Here was the red sky that we’d been warned about: a hot band of mango orange coalescing above the dark waves.
It was just past 6 a.m. and Dave and I were at Black Beach loading kayaks onto his truck for the 23 mile drive up the Superior shore to Taconite Harbor. That would the launch spot. Black Beach was, hopefully, the end of our expedition. I walked down to where the waves rattled the cobbles. Amber beads of spray caught the wind, shone briefly in the evil light.
I ran back to the truck.
“Sorry, I just had to grab some pictures.”
“It’s a beautiful sunrise,” Dave said, “You got everything?”
I went back to my car and double checked. Most of the stuff I would take on the drive to Connecticut was already loaded in there. My kayak guiding season was over, and it was it was time to pay a visit back east.
“I think I’m ready,” I said.
I got in the passenger seat and we rolled out on the gravel.
When I called Dave the night before, I got his voicemail.
“Either I’m kayaking or I’m kayaking,” the message declared. That sounded about right.
Dave, who cuts a wiry figure with a stern face offset by a silver goatee, has been in his paddling drysuit most times I’ve seen him. He goes out on the lake almost every month of the year, stopping only for when the ice gets makes paddling physically impossible.
He’ll be out there with a Greenland paddle in his hands, the traditional paddle of an arctic seal hunter. Such is his enthusiasm for the Greenland paddle that he has a “Rolling With Sticks” sticker on the side of his truck. which shows a stick figure executing an Eskimo roll with a Greenland paddle.
Dave told me he knows how to do 30 different rolls in his kayak, though I’ve never had the chance to watch this.
In fact, we hadn’t done a trip together yet. With me kayak guiding for a resort, and him at the nearby outfitters, most of our water time has been with customers.
Needless to say, neither of us get to take customers out for 20-plus miles in Small Craft Advisory conditions.
This was the kind of trip we hungered for as we wrapped up guided tours for the year. This was the Guide Tour.
We wanted to need our best technical skills, lake smarts and physical strength. We wanted to end the day beaten up — not from hauling boats or loading trailers — but from testing the actual, whoop-ass fury of the world’s largest lake.
Along the way, we were going to paddle a new section of lake for both of us, stretching past Sugarloaf Cove and out to the falls on the Manitou River. The Manitou is the only major North Shore waterfall that drops straight into the lake. No convenient overlook and interpretive center parking lot here. Tall cliffs and private property keep this gem out of sight from the road. You have to paddle there.
Later, we planned to go past the sea caves at Tettegouche State Park, and then around the 200-foot cliffs of Palisade Head, which has its own tunnels.
I wondered how well I would handle playing in the big waves all day, also how I would stack up to Dave’s expertise. I hoped to show the kayak vet that I knew a few things too.
Orange light marched down the nearby trees and cliffs as the sun peaked above Gull Island at Taconite Harbor. Gull Island and its companion, Bear Island are linked by a long line of quarried stone, which creates a bulwark against the Superior’s waves. Further protection comes from a smaller ring of stones that creates an inner harbor around the small boat launch.
We put the boats down on the concrete and did a last gear check.
Crap! Where were my paddling gloves? Dave lent me some neoprene pogies — a type of glove that attaches to the paddle and you put your hands into.
There were no ships in the harbor (there rarely are these days, now that most of the Taconite ore used to make iron goes out of Silver Bay.) Once upon a time, I stopped a tour near Gull Island to avoid crossing paths with the James R. Barker. The Barker had just dropped off a coal shipment at the nearby power station.
The boat is over 800 feet long, and at least as tall as an eight-story building. It lurched, Leviathan-like out in front of our tiny kayak pod, trailing a brown line of haze from its enormous stacks.
Once upon another time, someone asked me just how much coal was onboard a moored barge. I paused in an attempt to calculate the size of the black mountains that pop up near the plant after every new delivery.
“That would be approximately one shit-ton,” I said.
Today’s wind gusts had whipped the outer harbor up with sharp little whitecaps.
The big swells came in from the northeast, cutting past Gull Island at an angle, and crashing into cliffs. Seen at a distance, these waves were slow, blue forms, squiggles on the pink horizon. Each paddle stroke brought us closer to them. Soon we began to feel the lake’s power.
Dave’s kayak appeared and disappeared beneath him between water ridges. As the waves built later in the day, Dave himself would flash in and out from sight as the walls of water crossed my vision.
We grinned wildly at each other. This was the ride we’d waited for all season.
Waves shattered up against 100-foot rock cliffs, broadcasting plumes of spray that dazzled in the orange light. The rhythm of the waves against the boats was offset by the counter-rhythm from the reflector waves bouncing back at us from the walls. Sometimes, one of the reflector waves would smack right up against one of the oncoming rollers and they would pop —their splashes flying into the air.
This dynamic environment required constant vigilance to keep the boat upright and going where it should. Body and mind had to mold to the movement of the water with fast micro-adjustments in the hips and with the paddle. I enjoy the trance-like concentration this demands. I would still feel myself bucking and rolling when I got off the water, would be going up and down the waves when I went to sleep that night.
A golden eagle (or was it an immature bald?) looked down at us from over the cliffs. We would see several eagles along the trip, more than I had seen throughout the summer.
A 20-foot rock nob jutted out from the shoreline in front of our kayaks. It was the point at Sugarloaf Cove, a beautiful piece of parkland where I had led hikes earlier in the year. I was finally able to get a look at a sea cave that I’d often wondered about, though I could never see it clearly from the land. I maneuvered through the reflector waves to beneath the lip of rock where I could see an alcove, maybe 10-feet deep beneath the overlook. I wonder how many hikers stand up there, with no idea of the enormous opening beneath their feet.
Near the alcove, there was a cool rock feature on the cliffs that sent up tall whirlwinds of mist as the waves crashed past. The water made a “shush!” like a mighty exhale.
A nearby mini cave in the rock would take a wave and fire off spray with the thud of a cannon, sending spray out 20 feet into the lake. It looked like a dragon fire.
In fact there was a kind of explosion happening. As an oncoming wave slammed into the air inside the rock hollow, it compressed it, causing the air to blow out at high pressure, blasting shreds of wave with it.
Another natural phenomenon to look for was the surf spot. The Lake Superior North Shore is chock full of underwater ledges that create shallows. A big wave rises up and curl over, as it marches past. These make for fun/dangerous spots for kayakers depending on the size of the waves and the kayaker’s experience.
I look for these surf spots for fun on most days, seeking to ride a good-sized wave in my kayak. Now, these waves were massive, and curling in much deeper water. It didn’t seem like I was looking for surf spots. They were looking for me.
Whale-sized waves crashed on the ledges around Sugarloaf Cove. Dave and I gave them wide berth. The water on the other side of the point was less intense but there were smaller, breaking waves, that carried us long-distance over the shallows near shore.
This was the first place on the trip where I got rocked.
In the semi-shelter of the point, Dave and I had let our guard down enough to swap stories of our adventures kayaking the Temperance River, including Dave’s trip down an upper section I hadn’t tried yet.
“Is that really crazy?” I asked.
“No it’s not too bad, but you definitely need to stay on your toes.”
“Hey, speaking of which…”
The wave was stacked up about six feet high, approaching from our left and getting ready to break. As it curled over, we jammed our paddles into its side so that we could lean into it and brace against.
We were immediately sideways surfing a frothy stampede of water. Though my kayak wobbled in the melee, it stayed upright. And I got a massive charge.
Unfortunately, the wave had also pushed us closer to the rocks, and in a bad place for the next wave. Dave, who was slightly further out, managed to paddle out through it while it crashed over. Not an option for me. I tried to set a decent brace, but before I got there, the wave knocked my boat over like a bath toy. Submerged in the cold water, my immediate thought was, ‘Don’t let Dave see you screw up this roll.”
I fought my blade to the surface and swept it over the water. I got high enough out of the waves to take a breath, but the roll was sloppy and I went back under.
On my second attempt, I took my time getting things right under water (even as I started to feel pressure building in my head) and swept the blade again, flicking my hips and rolling my body to the surface.
I pointed the nose of my boat into the waves and paddled hard, slicing through the next wave of breakers.
Dave congratulated me. Sure, flipping the boat over was a bit of a noob move, but the roll redeemed it. If only everything in life were that simple.
Our course took us past the canyon of the Caribou River and to a sheltered cobble beach where we took a break to eat and go agate hunting. A rough day on Lake Superior is always good for searching out these little geological wonders because it brings a fresh crop onto shore. You know the other rock hounds haven’t been over it. I’m not much of an agate picker. My best find, was a pea-sized pebble, which did have some cool alternating red and white mineral stripes. Dave, who sells agates for a side income, snapped up several, beauties the size of golf-balls.
We were making great progress down the lake, and neither of us wanted to rush the day. Nonetheless, even in the half hour that we spent out of our boats, the number of whitecaps on the lake were building.
Dave turned on his weather radio, which announced that there were 4 to 6-foot waves (Wait, I thought they were supposed to be 3 to 5-footers!) which would build to 5 to 7 footers by evening. Of course, all bets were off when it came to underwater ledges and random mutant waves that rose much higher than their brethren. The Weather Service had issued a Small Craft Advisory for the North Shore, which we already knew about.
“The Small Craft Advisory advises me to go kayaking,” Dave said.
Not far off the beach, we could see an indentation in the cliffs up ahead. This, we guessed, was where the Manitou River dropped into Lake Superior. Soon we could see brown river water that swirled with yellow leaves and flowed out into the blue swells. Could we get up to the falls without getting thrashed?