| Confessions of an Adventure Paddling Guide |
| Written by Steve Piragis | |
Steve Piragis is a guide for Worldwide Paddling Adventures (www.WorldWidePaddlingAdventures.com) and owner with his wife Nancy of Piragis Northwoods Company in Ely, Minnesota (www.piragis.com).
Adventure is a big word. Most of the trips I lead would probably be termed “soft adventure”. My groups most of time are done paddling for the day by 4PM, showered and ready for a cocktail by five. In France we dine in old chateaus, drink rich red wines and sample terrine of pigeon and rabbit. The pigeon is a bit adventurous for most of us and the river can throw a curve at us even in Provence but basically guiding adventure for paddlers around the world is mostly fun with a little very mild adventure. There have been some moments though; moments when adventure meant an adrenaline secretion of the first magnitude. These are the moments of which history is made for a small paddling company and the guides who lead it.There was the time in Ha Long Bay Vietnam, an archipelago of a thousand islands in the South China Sea, when our mother ship returned to port without us. Oh, the captain was just going back to pick up the water heater he had forgotten so we could all take hot showers at the end of the day. He said he’d be back “soon”. Well, with 1000 islands to navigate even an experienced captain can get “a might confused” as Daniel Boone used say. As darkness fell over Ha Long we still sat in our kayaks near limestone cliffs in the company of tiny Vietnamese fishing boats, the fishing families lighting gas lanterns and preparing dinner in their floating home. A few of us started to worry and a few of us started to shiver a little not being prepared for evening in wet shorts and t shirts. Here is where a scary moment turned into a most memorable and satisfying one. With a little use of sign language, pointing to watches and exaggerated shivering the shy fisher families invited us aboard their warm canopied boats. We sat drinking strong hot tea and watched as they prepared fresh vegetables and fish in the stern under the bright light of the lantern. The hospitality we felt from those people will last a lifetime. The arrival of our wayward captain and our comparatively massive and luxurious mother ship, although a relief, was also a bit disappointing. We had our hot showers and our private cabins and a great meal of fresh seafood but we missed our new friends and the glimpse into a lifestyle so foreign. Adventure travel took on new depth that night on Ha Long. All of my travels as a canoe and kayak guide from Chile to Greenland to Vietnam and Turkey have introduced me and my clients to wonderful, gracious and generous people like our friends on Ha Long. Each one of these new friends deserves a paragraph or a chapter in the adventure log of this guide. Part II: Close encounter with arctic wildlife Despite all our efforts to bring people to natural wonders of the world and to see wildlife in abundance we have rarely had misadventures with animals. Maybe we have been just lucky or maybe we have been cautious and smart and well prepared. There is one little encounter with wildlife that did almost get too adventurous. I started dreaming about the arctic when I was a little kid. I read about Audubon’s trip to Labrador and drooled over birding trips to Churchill, Manitoba to see the tundra and the nesting shorebirds. When I got into this crazy business of guiding kayakers and canoeists I had to start planning a trip north; as far north as possible. I found out about Alexandra Fiord from my arctic explorer friend, Will Steger. A bit of an anomaly at 78 degrees north, Alexandra soaks up the summer sun and actually thaws enough by mid July to allow kayaking. There’s a wavy landing strip and a very neatly maintained Mountie cabin and research base there to greet visitors. With piles of food, Folboats and Feathercraft kayaks folded up in long bags and a general air of excitement, our group of paddlers surveyed a sea of broken pack ice rotting from our shore on July 16th when we landed. The trip went very smoothly as we rounded the end of Alexandra Fiord into Buchanan Bay and west into the long arm of Hayes Fiord. Our campsites were all interesting; great views, pleasant weather and the omnipresent evidence of the Inuit who lived here some 800 years ago. It was on the return trip when the adventure changed character. My boat was the closest to shore and the others off to my port. The water was calm and little wind and we were passing an old Greenlandic hunting camp used in the past century by Inuit. Gliding along in a well stuffed tandem Folboat with my bow man Larry perhaps daydreaming of the trip home a totally unfamiliar lifting of our kayak suddenly happened. We had hit ice before and had our bow lift a bit up in the past week of paddling but this was the whole darn kayak coming out of the water like it was about to get an oil change at Jiffy Lube. As quickly and quietly as we rose two feet up, just as suddenly we slid down to the starboard and back into the water. I managed to catch a brace and keep us upright on the downslide but what had happened? The answer soon surfaced right beside Larry on the port. It was a brown block headed walrus with whiskers and tusks and big black eyes staring at us at foot away. That secretion of adrenaline was instant and intense; fight or flight or what? Larry quite calmly asked what I thought he should do. I suggested maybe giving the beast a little shove on the forehead with the paddle and maybe not wait for him to plunge his tusks through our Hypalon skinned hull. The water here in Hayes Fiord is a chilly minus 2 degrees centigrade or very close to the freezing point of salt water. Larry’s little push on Wally the walrus sent him back down into the depths but then we had another problem. Slowly we were sinking. I felt the super cold water on my butt leaking into our hull. Apparently the walrus had a sharp barnacle on his back and our water slide down his back had ripped the hull a bit. I told Larry franticly that we’d better paddle fast to shore and like two cartoon characters we bolted for the nearest landing rock leaving a wake behind us and the walrus still chasing us. We did make it to shore and the others in our group sat stunned watching the whole scenario off shore. They bolted too and with out another walrus bump we were up on shore and surveying the 2” slit under my stern seat in the boat. Wally sat still seemed curious and he or she watched us for a good half hour from a few yards off shore. It was as dramatic as it gets for a group of middle aged paddlers from places like Vermont, New York and Minnesota. There is something about an adrenaline rush that burned that scene into our memories. These days our arctic adventures bring us to Uummannaq, Greenland down a bit south from Ellesmere and across the Kane basin where Inuit still live and hunt and mingle with a few tourists and our annual groups of paddlers. Here, on the warm side of Baffin Bay there is little pack ice but instead flocks of mountainous icebergs sail through the fiords. Walrus don’t like this area for some reason and that is fine with me. The weather here is abundantly sunny and the shear cuts of the headlands marbled with recumbent folds of gneissic rocks. The sea mammals here are bigger but friendlier. Minke and fin whales patrol the fiord system of Uummannaq and they remain curious but wearier of kayaks. Each trip by canoe or kayak, whether its in our backyard of the Boundary Waters or on some far flung continent, has it’s stories and each is a unique adventure. My goal as guide is always to be safe and always alert and always open to finding the events that leave us with the best memories. |
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