One of the best things you can do to prepare for wilderness paddling trips is to go playboating, aka fooling around on local rivers in tiny canoes equipped with saddles, thigh straps and airbags. Playboating allows you to develop your skills in full protective equipment, friends standing by to rescue you if you swim, and […]
Any good campfire requires tinder, a fine and easy-to-light material that can then be used to light kindling which in turn is used to light larger pieces of wood. Good tinder can be hard to find, especially in a rain-soaked landscape where everything is soaking wet. So it’s important to know about alternative tinder options. […]
Lighting a fire with gasoline or other flammable liquids like kerosene or white gas can be incredibly dangerous since the explosive fumes extend out well past the actual liquid. This can potentially engulf you in a fireball when you try to ignite the fire. The worst case scenario occurs if you’ve previously tried to light […]
A few years ago I pulled off the highway onto a deserted logging road and pulled out an old container of bear spray. I wanted to fire it off to refamiliarise myself with the range and dispersion pattern of the capsicum spray. I checked the wind direction, removed the safety latch, and pushed down on […]
What causes a river to meander and cause a series of curving channels across the landscape?
PORTUGUESE COASTAL CAMINO OVERVIEW The Camino de Santiago is a thousand-year-old pilgrimage network all over Europe which converges on the amazing cathedral in the town of Santiago de Compostella, Spain, that is built over the supposed remains of St James the Great. The most popular version of the Camino is the Camiño francés (the ‘French […]
Canoes are universal. After all, anywhere that there is open water it’s probably useful to have an open-topped craft that can be easily loaded and unloaded, pointed at both ends so it can go forwards and backwards, and light enough to be propelled by paddles. Prior to the advent of Kevlar and fancy plastics, canoes […]
Rolling practice… It’s been 20 years since I last rolled a small whitewater canoe equipped with a saddle, thigh straps, and airbags, so I headed to the pool to practice. I can see some room for improvement, but overall it’s a skill that’s coming back quickly. I’m motivated to make my roll bombproof because I […]
In this video I chatted with Canadian explorer Adam about rain and cold weather gear for expedition canoeing… Adam normally goes super minimalist, but hypothermia is certainly something to worry about. He had hypothermia a lot while doing shoestring expeditions on a budget in his 20’s and he’s not had hypothermia since then because he […]
I recently spoke with explorer and author Adam Shoalts about the role intuitive navigation plays in the wilderness. Here’s the video of that conversation, and the summary of the main points are below the video. Enjoy! Summary of Intuitive vs GPS Based Navigation It’s obviously a huge asset if you can learn to navigate intuitively, […]
