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Andrea's space13 August Palmers/Middle Mad - 2x4 training course After running the lower Mad tandem to get my canoeing legs dusted off, I attended a course taught by Gail Shields the May 30/31 weekend. Course was meant to teach/improve solo paddlers 2x4 stroke. All bow steering technique. The course was held at Palmers (Upper Madawaska River). First day went pretty well considering it was pretty much the first time i'd been in a boat for any significant amount of time since I broke my leg. Most of it came back to me pretty quick but it was obvious I was very rusty. The course was exactly what I needed to focus my paddling and work on technique. Weather was sunny but cool. The first day was at Palmers and we were sharing the space with about 30 boy scouts who looked absolutely miserable and freezing. I was wearing all the insulation and ww equipment I had to keep warm so I can only imagine how cold those poor, unprepared, boy scouts were and they spent most of their time in the water. We ended the day with Gail videoing our stroke and then reviewed it after dinner. Peter made a fabulous chicken almond dish in a dutch oven over the campfire - it was DELICIOUS. Shortly thereafter it rained and continued raining the rest of the night. Being pretty pooped from the day, we all headed to bed early. Some of the Boy Scout leaders came over from the paddlers Co-op to chat and told us it was supposed to snow the next day - I told them they were full of crap :) It's May for goodness sakes?! Second day, knowing that the next day there was over 130 boy scouts heading to Palmers, Gail had us drive over to MKC to run the middle Mad on the second day. On the 25 minute drive between Palmers and the Middle Mad, the temperature dropped about 5 degrees. By the time we were inflating our canoes the snow had started to fall. It continued to snow on and off for about two hours. We all froze our butts off and sang silly songs on the side of the river to keep the blood flowing. We had a great time negotiating the gates and practicing our "new" 2x4 power stroke. Being as rusty as I was, the new stroke wasn't quite working out great for me. Some of the others were picking it up a lot faster. I managed at one point to pin myself on a rock backwards and Gail had to come swimming to rescue me. I'd managed to figure out how to kneel for amounts of time but my ankle didn't like unkneeling and I was pretty much crippled for about 10 minutes every time I wanted to get out of the boat. Overall though, I learned a tonn. Gail was a fabulous instructor and I can't wait until next year to take another course with her. It was soooo great to be back in a canoe and doing what I love (despite the snow). 27 August Summer of 2008Well the summer is just about complete and I don't have many canoe stories for htis year. After breaking my leg in March, it's been a long road to recovery and I only managed to canoe for the first time last weekend. Ran the Madawaska River at Palmers Rapids. Had a blast and was so happy to be back on the river. Managed to hit my leg on a rock on shore which was exactly what the physio therapist warned me about so will have to be more careful next time.
More canoeing stories to come next year once i'm fully healed. Can't wait to run the Missinaibi! 19 July Novice Tandem course with Andrew Westwood (Jun 16-17/07)So I decided I would spend extra money and time this year to improve my white water paddling skills. The course with Andrew Westwood was offered by the club so I signed up.
It turned out to be quite a challenging weekend but I still improved my technique immensely. Watching Andrew paddle is like watching him dance on water with the fluid paddling movements and total control of the boat. Hopefully one day I'll come close to paddling that well but until then, i'll keep struggling.
Andrew worked with us a lot on reading the water, anticipating what the water would do to our boat and using various water features to help our paddling instead of working against it. The subtle changes really make the difference between fighting the water to make a ferry and gliding across the river with little effort. I think my proudest moment of the weekend was when we'd been working on using the dips in the standing waves to jet ferry the boat across the river. We'd been working on the move for a couple hours and were practicing in some really big standing waves when we actually managed to do it. What a rush!
We all learned how to work with the water and all were very surprised after the first day when none of us hurt as much as we usually do after a day of canoeing. Using the water to move the boat where we wanted to go instead of forcing the paddle to change the direction of the boat made it so much easier to paddle. I look forward to more practice of these moves.
I certainly have a lot more confidence paddling in bigger water now and probably more confidence in my river reading skills. There's always so much more to learn and so many rivers left to run. I'm looking forward to applying my new skills. Solo Canoe Course (Jun 2-3 07)Well a weekend of learning to solo boat was very successful. Once again I headed down to Palmer Rapids for a weekend of instruction. The group was fabulous with Stewart Rich and Micha Hoyt as instructors and only four participants: me, Dot Bonnefont, Eric Valk and Kenzie Rich.
We arrived Friday night with threats of rain. Just before Quadeville the rain came down in buckets and the going was slow. Eric almost hit a dear but we all made it safely. Forecast was for rain throughout the whole weekend but it turned out to be fabulous weather (maybe a little sticky but regular dumpings helped with cooling down).
Saturday morning started with a refresher on the basic strokes. Biggest difference between tandem and solo boating (other than the obvious) is that in solo boat you are both steering and providing power at the same time. Took a bit of practice to make sure the boat continued on a straight line. After lunch we moved on to practicing ferries, c-turns and s-turns. Just some small adjustments here from tandem. Principles are all the same but a lot more self coordination is required. We finished off the day by swimming the upper set. Not my most favourite activity as you end up swallowing a lot of water and wonder if you're going to drown. It's necessary as a refresher on what to do in rapids but I wouldn't call it fun. In any case, we all made it through. Even Kenzie swam it with her dad and we all relaxed for the rest of the evening. Paddler's co-op set up a huge television, satellite dish and generator for anyone who wanted to watch the hockey game but we were too exhausted. We were all in bed by 9.
Sunday again, we were out on the water early practicing strokes and ferries. We moved on to run the lower set. First time down was just getting the hang of running the rapids and catching the eddies. We stayed mostly to river right and a fairly easy line. We stopped mid-way to attempt surfing. It wasn't particularly successful for me and I ended up dumping but we got the main idea... We continued down the set and ran the big water at the end. This was a great run and I managed to do it without dumping. We now had to portage back to the top. Here's the one major problem with solo canoeing - you solo portage the canoe as well. There's no yoke to carry the 50lb dead weight either, you have to balance the saddle on your shoulder. I hope they figure out a better way to do this! We ran the set a few more times, taking different lines and eddies. I think we all definitely improved over the morning. Dot made the most improvement and gained more confidence to catch some really tricky eddies. I spent some more time in the water and had a blast.
We then stopped for lunch which turned out to be an interesting combination of whatever leftovers we could find. A couple of raccoons made a visit in the middle of the night and ate most of our breakfast and lunch. We managed to make do and were back on the water in no time. We decided to stay at the upper set for the afternoon since we didn't have as much time. THis is the biggest volume water at the site and requires some skill to get through still in the boat on the other end. It took me a while to build up the courage to do it but i knew i'd be upset at myself if I left without trying so into the boat and down the rapid I went. What a blast! I made it over the first two standing waves before I got thrown from the boat. Funnily enough, I got thrown into an eddy on the left of the rapid and I ended up sitting on a rock in the middle of the rapid while my boat continued its journey. Someone managed to procure my boat from downstream and I managed to peel myself off the rock and swim to dry land.
All in all, it was a fabulous day and weekend. I'm definitely more confident in the water and will continue to do solo boating. At least i know who to blame when i dump! 4 May Canoeing Season is upon us!Well it's almost time for another summer of canoeing extravaganza. I can't wait to get back out on the water. I've already got quite the canoeing schedule lined up. Here's what's planned so far and I'll be reporting as usual on all of my canoeing adventures.
June 2-3: Solo ww canoeing course, Palmer Rapids
June 10: Canadian Rivers Day - Ottawa River Keepers event, 20 km paddle on the Ottawa River from Victoria Island to Petrie Island
June 16-17: Novice tandem ww improvement course with Andrew Westwood, Palmer Rapids
June 20 - July 1 (dates still tbd): Canoe/hiking trip to Quebec
July 21: Lower Madawaska
July 28 - Aug. 3: Spanish River canoe trip
Aug. 10 - 12: Noire River ww trip
Woohoo! |
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