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A Day in the Waves: Part 2

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The second half of my big wave kayak adventure on Lake Superior:

The rising seas sent waves crashing into sea caves, mortar rounds of spray flying out from the cliffs.

A large stone archway guarded the entrance to a recess in the cliffs. I watched the waves slam against the sides, thought about what it would be like to rag-doll against the walls. I wouldn’t try to go through this one.

The Manitou River fell from the cliffs in a frothing yellow fury. The upper falls slammed into the side of the canyon, whereupon the onslaught redirected into a second, even more spectacular drop. There was a zone of smooth water in front of the falls, where the river flow was strong enough to beat back the lake, Further, the water boiled. Lake swells rose higher yet as they crashed and exploded into the face of the current. Birch leaves whirled in the agitation, flashing in and out of the darkness like strange fish.

It was an extremely tempting, if terrifying, place to try and surf a kayak.

The way to do it, was to aim for an eddy behind a sunken gravel bar. It was a spot that was slightly smaller than a modest kitchen, where the water was almost completely calm, a demilitarized zone between the warring lake and river.

I struggled to set up a good approach, wrestling with the river continually trying to push me back and the waves breaking at my stern. I half-surfed a couple waves, stopping to avoid getting thrown sideways or pushed down into the river. After a long struggle, I caught a wave that pushed me over the gravel bar and into the calm place.

It was one of the strangest places I have ever sat in a kayak.

Looking straight up, I could see 100-foot walls, curved amphitheater-like above my head. The falls couldn’t have been more than two kayak-lengths aways. And then there were the rollers coming in, crashing through the arch to the left.

I finally had the luxury of giving the view my complete attention, with no worries about the next breaking wave.

After I punched the kayak back through the breakers, Dave and I continued along the cliffs.

Mercifully, the profile of the North Shore has many projecting points, which create shelter zones where there will be calm water.

Fenstad’s Resort had one such protective point. We took a tranquil beach landing.

We were making great time down the shore with the waves pushing us, and even with the gathering seas, neither of us wanted to hurry.

“The point of a journey is not to arrive,” Dave said.

I nodded. The bigger waves? Let them come! Hopefully, they wouldn’t.

A guy with a mirrorless camera walked up to us to chat. There was some couple he’d heard about, who got swept out into the lake by an offshore wind and couldn’t get back. They died of hypothermia. We told him, we were experienced kayakers, guides actually, and that we’d paddled in these kind of conditions before. That seemed good enough for him, and we ended up talking about wildlife sightings in the area.

It turns out that there was a bear cub in a tree nearby, no mom. She had probably been shot by hunters. leaving the little guy to fend for itself this winter. The cub was probably a yearling, the guy thought, not a good prospect for survival.

The bear had been stuffing itself with apples from the resort’s trees, but the guy left it a fish he had caught so the growing youngster could experience some other sections on the food pyramid.

When the three of us went to see the bear, we found it looking down at us from a tall spruce. After more people went to look at him, he climbed higher and to the other side of the trunk. Then and again, he would peep out to look at us.

There were bright red apples hanging off of one tree, greens on another. They were delicious.

Trout swirled about in two streams nearby. The water levels had come down, leaving them trapped in pools.

Dave thought he might snatch one and leave it for the bear cub.. The guide and I watched skeptically as he waded in, but when he started throwing stones in strategic places, he managed to herd them into one place. Dave might have tried to swipe one out of the water, then thought better of it.

The waves kept building, but weren’t quite at the point where we wouldn’t fool around.

We deliberately took on a couple surf spots above the ledges, usually, opting to get near the downwind side of the ledge to make it easier to steer out of there if we encountered something too big to handle.

At one point, I’d thought I’d missed a wave, only to have the lake drop out from under me. Suddenly, I was surfing sideways, paddle jammed in the water. The stabilizing maneuver, known as the high brace, reminds me of 19th century whaling. I jab the paddle blade at the oncoming beast, lean the boat in and stick it. A Melville quote would have been appropriate here.

“From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee!”

This particular breaker took me on a 30-foot sleigh ride before I swung out of the break zone.

At another point, we were kayaking near shore, when a huge wave suddenly reared up next to me.

“I’d hate to be you right now,” Dave called.

But the wave ended up grabbing him too.

We stuck our paddles and rode, until the wave threw us up on a cobble beach. Dave might have been pissed because his fiberglass kayak had just taken a beating, but he laughed.

“That. Was. Awesome!”

The waves kept building.

After another hour on the water, we didn’t fool around much.

Every now and then, a 10-footer would rear up by our kayaks. I would try to angle my boat halfway into them, leaving room to brace and avoid getting flipped over backwards. Most terrifying of all were those monster waves, that broke at the top (but didn’t roll completely over, thank God.) These waves made their own break zones. I found that these half-breakers were technically easier to ride out than the breakers on shore or those that went over a shallow ledge. They just happened to be scarier than hell. If these massive waves started rolling over all the way, I couldn’t imagine how I could stay upright paddling through them.

The northeasterly swells kept me looking over my left shoulder constantly, with little time to appreciate some of the rock formations on shore.

This was a shame because we were going past Tettegouche State Park, home to a massive sea cave near Shovel Point.

I glanced at the formation with some regret. There was no way we would kayak into the cave now with this crazy surf.

Instead, we focused on getting around the cliffs at Shovel Point. Spectators at the rail got to see us taking on the swells and reflector waves.

The waves beyond the point were smaller, if still powerful, giving Dave and I some long-distance surfs.

Then we decided to take a shortcut through a small boulder garden. This turned out to be a mistake for me, when a wave crashed early and threw my boat against a rock. I steered away from the obstacle, only to get thrown up against yet another. I was almost out of danger when a third wave, hit me and flipped the front of my boat on top of a boulder.

Shit.

I tried to flip, back over, but the boulder got in the way of my paddle. Next, I tried pushing off the boulder itself, but I had to take my hand out from the pogies to do this. Just as I was ready to right the kayak, a mother of a wave came and blasted me, ejecting me out of the boat through the spray skirt.

Getting the boat emptied out on the rocks took at least 10 minutes. Submersion in the cold water brought up an urgent need to pee, which I did as discretely as possible (not very discretely) in front of the bystanders watching from the cliffs.

Dave came around and helped me get the last of the water out of the filled-up boat and get me back in. We were determined to get off the lake via the Baptism River, which meant that we would have to surf waves in against the current. The river shot out in an offset angle from between a cobble bar and a rock cliff.

The big-ass waves were crashing everywhere now. I let Dave go into the river first, slowly side-surfing one wave at a time in order to hit the sweet spot. When he got into the slack water, I brought my boat to bear.

The stern lifted on the crest of a huge breaker. As I plunged the paddle in, the wave shot the boat to a wild left and bounced its nose off the  cliff.  I back paddled on the right.

Here came the second breaker.

Again, I stabbed the paddle into my assailant. This time, the shaft snapped.

Of course, the wave pushed me back into the cliff, and I had to shove off with my left arm.

I held both ends of the busted paddle and paddled them like mad for the river mouth. Fighting the current this way gave me just enough momentum to stay ahead of the break zone, but it was like running top speed up a tilted treadmill. I wasn’t going any further forward and eventually, I knew the current would feed the boat back to the carnage.

Dave had already beached his kayak and jumped in the belly-deep current. He grabbed the loop on the nose of my kayak and got me the rest of the way home. Saved my ass.

We threw our kayaks up on the beach, where there was a corridor of rock piles and some inexplicably well-dressed people milling about. Some of them started asking to Dave about our journey. I stumbled into the shelter of some ledges where I could be out of the wind.

It was around this time that I realized that I was dumb to keep flailing at the water with two ends of the broken paddle. If I had just taken one end and paddled with it canoe-style I probably would have gotten enough momentum to go up current and get onto the beach on my own.

Some of the well dressed contingent came over to spread the cheer.

“We saw you almost die,”

“We didn’t almost die,” Dave said.

“Well, can you please move your boats, we’re going to have a ceremony here.”

A wedding!

And if we had come in ten minutes later, well, both of us would have absolutely surfed right into the marriage ceremony. What? You didn’t get the RSVP? Sorry guys, but these boats are coming in.

I can understand why many of those on shore, might have seen this all go down and thought, ‘Wow. What a couple of idiots to be out in that.’ Maybe some readers feel that way.

I do take issue with people who make rote judgements of how dangerous/safe, something I am doing is is based on a cursory, emotional assessment.

I’ve had people approach me after I get off the water with this automatically superior attitude. They don’t necessarily say, “You’re dumb.” Usually, they relate some passive-aggressive story about somebody who died. Not that it matters that the other guy had no life jacket, no wetsuit and several drinks in the tank. Never mind that I practice kayak rescues, practice rolling, practice bracing and practice in big waves. I constantly ask myself if I am allowing my enthusiasm to cloud judgement.

I’ve also been that guy on the beach. I’ve told a group in a canoe that the waves were going to be much bigger when they got around the point and tried to discourage them from going out on the 40-degree waters in jeans and cotton shirts.

Still, these others, just by knowing that someone has died on the lake, have gained this incredible perspective that I must lack. Thank you, Concerned Bystander, for your considered opinion.

While I don’t always make great decisions, I do resent others lumping me with the yahoos who have no idea what they are doing.

Dave and I used some judgement when we looked back out at the lake and saw mostly big breakers going out to Palisade Head. We had four miles of lake to cover to get back to my car. Could we make it? I thought we could do it if we had to.

But maybe we shouldn’t. Constant bracing had taken a toll on Dave’s back. I was feeling tightness as well. The lake showed every indication that the waves would continue to build.

Dave took out a cell phone and called a friend to pick us up. We hauled the boats up the long steps away from the lake.

The waves stayed rolling in my head for two nights in a row. I felt that I was moving with the swells, bracing into waves, surfing them. Some kind of unconscious learning was happening. Surely, the neurons were making new connections, preparing me for the next trip on the big water.

Here was the trip I will remember years from now: two kayaks, beneath the cliffs, through the waves, staying up.

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A Day In The Waves: Part 1

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Lake Superior’s waves crash against the rocks in a red sunrise at Black Beach, near Silver Bay, Minnesota

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.

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Dave in his drysuit, prepping for launch.

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?