Regardless of your selection, your kayak will
paddle differently when it's loaded. The boat that you love for your roadside paddling adven- tures may sit too low in the water once you add 40 pounds of overnight gear. Your favourite creek boat’s usually forgiving stern may start to grab, or even squirt, on eddy lines. The added weight will make boofs more effort, quick direc- tion changes more challenging, and technical paddling a half-grade more difficult. Your kayak's lower position in the water will exaggerate its tracking tendencies. As a result, you may be happier in a kayak with more rocker than you might normally enjoy. I typically paddle a Perception Java, but for longer, more gear- intensive multi-day expeditions, I may pull out the larger-volume Phat. For my weight of 145 pounds, I find that the Phat actually paddles better when loaded, with the extra weight and hull displacement taming its spin-on-a-dime nature and improving its hole-punching abilities. Experiment for yourself! A high back deck, with removable backband, is crucial for allowing easy access for packing gear into the stern of your kayak. Adequate space in front of your bulkhead is also important to ensure that your loaded kayak is balanced. If necessary, shift your seat forward to help adjust the trim of your kayak.
Kayaks such as the Prijon Embudo and Eskimo Salto that don't require structural pillars are certainly easier to pack gear into. Extra room tends to get filled with more stuff, so be careful—especially if you anticipate any long, arduous portages. Think twice about removing pillars to make additional room for your gear. For one expedition, I removed the stern pillar from a Pyranha Micro 240 only to realize that it served a major role in stabilizing the seat laterally. Five or six big drops later, my seat had split in two. Increase the available packing space by customizing your boat. Cut out access panels in your pillar and/or bulkhead to create storage compartments. Build a shelf under your front deck. Carve a hole in your hip pad for your Leatherman or toothbrush. Use a hole-saw to lighten the weight of your outfitting components, but again, consider structural integrity. Rig up a shoulder pad or backpack harness for long portages. Be creative.
Sleeping Gear Volume is usually the critical factor when selecting sleeping gear. You're not going to be able to bring a tent unless you are on a longer, easier trip in a big boat. You'll have to settle for
some low-volume combination of sleeping bag, mattress, and tarp or bivouac sack. The debate over down versus synthetic sleeping bags is quite simple. Down is better when cold temperatures are expected since you definitely won't be able to fit a winter-weight synthetic bag in your kayak. But remember that a wet down bag spells trouble. Research what type of campsites can be expected. Will you find open, sandy beaches or have to make do with a rocky ledge in a tight canyon? Hard-core expedition paddlers will use their paddling gear to sleep on. You'll probably appreciate the extra comfort of an ultralight sleeping pad which rolls down to the size of a football and should be easy to fit in your boat. Although I've seen it done, a closed-cell blue foamy will take up too much space. If mosquitoes or blackflies are anticipated, a bivy sack complete with mesh inner liner is your best bet. For rain protection, the bivy sack will also do the trick, but torrential downpours are definitely better spent under a lightweight tarp. The tarp is also indispensable for cooking or time spent hanging out in the rain. Quite likely, if it's a solid rain, you'll just want to keep on pad- dling. Better yet, check the extended weather forecast—if you can't postpone your trip until better weather, you may want to bring a tarp and bivy sack.
Food and Cooking Equipment Is a stove absolutely necessary, or can you get by cooking on an open fire with a single pot? For northern trips, firewood may not even be an option. If there is a source of wood, you'll probably want a fire simply for warmth or drying gear. Bring waterproof matches or a lighter, and some type of fire starter (tealight candles work well) to dry out kindling and get even the wettest of wood going.
Plan a typical backpacking-style menu of dehydrated meals, pasta or rice, instant oatmeal for breakfast and dried fruit. On shorter trips, limiting yourself to dehydrated food isn't really necessary. If you're Clay Wright, just buy six or seven Big Macs, squish them into a small Tupperware container, and you're ready to go. Organize your food into meals and/or days for longer trips. Ensure easy access to snacks and your lunch—you don't want to pull your boat apart every time you're hungry. Where possible, prep your food at home. And don't forget your water filter if water quality issues are a concern. A Nalgene bottle with filter attachment is a great combination.
Virtual Scouting
How to find your river by Keith Morrison
The fact is, there are lots of rivers out there that have yet to be paddled, and many are right on your doorstep, just off the road and through the trees. Kayaking has evolved rapidly in the past few years, and we tend to look at rivers differently than we did even five years ago. What couldn’t be run in a Prijon T-Canyon can now be run in newer, shorter creek boats. Hairy rivers that early white- water explorers of the ‘70s and ‘80s (the folks who wrote the guidebooks) passed by as boring or unrunnable may now yield some great play.
Increased access allowed by new logging roads, power lines and geological exploration cut-lines have opened a plethora of paddling opportunities. Research is key and gathering river information is the first step to any kayaking expedition. Who Knows? People love to look at whitewater, and they love to talk. Ask locals, fishermen, pilots, canoe outfitters, forestry folks, and water survey people. Take what they say with a grain of salt, however. What a non- paddler sees as an unrunnable torrent may be a class II snoozer. Try local tourism information booths. Books on the region are a great resource—try existing canoe and kayak guidebooks as well as photography books and nat- ural history journals. Read past the information provided, because often there are fat sections of whitewater lurking in the background of, say, yellow-breasted warbler photo- graphs.
Maps No matter what you hear, the next step is finding it on paper. In Canada, topographic maps come in two common scales: 1:250,000, ideal for perspective, and the more detailed 1:50,000 for trip planning and naviga- tion. Maps can be obtained from map stores and many bookstores, and on websites like
www.maptown.com. Digital maps are also an option, although many regions outside populated areas are not yet available. Topographic map symbols reveal a great deal of use- ful information for the intrepid kayak explorer, explained in the legend found on the back of the map. Rivers and lakes are illustrated in blue, while extremely narrow and low-volume rivers and creeks appear as thin blue lines and intermittent streams (spring creeks) appear as dotted blue lines. Rapids are indicated along the rivers as chevrons or hatch marks, and falls as square brackets. Contours Topographic maps show contour lines;
that is, curved lines on the map, usually brown, that join areas of equal elevation. Typically, the space between each pair of contour lines on a 1:50,000 map indicates a 20-metre change in elevation, although older maps may have 50- or 100-foot contour intervals. Check the bottom of the map to determine the contour interval. Usually, every fifth contour line is labelled with an actual elevation number. Rivers flow across contour lines of decreasing elevation. The more contour lines the river crosses in a given distance, the steeper the descent, always a good thing when looking for whitewater. When the contour lines look like they’re right on top of each other, you’ve got a
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