got going, anyway. It had been five weeks since I'd been out, and I'd
been expecting at least that much more. I guess Glenn had been getting to
me -- I was getting itchy. But, it was good to sit in Tom's kitchen,
drinking coffee and catching up while waiting for Glenn to show up. He made
it a few minutes later, his kayak trailer loaded with a brand new
sit-on-top that he'd been itching to try out. We headed into town for
breakfast, then on out to the stream Tom had found.

We knew, of course, that the regular put-in for that stream was all ice,
and Tom, in his excitement over open water, hadn't scouted out an
alternate. But, he figured we could use the ramp at a bait and tackle shop
near one end of the open water section, right after the stream flows under
three bridges -- an interstate highway, and two frontage roads. We got
there to find that the ramp was blocked by a sheet of ice. Even if we could
have gotten to it, we'd have had to drag the boats through two to three
feet of snow for a couple hundred yards. A little further up the stream,
but more accessible, the stream flowed past a high dock. "We could go
there," Glenn said. 

I shook my head. I'm not good at dock launches and this was a high dock,
anyway. "You guys can if you want," I told them. "I'm not screwing around
with a dock launch in water this cold."

"Let's try the other side," Tom suggested, and we got back in our vans. It
looked a little better on the far side of the interstate -- at the bottom
of a steep hill, there was the hint of a little beach, when viewed from the
bridge, but it was steep enough that getting the boats up and down the hill
in all that snow was a daunting proposition, especially since we hadn't
thought to bring climbing ropes and such, this being a kayaking expedition,
after all. Besides, the road was pretty narrow to be leaving the vehicles.
We knew there was a place we knew we ought to be able to get in at a
campground along the river, but it would be a long haul through deep snow
to get there, and my snowshoes were in the rafters of the garage at home.
It looked pretty bleak.

A short ways up the road, a lane ran off to a group of cottages along the
river bank. "Let's head up there and see if there's something," Glenn
suggested. It was about our last hope. The lane wasn't long, and it was
narrow. I was starting to hope that Glenn was pretty good at backing up his
trailer, since it appeared we'd have to back out to the road, when at the
end of the road a wider spot appeared, a cul-de-sac where there were a
couple of houses, but big enough to turn around in. As we started to turn
around, we noticed a woman trying to get a pickup out of her garage. A huge
pile of snow had slid off the garage roof into the driveway, and she was
having difficulty trying to bust through it. We were getting out to help
give her a shove when she managed to get it free. Since we had the lane
blocked, Tom explained what we were doing and asked if we could maybe put
our kayaks in behind her garage. The thought about it for a moment, and
said it was OK with her if we managed to park our vehicles so we didn't
block the driveway.

I wished I'd brought my boots. All I had were my kayaking shoes, although
with neoprene socks, but that really isn't what you'd like to use to
posthole through two feet of snow. We did it anyway. From the top of the
bank behind the garage, it looked pretty bleak -- an ice shelf sat out in
the river. There was a small open area next to the bank, though, that
didn't look too deep. We worked down to the bottom of the bank, and here
was this perfect little narrow snow-free area for launching. We stared at
the ice shelf for a minute -- it wasn't real thick, and we thought maybe we
could do something with it -- maybe shove the Heron out, and use its
cruiser bow as a battering ram. And, Tom had brought his ice spud -- maybe
that would help. We'd gone to all this trouble, we didn't want to quit when
we were this close to success.

So, we went and got the boats, managed to park the vehicles so others could
get by, got on our gear, and postholed back out to the stream, dragging the
boats over the snow. As it worked out, Glenn got onto the water first, and
reached out with his paddle, to see how solid the ice shelf was. It was
pretty hard, but . . . "Keep pushing, Glenn," I called. "You're moving it!"
Sure enough, the pressure of the paddle was just at the right spot to get
enough lever action to break off a chunk of the shelf 20 feet long,
clearing our final obstacle to the river!

In a couple minutes, I was in the Heron and on the water. After sitting in
the storage shed for a couple months and out in the open air all morning,
the seat was uncomfortably cold and my snowcovered kayak shoes could have
been warmer. It felt good to be out on the water in the Heron, though. I
haven't used it much since I got the fiberglass boat, but the Heron is the
primary winter boat since it'll fit in the storage shed and the Nimbus
won't. Glenn and I just sat out in the middle of the slowly moving creek,
while I fiddled with the adjustment of his rudder pedals.

Once Tom was on the water, we decided to start out by going upstream. We
had no idea of how far we could get, but it didn't matter -- we knew we had
a quarter mile or so of open water downstream, and we were on the water at
last. In January. In a January that we'd thought we were closed out.

Although the sky was overcast, it was awfully pretty out there in the
marsh, with the dried marsh grasses poking up through the snow, a few
flakes of snow in the air. The depths of winter had closed things down, but
still, where there was open water, there were things to see. A mallard
skittered around the bend raising cain, and we followed. At other times
when I've gotten into the boat after a long layoff, it had seemed pretty
tippy, but now it seemed solid -- if slow, after having gotten used to the
lightness of the Telkwa. Of course, not having done any serious kayaking in
two months may have had something to do with that, too.

Around the bend, we were surprised to see the water still open, the stream
even wider than it had been where we launched, and not much of a current
going through. We were just as happy -- we'd agreed this was not a day to
push hard or do anything rash. Bend followed bend; at each one, we expected
to see the ice close the river ahead of us, and each time we were surprised
to see it open to the next bend. At one bend, we surprised a flock of
mallards that blasted off into the air, squawking and protesting our
unexpected presence. Finally, one last bend and we could see the small lake
that fed the stream, and see the ice that would mark the limits of our
journey. We'd come upstream a good quarter mile or more, maybe as much as
half a mile, farther than we'd expected.

Turning around was easy, and we headed downstream, just taking it easy.
Fifty yards below our put-in, we found the big chunk of ice that Glenn had
broken out, giving us a hint of how fast the stream was flowing -- not very
fast. We headed on downstream, through the huge culvert that took us under
the frontage road. Places like that bring out the kid in you. I let fly
with the opening bars of "Amazing Grace," sung slow, loud and soulful, just
to hear the echoes. A mallard that had been sleeping near the end of the
culvert didn't appreciate it and blasted off into the skyline far above.
Then, through the longer culvert under the interstate, to the accompaniment
of more echoing songs, and finally under the concrete bridge under the
other frontage road. After another couple hundred yards, we reached the ice
front on the downstream end. We'd seen some ice fishermen trying for
bluegill when we'd been there earlier, and were expecting some goofy looks
when we came by, but apparently the bluegill had moved and the fishermen
had followed. We did get an adequately goofy look from a kid in a passing
car, though. Yes, kid, we know we're crazy.

We turned back and went back upstream, through the tubes and past the sheet
of floating ice. At the launch site, we decided to do another lap -- after
all, we'd gone to all the trouble, and everything was going fine. Once
again, we paddled through the bends to the ice front at the upstream lake
looking across the snowcovered ice to the snowed-up regular launch site,
then back downstream, under the highway again, noting that the ice
fishermen hadn't come back, and finally back to the put-in. Having given
the shore a good look along the way, we realized that we'd stumbled upon
the only really decent place to put the boats in along the entire chunk of
open water. "Well, we got January on the books," Tom said.

In a few minutes more, we had the boats back up by the road and were
loading them on the trailers again. "It sure was nice of that lady to let
us use her place," Glenn said. "If we'd brought a snow shovel, I'd say,
let's do her a favor. We might want to come here again."

"Guess what," I told him. "I brought a snow shovel." I hadn't taken it out
of the van from having to open the way to the storage shed the day before.
With three of us changing off working at it, we took maybe fifteen minutes
to clear out both of her garage doors. Thanks, lady, whoever you are. Three
addicts got a fix that'll get them a long way toward spring, if and when it
ever comes.

---------------------

This is one of the more than a dozen new articles on my website:

http://www2.dmci.net/users/wesboyd/kayak.htm

-- Wes


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