Leland Davis discusses the virtues of balancing kayaking risk and reward, knowing when to walk and when to fire it up.

I leaned out over the edge, craning my neck to catch a glimpse of the landing zone forty feet below my perch. At full extension I could see the spray exploding outward where the rightmost portion of the flow impacted a rock, but I couldn’t make out the size or configuration of the obstacle. I resisted the urge to lean farther forward lest I tumble over the precipice and research the extent of the rock up-close at high velocity.

The view of my desired line was even more troubling. The lip of the drop was chunky, with the potential to kick my bow up. There would be no smooth roll from horizontal to vertical on this one; I would have to carefully dictate the boat angle with my body positioning. What’s more, there was a curl of water that would surely envelop me as I dropped, preventing any possibility of spotting the landing in order to set my boat angle or avoid the rock. At more than thirty feet of freefall, a flat landing could spell disaster for my spine even if I landed in deep water. I tried not to think about the two excellent boaters that I knew had broken their backs on this falls, and instead focused on what I was trying to accomplish. I had wanted to run this “Big Boy” for more than a decade.

Leland scouting Big Boy. ©Chris Stafford

My first venture back to the fabled Raven Fork in several years had been a great day so far. I was boating confidently and well, styling more than a half-dozen solid class V rapids that had pushed me – at least my mental stamina, if not my technical skills – on a few past trips. This day my heart rate was steady, my mind cool and clear. I was focused on keeping myself in a positive and relaxed frame of mind for this challenge. All of the conditions were right – my mindset, the water level, the safety crew, the weather – everything had converged to bring me to this horizon line with the perfect circumstances for success. My desire to huck was at a fever pitch; this was the moment I had been waiting for.

After watching another member of my party run the drop, I looked at the lip again for a couple of tense moments, wishing for something to materialize that would give me the confidence that I could nail the line. The more I looked, the less I liked what I saw—or more accurately, what I couldn’t see: the line. It wasn’t the height of the drop that bothered me; I’ve run plenty of taller ones. Taken by themselves, the rocks around the landing zone weren’t a huge worry either; I was confident that I could miss them. The shape of the lip was of some concern, but I felt I had enough experience to get my bow down.

The curl of water bothered me, though. It would obscure my view as I fell, meaning I would have to set my angle and miss the rock without any visual cues. It would be a leap of faith: faith in my ability to read the line, to be in the right place, and to set the correct angle over a difficult lip, all completely blind. I took all of those variables and plugged them into an equation that contained my skillset plus my desire to run the falls on one side, and on the other side the difficulty plus the possible negative outcomes from a mistake: a flat landing, rock impact—the very real possibility of a broken back. Desire was obviously running high. So were the consequences. The drop was also very heavy on the difficulty. I have a lot of skills—certainly enough to nail the line, miss the rocks, and set my boat angle. Unfortunately, I wasn’t absolutely secure in my ability to do all of those things simultaneously and blind 100% of the time. I just didn’t see the line.

The scales teetered, then tipped. I looked down at my crew who were poised below for safety and gave them the finger across the throat sign, followed quickly by the walking fingers. Today was not the day. I reluctantly shouldered my boat.

Assuming proper safety and conditions,

IF (Skills + Desire) < (Difficulty + Consequences) THEN Portage

Knowing when to run a rapid and when to walk around is one of the most difficult things to master in whitewater. Erring on the conservative side can impose false limits on where you can paddle and cause stagnation of your skills, interest, and growth as a boater. Erring in the bolder direction can cause discouragement, injury, or even death. For some, this decision-making process is part of the core of why they paddle; for others, having to frequently make this difficult choice can interfere with their fun.

In the beginning of your paddling career, you make this choice all the time, because all rivers and rapids are new to you. However, the stakes are usually fairly low, which tends to compensate for the lack of skills on the other side of the equation. Desire is generally high at this stage—you’re eager to gain the skills to get to that next river or rapid. Your ability to identify the hazards is also low, which tends to skew the equation in favor of going for it.

The more you paddle and the harder the rapids that you attempt, the more the “don’t go” side of the equation stacks up. Experience has taught you to see the dangers and know the consequences. Eventually, there’s a lot more than just your pride, your gear, and the indignity of chugging a sandy bootie beer at stake. It becomes a life and death game. Any discussion of how best to play that game should start with the question of whether this is even a game you want to play. Enter the wild-card variable—the random coefficient that makes everyone’s equation unique: fun.

Styling Mortal Kombat. ©Nick Murphy

The first question to ask yourself is, “do I derive fun or some deeper value from making life-and-death decisions on the river?” It’s perfectly OK if your answer is, “no.” Simply choose rivers that you know well, where the decisions of what to walk and what to run have already been made, or spend your exploratory days on easier, unfamiliar rivers. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, and it’s what I choose much of the time.

If that decision-making challenge is fun for you or if your passion is running new and different rivers, I suggest you also plug fun into the run/walk equation. When all else is close to equal and your mind is whipping back and forth on a seesaw between “I should walk this beast,” and “I know I can do it,” fun can be the deciding factor that pushes you one way or the other. Thinking back to my decision at Big Boy, I have to say that fun played a significant part. I could have run the rapid and would most likely have stuck the line; and if presented with the same circumstances earlier in my boating career, I probably would have tried it. In the past, walking away from a drop that I knew I could run has left me with regrets. However, on this day sticking that line felt more like work than fun, and I was content with my decision to walk away.

The good news is that Big Boy will still be there when I run the Raven Fork in the future, and one day the stars might align and the equation will work out in favor of me running it. In the meantime, I can work on adding skills to the positive side of the equation – perhaps by running some easier/smaller drops with my eyes closed to practice setting my angle blind. Perhaps next time I will have enough confidence in that part of my abilities that the line will become obvious to me, and the execution fun. I will have grown as a boater. And that’s part of the secret to progressing: when you walk away from a rapid that you have a large desire to run, think of it not as a failure to perform, but as an opportunity to identify what skills you need to gain to make a rapid not only runnable, but fun for you. We can sometimes learn more from walking away than we do from running a rapid – it’s all part of the game.

We all need a place where we go to recharge and refocus. Bonding with a River is kayaker Andria Davis’ story of how she found just such a place and what it means to her.

I started boating in the mid ‘90s on the Chattooga River, located on the border of South Carolina and Georgia. I had been into mountain biking and climbing and had recently stumbled into raft guiding. I loved how fun kayaking looked, and it didn’t take long before I started asking to borrow kayaks to join my raft guide friends for their after-work paddle.

I was immediately enamored with kayaking. I loved being down in the water and feeling every current. I started to learn to roll and went out on the river every chance I got. The kayakers that I paddled with all took play boats (creek boats were only for creeking back then, so unless you ran Overflow and the Green, you only owned a play boat) down the Chattooga, squirting every eddy line, splat wheeling every rock, and surfing every hole and wave. I was keen to learn all of these tricks and threw myself out there, playing the river. Because there was so much play to be had, these amazing paddlers never hesitated to run Bridge to Woodall (a short, easy section) with me before they headed down to the Five Falls (the class IV/V gnar) without me. Those were glorious times—hot summer days, cool water, splashing, swimming, and laughing out on the river. It was magical, and I decided that I would dedicate my life to it.

The author paddling the Chatooga. ©Leland Davis

I had been borrowing boats during this time, so my boating was all over the place. The kayaking world was between designs, and I would paddle the river one day in an RPM, the next in a Pirouette S, and the next in a 3D. I couldn’t find a boat that I really clicked with, and I remember the day it happened. I was paddling the Nantahala on a mission to play at my favorite spot, Quarry. It was the summer of 2000, and I was in a Pirouette S. As I caught the eddy at Quarry, I wiped out about 3 paddlers in short little boats. Oblivious, I was grinning ear to ear in my red Pro-tec as they all gave me dirty looks and rolled their eyes. I was definitely not cool. I saw this girl in a yellow Pyranha InaZone. She was my size. She got in the hole and ripped. It was love at first site. That was my boat. I needed to find one quick!

I soon got an InaZone (and a better helmet), and my paddling life took off. I quickly became a solid intermediate boater, paddling class IV runs like Chattooga section IV at 2.5’ and the Upper Gauley. Not long after that, I got my first creek boat, a Pyranha Micro 230, and I asked a friend to take me down the Green Narrows. My love for the steeps kicked in, and I became obsessed with class V creeking. Every time it rained, phone calls were made, jobs were quit, and my boat was loaded up heading for the hardest thing running. Soon this passion took me out on the road, searching the U.S. for all the good class V. I rapidly became scared, humbled, and exhausted. Things had become too serious all the time, and I wasn’t having fun. I began to question my motives and myself. I had become lost.

Andria paddling her beloved Pyranha InaZone play boat.

Many people get to this point in their paddling, and they quit. Usually, it really is time for them to move on—time to get a job, start a family, or find a different sport that doesn’t scare them to death. However, the deep love that I had for the river on my first seasons on the Chattooga was embedded in my soul. I couldn’t move on to something else in life without a deep sense of loss. I wasn’t going to run away with my tail between my legs. Not only was I going to have to face this fear, I was going have to unbury that love. The two went hand in hand.

For me, I had to think about what it was that ignited those first sparks. It was the feeling of being down in the water and feeling all of the currents. Just thinking about it as I write this brings waves of excitement, joy, and passion through my veins. What I needed was a home river with a spot that I could go to for recharging. I needed a place that was beautiful, secluded, and powerful, yet playful. It needed to be a deeply spiritual place that helped me remember what it’s all about. It needed to be fun but also challenging.

There are many rivers to choose from in my home of Western North Carolina, but there was one that I kept returning to. I hadn’t consciously chosen it; I just kept going back there time and again, and pretty soon this became my spot – Jaws on the Nolichucky River. It’s a rapid that has a slab of rock that creates an awesome hole – so awesome that it got the name Jaws for its ability to eat boaters. This spot has all that I need: a quiet, back road drive to clear my mind on the way there, no crowds, a spectacular canyon setting, and tons of fun play boating. To top it all off, I get to run several rapids on the way to the spot, plus squirt defined eddy lines, surf many warm-up waves, and I don’t have to run shuttle; so I can even go there by myself.

I’ve had all kinds of days at Jaws. I’ve solo surfed in the freezing cold rain with vultures circling above me, and I’ve splashed around laughing with friends on hot summer days. We’ve eaten berries from the shore before swimming through the hole for fun. Sometimes we bring a raft and a boogie board and a truckload of friends and family; and sometimes my husband Leland and I get there and it’s kinda high and stompy, and we both get worked and a little scared. It has many different moods, and I like them all. That is part of what I go to a river for: to be in tune with the natural flow of the cycles. Somehow being in that free-flowing canyon and feeling the river reminds me why I paddle. It brings me back to me. It scours out any doubts and fears that I have. It teaches me. It cleans my soul.

I know that all things, including people and spots on the river, are temporary. I enjoy this place in time when I am young and healthy enough to surf while this spot exists. Not long ago, there was a spot at the end of the Nolichucky gorge called Cowbell. It was a compression spot that drew squirt boaters from all over. Cowbell created a culture of squirt boating community, with some people getting their boats chopped especially for this spot. This was their magical place. Floods came in 2004 that rearranged the riverbed and washed away the compression. People do still go there at certain levels, but it’s just not the same. For most everyone, the spot is gone—and with it an entire culture. So I know there is danger in defining my whole boating existence in one spot. If time dictates that I need to move on, I will.

Surfing Jaws on the Nolichucky. ©Leland Davis

For many people here in Western North Carolina, the Green River Narrows is their spot. It’s a special river to me, too, and it satisfies me on a different level than Jaws. The Green is an amazing gorge, but it’s located in a very urban area. The drive there is traffic-y, and my nerves are often jangled before I even get to the river. When I get there, the parking lot is often crowded with tons of personalities. I pick up all of this different energy right before we load boats and fight traffic to the put-in. As most people know, the rapids on the Green are quite intense. I love the intensity – I love putting on my full face helmet and my elbow pads and brawling it out amongst the gradient and rocks. I am a creek boater, and I live for that combat. The Green is my yang spot, meaning that it satisfies the part of me that needs some “grrrr.” However, all of this intensity often leaves me feeling depleted. The Green leads me to a different space in myself. It is one that I like to stay in touch with, but it is not the original space. It is not the one that will keep me coming back on the soul search.

So for now, Jaws on the Nolichucky is it. So if you text me to go to the Green, and I say, “No, Jaws is running!” – now you know why. I’ve got to get to Jaws before the free-flowing river drops to a low summertime level. For now, it’s spring; the river is running powerful, clear and cold. The canyon walls jut up to meet the ominous grey sky. The buzzards are circling, and Jaws is calling.

Following in the path of writer Jack Kerouac, Rob Lyon and his buddy Steve have taken to Washington’s Ross Lake in their canoe (read Part 1 and Part 2). Now we join them high above the lake on Desolation Peak where Kerouac once spent a summer and where wind and darkness are proving the mountain aptly named.

©Robyn Minkler

“Desolation’s way up there Ray, six thousand feet or so looking in to Canada . . . thousands of miles of mountains, deer, bear, conies, hawks, trout, chipmunks.  It’ll be great for you Ray.”  – Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums

“The tower is sounding better by the minute,” Steve confessed.

“I hear that; sorry about that, Park Service.”

We turned on our headlamps and scootched out from under the tower. Lordy it was miserable getting dressed in the teeth of the blow.  We gathered up our gear fast, not even bothering to lace up our boots.

On the other side of the tower we unhooked a massive shutter and removed the plastic covering up a broken window. Steve held open the shutter while I squeezed in and barrel-rolled onto the floor.  Steve handed in our packs, which barely fit, and climbed in behind me.  Suddenly it was a lot quieter. We could still hear the hell-wind tearing it up outside like a pack of wild dogs wanting in, but the difference was day and night.

I’ll pee in my hat if I have to. I’m not climbing in and out of that window.

We stashed our gear and put on our Petzls.  I offered Steve the cot while I set my pad on the floor in a corner.  We walked around checking things out.   A huge range finder hunkered in the middle of the small room.  Steve had worked his way through engineering school as a timber cruiser and knew his way around survey gear.  He was the engineer, me the lit major.  He explained how it worked.

“Want some hot chocolate?” I said.”

“Sure.”

I dug out my JetBoil and fired up a pot of water.

“Pee bottles,” Steve said, brandishing an empty water bottle.  “Got one?”

“Yeah, I think so, I’ll pee in my hat if I have to but I’m not climbing in and out of that window to pee three times a night.”

“Three?”

“More or less.”

 ***

We sat quietly for a while, sipping our chocolate as the long day, and the long week, eventually caught up with us.  No matter the inappropriateness of being in the tower, it felt like a refuge.  We would sleep this night, after all.

“We don’t get up on mountain tops much,” I said.”

“No, more like canyons and ridge lines and beaches at the edge of nowhere.”

“Not so much to do up here, is there?”

“Good place to spot a forest fire.”

We laughed.

Steve drained his cup and set it down.  “See you in the morning, man,” Steve announced.  “I’ve got to close down shop.”

“Right.  I’m probably stay up a while; I’m kind of psyched to be here.”

“Sleep in if you want,” he said. “I’ll try not to wake you.”

©Robyn Minkler

I get up and poke around the tower.  The night feels strange and magical somehow, the chocolate hot to the lips, warm to the hands, sweet to the taste buds and warming my belly in the frosty air of our mountain top cell.  My only sadness is that I cannot see out from the tower with the shutters bolted down.  Can’t see old Hozomeen peering in the window like a vagrant bear, nor the diamond sutra stars winking resolutely overhead.  I walk around leisurely, in the moment, stopping every now and then where fresh air seeps in around a sill and push my nose into the crack . . . aaah!

My breath frosts in the chill air but I am dressed in gloves and down and thick wool socks.  I have always loved remote shelters for wayfarers, at least when they weren’t mousy and scruffed out.  But I’ve never seen one as neat and teat-like as this.

“Neat and teat,” I mutter aloud.

Before long I end up on my pad and wrestle my legs into a half-ass, half-lotus.  I slip in a pair of ear plugs, take off the headlamp and sit with my thoughts and feelings a while before I too shut down.

I am glad to have an inside look at a fire lookout. I’d told Steve earlier I’d take the job in a heart-beat, but I may have jumped the gun on that.  I recall it hadn’t turned out all that well for Jack.  I can imagine him exiled up here for a long summer season with only the conies and grouse and bears for company, missing his Yab-yum girls, his booze, his jazz clubs and his buddies, and feeling maybe a little hung out to dry.

Of the two, Gary Snyder was the wilderness man, the true nature pilgrim, manning a look-out himself on Crater Mountain a few years ahead of Jack, and the one who urged Jack to take the Desolation gig.

But in the sixty-three days he spent on the peak, Jack did not produce more than a letter to his mum, a few haiku and several journal entries.  I recall a passage where he and Snyder and Allen Ginsberg were climbing a peak in the Sierras and Ginsberg waited at the bottom, Kerouac hunkered down part way up and freaking out, while Snyder tattooed a wild jig on the tippy top, conveying, perhaps, the relative quotient of passion for wilderness in the three.

But as for creating or writing in the wild, I can relate.  Out alone for three months in BC I’d written even less, then followed that up with another long trek with the added stupidity to pack a laptop and solar panels with me in my kayak.  I buried the lot on a remote island the third day out, like Long John Silver. The wild was is not the place to go to write, it seems to me—it is too severe, too rarified, an environment.

But it was time well spent, time alone in the wild, a hefty deposit with Bank of the Soul.  At least with the kayak and a hundred miles of empty beaches there was room to roam.  I might feel like Napoleon on St. Helena up here.

A sudden blast of wind judders my train of thought.  I push my plugs in deeper, thinking no long term mountain top contracts for this old boy, but I can sure appreciate the sanctuary afforded us this one stormy night and with a small bow of the head I express my gratitude.

It is late and I feel the overwhelming need to roost up.  I lay out my bag and make a pillow of my down parka, slip on in, then remember I’d forgotten to brush my teeth again after the chocolate.   Too bad.

We sit on the steps of the cabin in the sun drinking coffee next morning, waking up, coming around.  The intense self-awareness of the night before has evaporated with the caffeine and fresh air like the dew steaming off the tower walls behind us, and the wind, blessedly, was down.

I picked a passage from Bums, one reflecting Jack’s early enchantment with the tower:  “Lo, in the morning I woke up and it was beautiful blue sunshine sky and I went out in my alpine yard and there it was, everything Japhy said it was, hundred of miles of pure snow-covered rocks and virgin lakes and high timber, and below, instead of the world, I saw a sea of marshmallow clouds flat as a roof and extending miles and miles in every direction, creaming all the valleys, on my 6600 foot pinnacle it was all far below me.  I brewed coffee on the stove and came out and warmed my mist-drenched bones in the hot sun of my little woodsteps.  I said ‘Tee tee’  to a bit furry cony and he calmly enjoyed a minute with me gazing at the sea of clouds.”

“Tee tee,” I said,

“I’m no cony.”

I got up and walked over to the window to secure the tape and plastic as best I could.

A paste of white fog covered the lake below while on the mountaintop the sun did shine.  “They have parafoils now,” Steve said, “that you can pack up a mountain.  Only thirty pounds or so.”

I was stiff and sore from yesterday’s grunt and could use a parafoil.  We would be braking going down, at least, using a different set of muscles.

We stalked around our alpine domain while we jacked up on the coffee, putting our packs together and making small discoveries around the peak.

I could imagine the tower in summer with its wing like shutter thrown up, not unlike the curved rooflines of Buddhist temples I’d visited in Korea.  Maybe Han Shan, I thought, would be the ultimate tower denizen. He could carve his poems on bare granite, a kind of rugged Grauman’s north, where instead of handprints of Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren, we have Desolation Peak haikus.  It is a life above the world, in any case, this tower life, literally and figuratively, best lived in deep communion with Mind and Void and perhaps the simple scratching of inspired wisdom on mountain bones.

We shouldered our packs and started off down the trail by mid morning.  Going down wasn’t as painful as expected, but we were grateful for cushioned canoe seats a few hours later.  We threw our packs aboard, dragged the boat to the water and got in, and Steve pushed us off.

©Robyn Minkler

We continued south that afternoon across a glassy surface, the fog all melted away and the banked timber and snowy peaks and sky, a vast blue boy sky, rendered in mirror image.  We had our legs thrown up over the gunnels and our aching backs pushed deeply into cushioned backrests.  The descent of Desolation had been uneventful, four hours up, less than half that coming down.

We passed Cat Island and I turned around for one last look at Desolation, then we passed Ponderosa and pulled into Ten Mile Island for lunch.

It was my turn to sit in the sun in the stern by the cooler doling out cold cans of beer and using the clever steering arm Steve had rigged up.  I fired up the little motor, then idled it down.  I picked up my rod and unhooked the fly from the hook-keeper and slowly let out line.

“Dude,” I said, sensitized to what might seem like literary fawning, “can you handle one last excerpt from the K man?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You sure?  It’s the denouement to his time on the tower.”

“Spake on.”

“I like that about you, you know, you’re always patient with me, you don’t just shut me down.  Most guys would wince at this point.”

“I am wincing.”

We laughed.

“Alright. This when he’s finally through with the lookout gig and back in the bowels of humanity. Seattle, 1956.”

I dug a scruffed up copy of Desolation Angels out of the side pocket of my pack, found the passage, and held forth: “I tell the busdriver to let me off downtown, I jump off and go klomping past City Halls and pigeons down to the general direction of the water where I know I’ll find a good clean Skid Row room with bed and hot bath down the hall — I go all the way down to First Avenue and turn left, leaving the shoppers and the Seattleites behind, and lo! Here’s all humanity hep and weird wandering on the evening sidewalk amazing me outta my eyeballs — Indian girls in slacks, with Indian boys with Tony Curtis haircuts — twisted — arm in arm — families of old Okie fame just parked their car in the lot, going down to the market for bread and meat — Drunks — The doors of bars I fly by incredible with crowded and waiting humanity, fingering drinks and looking up at the Johnny Saxton-Carmen Basilion fight on TV.”

“Back in his element, eh?”

“No doubt.  And his final words on Desolation: “No clock will tick, no man yearn, and silent will be the snow and the rocks underneath and as ever Hozomeen’ll loom and mourn without sadness evermore . . . Farewell, Desolation, thou hast seen me well … All I want is an ice cream cone.”

“Ice cream would work right about now, yes,” from the bowman.

“Copy that, maybe Tom’s got some.”

©Steve Thomsen

Motoring the lake was Samadhic, the purr of the little gas motor vibrates through the hull.  I felt it pleasantly stirring my lowest chakra.  We troll slowly back downlake that afternoon heading for Little Brown Jug again for a night of decompression before heading out in the morning.  We catch our dinner of delicious rainbow trout (and one extra to barter with Tom for that ice cream) and stow away our rods.  Within sight of the dam we notice a boat closing quickly toward us . . . a Boston Whaler coming at us like a shot.  It was a Park Ranger.

I shut down our kicker as he came about.

‘You fellows seen another canoe today?’ he called over.

Steve and I looked at each other.

“I found some gear,” the Ranger said, “paddles, sleeping bags, life jackets, floating near Cougar Island.  When I saw your boat I thought it was two other guys I’d written a back-country permit for earlier this week.  They had a permit for Cougar Island their first night in.

Seen anything?”

Author’s Note: The fate of the two canoeists is still a mystery to us. The shuttle driver reported not having shuttled them back down to Diablo and Tom knew nothing about it.  To our knowledge, no bodies have ever been found.  My guess is the swamped their boat and swam ashore, then hiked out to Highway 20 and hitched home. Cocktailin’ is a whole lot easier in the city.

When Rob Lyon and his buddy Steve take to Washington’s Ross Lake in their canoe (read part 1 here), strange and wondrous experiences await them – some expected, others not. Following in the path of writer Jack Kerouac, who spent a summer on Desolation Peak high above this North Cascades jewel, their story takes on some of the same poetry and discovery as his.

We had a little fire in our wooded camp that night and cooked the trout and the mushrooms over a little Coleman stove. We figured we were probably the only people encamped on the lake, excepting the guys back at Cougar. This late in the season most visitors kept to the comfort of the cabins at the dam. At one point we heard twigs snapping and watched a large black bear prowl past the edge of our headlamp beams. I yelled out it might find some easy pickins’ at Cougar Island. We stashed our food in a heavy metal food locker that the Park Service provided before going to bed. I kept my headlamp close at hand.

©Robyn Minkler

The next three days were like Indian summer, a last hurrah of warmth for the mountain country. We could smell it in the forest in the cones and needles. Even the off-gassing of the canoe seemed a pleasant thing.

Tom was right about the wind; it kicked up right about noon. We got on the water early each morning. The bitch with that was that our camps were all on the east side of the lake and slow to get that morning sun, which we dearly loved. Ah well, at least we’d have it at the end of the day. Hell, it could be raining.

We steadily paddled north, seeing only the odd motor boat buzzing down the center of the lake – rangers or border patrol, we figured, or someone from the resort. It was fine going early in the day. We hugged the east bank and probed deeply into the clefts in the mountain at Devil and Lightening Creeks where it was cool and still and ferns grew on weeping rock walls.

On the afternoon of the fifth day we decided to hold over a second night at a small camp at the base of the Devil’s Junction trailhead. The East Bank Trail runs right past this camp. We split up and hiked different directions along it hoping to find grouse. The trail winds through different micro ecosystems, crossing cold water creeks on planked logs or stepping stones. The woods are exquisite this time of year, the trail carpeted with yellow maple leaves the size of punctured basketballs. Then it swings toward the water, hugging a narrow ledge along the face of the mountain.

We were fortunate to flush enough ruffed grouse in the alder draws at low elevation bordering the lake to keep us in meat for several days. Hiking back to camp with a warm bird in the game vest bulging against our backs was a good feeling, and it occurred to me that it was largely from reading Hemingway and Ruark, that I first learned of of hunting, if not fishing, for game, while it was Kerouac that brought us here to this mountain lake in the first place. Goes to show how influential our literary icons are.

We hugged the east bank and probed deeply into the clefts in the mountain at Devil and Lightening Creeks where it was cool and still and ferns grew on weeping rock walls.

On the second day out of camp we took the entire day to hike up to snowline in the alpine near Devil’s Junction to hunt blues. Blue grouse live high up on the mountain, and hunting them in the snow above tree line is an extraordinary experience.

In fact, the daily drill of hunting grouse or trolling for rainbow, then hunting up mushrooms and gathering and filtering fresh water, were rituals that gave texture to our time on the lake. I was thinking that if fishing and hunting are to the acts of shooting and catching as driving to the supermarket is to picking out a plasticized piece of flesh, it is a sad comparison indeed.

Steve is a whiz with a Dutch oven, and he braised the game with olive oil, onions, garlic and a dash of Randy Waugh’s legendary (in it’s time) Chicaoji sauce (made by a friend on the island). We cut up some potatoes and threw in a can of roasted tomatoes. It was a cachatorie, really, a hunter’s stew, and Steve put the blueberries from the crops of the birds we shot in with it. Grouse are some of the finest eating wild game I know of as mild as most quail, with a subtle flavor. Compared to commercially raised chicken, bred to incite gluttony, eating wild bird and fish feels more like a sacrament.

Our sunny days were steadily marching along toward winter and we decided to take the full measure of the lake before climbing Desolation.

We paddled past Silver Creek the next morning, poking our nose across the international border near Hozomeen, trip apogee. Holding out in the middle of the lake, we had lunch and watched the BC shore-side, but detected no signs of life. Even Winnebago Flats, an RV area there, was devoid of life.

©Steve Thomsen

I was reminded of the desperate small-boat flight to freedom of Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley down a long mountain lake, crossing to safety into Switzerland, in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Ross is a popular smuggling route for pot, or was at least, until we legalized it here in Washington State. I’ve often wondered if any of the smugglers might have read that Hem piece. Years ago I pitched Outside Magazine about a story about that smuggling conduit, with me running a trash can full of BC parsley down lake in my kayak, paddling at night, in winter too, feeling what it might be like to stand in a smuggler’s shoes. That story is yet unwritten, and now I’d have to reverse the direction.

Silver Creek was a letdown. Low and almost marshy, the entire flat was like an effluvial plain created from what Silver Creek had carried out of the mountains, which was considerable silt and rock. It was boney, wet and rooty country. We nevertheless caught two trout at the mouth of the creek. We cleaned them and put them right in the fry pan. They were smaller than the fish we had caught, but this time we found a big patch of white chantrelles to go with them and had an exquisite Rafanelli zin along in support.

We paddled leisurely south the next morning, heading for the trailhead at the base of Desolation. Hugging the steep west bank, we crossed at the point opposite Boundary Bay. By this time into the trip the muscles in our backs and shoulders and arms were in game form, and we fairly flew along. We scoped Desolation as we passed by, getting out the topo and guessing on the lay of the trail up.

From the level of the lake, Desolation was an uninspiring, rounded knob of a mountain and nothing like jagged Hozomeen peering over its shoulder. Jack sketched Hozomeen in a nine word ditty: “Hozomeen, Hozomeen, the most mournful mountain I ever seen . . . .” Well, it was equally mournful camped right below the trailhead that night in a field of exposed tree stumps on a shingly, dry, mud-caked shore.

The stumps were mournful enough, but the shadows they made when the sun went down were downright weird. They flickered more like ghouls, less like wraiths, as the wind batted our flames around. We set lanterns on a couple of stumps thinking that might help, but it only exaggerated the eeriness. We grilled a trout apiece on a wire grill over the open fire, salted them up and dove in. Shut up to eat, we could hear the sounds surround.

They may have added to the eerie mood, but I was keen on them, nevertheless. They were wild and lonely sounds, a lullaby for my soul. We heard the loon again, this time voicing a crystal tremolo. A north wind soughed hard through the steep-ranged timber behind camp. A steady crash of waves swooshed up the shallow bank and had me getting up to make sure they wouldn’t bother the canoe. And the dull roar of Artic Falls across the lake waxed and waned with the whim of the wind. Only the crackle of the night fire had a friendly tone to it. We stayed pretty much quiet after dinner too; it was hard to want to talk and break the spell.

Whitecaps stretched across the lake the next morning. A bright early sun vanquished the ghosts and mournfullness of the night before to the netherworld.

“Good thing we’re not going anywhere,” I shouted over to Steve.

“Except up.”

“You bringing a tent?” I asked.

He looked around at the sky. “I’d rather not. It’s going to be a haul going up. I think it’ll stay dry. I might bring my rain fly though, just in case.”

“Shotgun?”

“Nope, not with the pack and camera and everything else. We’ve got those freeze-dried meals you know.”

“That’s right.”

We packed up and secured our things under the overturned the canoe. We took our time and were on the trail by noon.

At lower elevation, the Desolation trail reminded me of the mossy-rocked islands where I live. Mossy rocks and bouldery outcrops mixed with stands of fir and maple, the leaves winking yellow and gold. We took plenty of breaks along the 5,000 vertical foot ascent. We ate Clif Bars for lunch and made it to the campsite on the southern end of the ridge by late afternoon.

According to the topo, the cabin was a mile further north. We scouted around the knob, ate some blueberries and looked for bear, spotting a yearling in the distance. It seemed as if the wind had picked up, but nary a cloud could be seen, and we could see forever, it seemed like. The lake was a distant ribbon of steel, and an eagle gyred far, far down below where we stood, watching.

The trail to the cabin had been guttered to bedrock by snow and rain runoff, and there wasn’t much soil to begin with. It wound through a forest of twisted, fairy-tale sub-alpine fir. Bear scat was thick around the berries and I was fully expecting to bump into a bruin; we took up hooting on blind corners. Then, finally, late that afternoon we hove in sight of the cabin, perched like a pale blue hat atop the peak.

©Robyn Minkler

As we got closer, we heard a cooing sound from the tower. Suddenly two blue grouse busted out from under it. They were enormous up close and I actually thought they were eagles at first! The birds glided over the edge and down the east side of the mountain out of sight.

“I couldn’t have shot them anyway,” I said.

“Odd how they’ve habituated with the structure here, you know. They reverse the typical migration pattern, breeding lower in the valley in the spring, then the males hustle right back up into the alpine.”

“I like it that they’re up here in the mountains:” I said.

“Edgy birds, like chukar living at fourteen thousand feet in the Himalyas – I read that in Mathiesen’s The Snow Leopard.”

“Make those ruffies look like slackers.”

“Exactly.”

There wasn’t much poking around to be had on the tiny knob of a peak. We tucked in close to the lee side of the tower, out of a powerful cold wind, shucking out of our wet tees and throwing on fleece and down. To get a jump on the impending darkness, we decided to cook up our freeze-dried spaghetti immediately and button up early. This night would be one cold hombre, we figured. It was still blowing like a bellows, whipping raggedly over the brow of the peak, but we managed to measure out the water, heat it up and pour it into the bags. Then we sat on the front steps of the tower, heads tucked in down hoodies, eating out of our Mylar nose bags and watching the sun set.

We could see well out across the Canadian border and over to the Pickets in the west, all white-tipped and blue tinted in the gloaming, and south to Ruby Peak behind the dam.

“How cool would it be to live up here for a couple of months?” I said to Steve.

“It might get old,” he said.

“I bet, but I’d chance it. I’d take the job in a heartbeat.”

The mercury was dropping as fast as the sun. It was easily below freezing already, and that was out of the wind. We had scouted out the tower for a spot that might be a little sheltered and didn’t come up with much. We scuttled under the structure and set up our packs as wind breaks, but they weren’t worth a shit. We were spanked from the hike and would sleep like rocks if we had half a chance, but any dropping off we might have done was countered by cold fingers slipping into our bags as the wind rose to a shriek, whistling through the guy lines and rattling the shutters, and it was obvious we should have taken shelter in the campground.

After about ten minutes I called over to Steve.

“You awake?”

“You kidding?”

I laughed.

“I am FREEZING over here.”

It was quiet for a minute.

“What do you think?” I said.

“I think we fucked up.”

Episode 6 of the Wizard’s Eye series takes us to the Pacific Coast of Mexico where Tyler Bradt and his crew have at last set sail on their epic, potentially crazy attempt to circumnavigate the globe in a 44-foot sailboat while cramming in as much high-octane action sports adventure as possible.  But how far will they get before something goes wrong? That’s a question only the boat can answer. View other Wizard’s Eye episodes here. 

When Rob Lyon and his buddy Steve take to Washington’s Ross Lake in their canoe, strange and wondrous experiences await them – some expected, others not. Following in the path of writer Jack Kerouac, who spent a summer on Desolation Peak high above this North Cascades jewel, their story takes on some of the same poetry and discovery as his.

©Robyn Minkler

It was late autumn in the Northwest. I’d taken the red eye ferry from the San Juan Islands to rendezvous with Steve Thomsen, long time adventure partner and photographer, in the parking lot of the Airport Shuttler in Burlington. A quick schlep of swag from my rig to his and we were tooling north up the Skagit River Valley on Highway 20 heading for Ross Lake, a glacier-fed alpine reservoir in Washington’s North Cascades. When Jack Kerouac traveled north to take a gig above the lake on top of Desolation Peak in the fifties, his trip in sounded about like this:

Now I was really in mountain country, he wrote in The Dharma Bums. The fellows who picked me up were loggers, uranium prospectors, farmers, they drove me through the final big town of Skagit Valley, Sedro Wooley, a farming market town, and then out as the road got narrower and more curved among cliffs and the Skagit River which we’d crossed on 99 as a dreaming belly river with meadows on both sides, was now a pure torrent of melted snow.

Steve and I had checked out of our routines for a week-long canoe trek in the heart and soul of the North Cascades wilds, and we planned to hike up Desolation and have a look at the legendary tower.

We crossed the bridge over Diablo Lake and pulled into Colonial Creek campground. The place was deserted except for an overloaded canoe and two guys about to launch it at the boat ramp.

One of them, a small, hatchet-faced man with close-set eyes and a scruffy red beard, was sitting in the stern holding a martini glass. His buddy was bigger and kind of fat, with a receding hairline and a broad, blank face. He was ready to push the boat into the water.

We walked down the ramp and asked them where they were heading.

“Ross Lake,” the little guy answered. “We’re going to rough it in the wild.”

He pulled out a slip of paper from his pocket, waved it and read: “Cougar Island. October 10th. Back Country permit.”

He looked at his buddy like we weren’t even in the picture.“A cute little island all to ourselves, Bill; it sounds so romantic. The clerk at the Ranger Station said it was divine. And no bears.”

“Bears swim, you know,” Steve said. “We’ve seen them crossing the lake.”

“Well shoot,” the little guy said with faint dismay, then a quick, toy smile. “Well, Bill will just have to patrol the perimeter to shoo them away, then. Won’t you Bill?”

“Good luck with that, “ I said. “Maybe we’ll see you up lake, though.”

The guy in the stern held up his glass and trilled a toast: “To adventure!” His buddy pushed the boat into the water as he lipped his glass, sloshing it down his shirt. The big fella was smiling then, I noticed.

Steve and I walked back up the ramp to the rig, looked at each other a moment and laughed.

“Laurel and Hardy,” Steve said, snorting.

Sure, I thought, but feeling a darker vibe, more like Steinbeck’s Lenny and George.

 ***

Finally we were on the water ourselves. We paddled out across Diablo Lake, a smaller reservoir just below Ross Dam, into a cool-aired, shadowed cleft in the mountain. Sheer rock walls towered left and right before we reached the landing at the dam. We unloaded and staged our boat and gear while awaiting the shuttle around the dam to Ross Lake.

Riding on the wooden bed of the open flatbed shuttle truck, our canoe bounced unmercifully until I took out a pad and slipped it under the hull. We had the truck to ourselves driving the 600-vertical-foot switchbacks up through thick-ranged fir and boulders the size of cars, to Ross.

I leaned out over the rail to ask the driver if he’d hauled the two canoeists up earlier.

“Couple drunks?” he shouted back through the open cab window.

“One, at least.”

‘’Yup, heading for Cougar. They’ll need a little luck to make it, I’m thinking.”

 ***

The name “Little Brown Jug” was burned into a wooden plank above the door. It was a small, rustic cabin with a kitchen and a bunk room, floating on a raft of ancient cedar logs. Tom Barnett, old friend and owner of this unique floating resort, had offered us a room for the night.

©Steve Thomsen

The evening chilled up quickly and clouds moved in with rain. The wind was picking up. We figured the canoeists were safe at Cougar Island by then. We stoked the stove so hot that the sides glowed orange and the cabin rocked from the hammering waves.

While Steve hunched over the fly tying vise wrapping up some big sexy soft hackles that Tom was keen on, I prowled around the floating dock, chatting up the few fishing neighbors on the float with us and taking in the mountain air. Suddenly it was dusk and I stood transfixed at the sight of white-capped peaks glowing a soft lavender in the fading light and mirrored across the surface of Ross Lake. Man, it was great to be in the mountains again!

It did not get cold enough to snow that night, but reared back and poured at about two in the morning instead. I woke up to a timpani of hail on the metal roof and sheets of water and ice pellets funneling into the barrel of aluminum cans outside my window. I scuttled out naked and dragged the can back under the eave, wondering how the martini adventurers were making out. Back in bed, I didn’t wake again until dawn.

A low sun cleared the ridgeline when I stepped out the door. Tendrils of mist lifted off the surface of the lake like wraiths from the grave. We brewed some coffee and prowled around putting the canoe to rights and packing the few things we’d taken out. It was a big canoe and full up with our stuff, but considering we were geared up to camp, fish, hunt, photograph and backpack, there was no getting around the pile.

We walked down to the office and said good-bye to Tom. I mentioned we were thinking of climbing Desolation. He told us he’d been up just a few days earlier, rescuing a couple in an early blizzard.

“Watch out for those winds, you know,” he called out as we paddled passed the office. “They’ll kick up like a cranky mule in the afternoon with this high pressure settling in.”

 ***

There was no sign of weather on the horizon as we paddled north, but it wouldn’t take long for a storm to catch us by surprise. The entire horizon was jagged with white peaks and ridge lines. But the glory of the day was heady and I let out a yip.

The smell of mountain air was wine for the soul, and the surface of the lake mirrored the dark-firred banks. The red and gold of sumac glinted where avalanche had razed the slope, and high up on the flank of Little Jack we could see patches of red.

“Check it out.” I pointed. “Blueberries.”

Blue grouse liked the berries and we liked the grouse; pan-fried fowl would make a nice addition to a diet of fresh trout. My shotgun was behind me in its case, but you didn’t just run off up the mountain.

We passed through the narrow channel in the log booms and rounded Green Point. Not much later we could see Cougar Island in the distance and a stream of black smoke spiraling up from the top.

“Looks like our friends are home,” Steve said. “Want to stop in and say hi?”

“I don’t know why I would.”

He laughed.

“Might figure into a story sometime.”

I snorted in reply.

 ***

Hiking up from the floating dock on the north shore, we found their camp on the top, and what a wretched scene it was. The small man was laying in the tent, half in and half outside in the mud, with the tent collapsed on top of him. His buddy looked as sullen as ever, tending a fire of smoking green wood and tin cans.

Man, did we feel out of place.

“Should have called first, eh?” I said.

The big dude just looked at me.

“We just thought we’d stop in and say hey,” I said. “Looks like that storm spanked you pretty good. You guys need anything?”

“No thanks.”

“Weather’s on the im-prove at least. Well, maybe we’ll see you up lake.”

“I doubt it.”

The scene was too tawdry for pity. We made short work of social and hiked back down to the boat.

We paddled north under blue sky sucking up fresh lake air, mountain air, fir- and lichen-dosed air, and we hung our souls out to breathe. We were silent for a good half an hour.

We closed on Roland point, on the north side of which was our camp, but we veered west toward the Big Beaver Valley instead. We could just make out the mouth of the creek where it debouched into the lake.

The spunky Beaver cascaded from just below the suspension bridge on the trail for a hundred feet down into the lake. Peering closely into the roiled water we could see fish everywhere! But it was closed at the mouth and we had to hike upstream a ways to fish.

It was close and dank and cold hiking up alongside the Beaver. We couldn’t get to the water easily because of the brush and deadfall, and the bank was steep and muddy and no good to fish. We talked about the time we’d floated it in kick boats, the bitch of portaging the giant log jams with our fins on, and the thrill of catching one huge trout after another on big drys as we floated along in single file taking turns with the fish. Steve had been along on that trip, along with Ken Morrish and Tom. I will never forget that float. But the Beaver was just not happening on foot, and we hung a U after only a mile and hiked back down to the lake.

Near the canoe we found the fixins’ to go with some pan-fried trout (which still needed catching). We collected a dozen prime Matsutake mushrooms, poking their caps up through the duff. We carried them in our hats and they smelled fragrantly of almonds. We flushed a ruffed grouse foraging on alder catkins in sight of the lake, but had left our shotguns in the boat.

“Good omen, at least.” Steve said.

“It would have gone real good with these mushrooms though.”

“So will those trout.”

”Well let’s go catch them.”

And we did.

 ***

As we paddled out of Beaver Bay and across the lake, I caught sight of Desolation Peak bumping the northern horizon. It was getting late, so we fired up the little folding Evinrude. About a mile out we killed it and tossed out our lines. With my rod tucked under my leg I warmed up my arm muscles and found my rhythm.

We got in synch and were fairly flying along when Steve called out, “Whoa Chief! Our flies are hoppin!”

We slowed the pace, and our flies slipped back under the surface. The only sounds were the yodel of a distant loon and the swish of paddle blades.

©Robyn Minkler

Then my rod bent double and a bolt of silver arced out of the lake! We brought the boat around and I played it in steadily, giving and taking line, but leaning on it whenever it rested, finally bringing it to the net.

It was beautiful big rainbow trout! Silver sided and dark, moss backed with a pink swoosh down the side! The lake was lousy with big fish these days.

“Nice, “ Steve said. “One more.”

Moments later I heard Steve call out: “Fish on!”

This one stayed deep and dogged around under the boat for a while. Steve’d been running a light leader that he’d forgotten to swap out from another trip and couldn’t lean hard on the fish.

“Dolly,” Steve said.

“Yup.”

After a long stubborn fight we brought a second large fish to net. It was another beautiful fish but it was a Dolly Varden alright and illegal to keep.

As we trolled off the flank of Roland Point within sight of our camp at McMillan’s, Steve hooked up again. Another fine bow, it leaped three times across the darkened, metallic surface of the lake before he finally swung it head first into the net.

We would feast this night.

I dug out a couple of beers, cracked the seals and handed one back.

“To predators,” I offered, leaning back with my can.

“Roger that,” Steve replied, stretching forward with his.

Read Paddling in Kerouac’s Path: Part 2 here.

After months of work preparing to sail across the Pacific, the 44-foot sailboat Wizard’s Eye finally left port on April 10, but a faulty steering component has led her back to land. Here, captain Tyler Bradt, a kayak stunt man turned world explorer, takes a moment to meditate on trials passed and those to come.

Usually when I think of myself perched on the edge of the world, I am looking out on a watery horizon line that seems ridiculously high. So high that while sitting on the river in a kayak it looks as if the planet plummets away and the drop to come could be two thousand feet tall if it is twenty. These are the moments that I love, and my desire to safely put my body into seemingly ludicrous places has made those experiences commonplace in my life.

Today I once again feel as if I am perched on the edge of the world, but instead of looking out on tall mountains and blue skies, I sit looking out at a long, skinny, perfectly horizontal horizon line over the Pacific Ocean. I know that on the other side of that long, skinny horizon line only more await…

I’m sitting on the tip of Baja, which juts into the Pacific in one last dramatic statement of land. It’s the land of giants – rock pillars reaching hundreds of feet into the sky, flecked with sea spray from the Pacific Ocean lapping up their sides in a continuous futile pursuit to reach their tops. On one side sits the Pacific in all its glory, and on the other side the human race is engaged in a frenzied competition to stack as many drinking establishments beside the bay as possible. The only thing that stands in-between the people and the Pacific are those rocks and one small community of sea lions which fitfully protest the continuous flow of booze cruises coming in from Cabo, a place we have managed to summarize in one word: Babylon.

On one side sits the Pacific in all its glory, and on the other side the human race is engaged in a frenzied competition to stack as many drinking establishments beside the bay as possible.

It’s an interesting place to be, and to be somewhat stranded here is more interesting yet. Our course should have thrown us well clear of the edge of the world at this point, but instead we sit in a haze of jet skis, only loosely operated by their inebriated drivers, ripping along at such tremendous speeds that sometimes when I hear them coming I brace myself, wondering what kind of impact a five-hundred-pound, 40 MPH projectile running headlong into 40,000 pounds of floating steel might create. Luckily we’ve yet to find out.

In a matter of days, and after a few transfers of numbers between accounts, the last piece of the puzzle will arrive from the States: a new Kobelt 7050 2” diameter balanced hydraulic steering cylinder with a 12” stroke. If you asked me years ago what I would finally spend the rest of my worldly money and current life savings on, I probably wouldn’t have said that. Lucky for us, this trip has been a lesson in non-attachment with an emphasis on being present, and now the idea of sailing around the world with minimal resources doesn’t only sound possible, it actually sounds like a pretty damn good idea.

On Friday morning, we will say goodbye to that small community of sea lions and jutting rock spires and quietly drop off the edge of one world and into the next until our floating life capsule reaches the other side, many degrees of latitude and one hemisphere away. A strong north westerly wind tugs the boat against its 60-pound anchor and 100-foot chain, waiting to suck us out into the Pacific Ocean and the trade winds that, we hope, will take us the rest of the way to French Polynesia where crystal clear waters and abundant surf will keep us fat and happy until it is once again time to move on.

Our loose route will take us from here to the Tuamotu Islands, onto Tahiti and Fiji, finally ending in New Zealand in October, just in time for summer. What transpires in-between now and then, and whether we realize our goal of getting to New Zealand before the next storm season, will be decided on by the gods. From here on out our job will be to listen as intently as possible to the boat beneath us and the world around us with one eye on the horizon and the other on the Wizard’s Eye herself.

We will continue to release two-week film updates from the expedition here on Souls + Water and on our vimeo page: www.vimeo.com/wizardseye

We will also be bouncing small chirps of communication off of space and back down into the digital world where we hope you’ll be interested in seeing how the expedition is going and following along: www.facebook.com/wizardseyeexpedition

Join team NRS paddler and world adventurer Tyler Bradt and his Wizard’s Eye crew as  they take stock, make final preparations and finally cast off the bow lines on their ’round-the-world adventure sports extravaganza.

View other Wizard’s Eye episodes here. 

After years of planning and months of sanding, painting, welding, wrenching and rigging, NRS paddler Tyler Bradt and his merry crew put the Wizard’s Eye in the water and get ready to sail across the Pacific. The excitement and anticipation is palpable in this fourth episode of the video series that will document the team’s five-year-long quest for the ultimate global action sports adventure.

Episode 3 of the Wizard’s Eye Expedition series tells the rag-tag story of BASE jumper and most recent Wizard’s Eye crew member Jordan Kilgore. The crew is now assembled and the boat is nearing completion for the Pacific crossing.