A Great Loss

Yesterday my family and I learned that we had lost one of our own. My nephew, who was only a few years younger than I and more like a brother to me, had taken his own life. Alone in a car in some back alleyway he had ended his own suffering of a pain that none of us will ever fully understand.

Canoeing Workshop

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to be able to take part in a workshop for Red Cross Canoeing instructors to refine our paddling skills and improve our teaching abilities. We were able to fly out Randy Carlson, an ACA certified instructor trainer, and his assistant Zak clear out from Minnesota. We did one day of tandem flatwater paddling, focusing on techniques for teaching the fundamentals of canoeing, then did two days on moving water (The Lower American River which was flowing at 8,000 CFS); one in tandem and one in solo boats. Thanks to a generous grant from the American River Parkway Foundation this amazing training workshop was available to all instructors in our program free of charge. I felt quite lucky to be involved!

For more information and instruction on canoeing in the Sacramento area go to redcrosscrc.org/canoeing.

Lost Coast Gloom

I am really behind on my blogging here, as I took yet another trip to the Lost Coast two and a half weeks ago and have yet to share it. Turned out to be a wet and gloomy weekend on the coast, but I'm finding as I explore this area ever year that it has many faces and all of them are quite beautiful.

Lower Colorado River Canoe Trip GPS Data

OK, I finally got around to getting the GPS coordinates off the GPS and uploaded the data onto EveryTrail. The best way to view it is to click it to go to EveryTrail, click "view map fullscreen", pause the slideshow and close the image, then zoom in on the route clicking the red dots to view the photos at that location. You'll notice the first portion from Walter's Camp to just before Draper's Cabin is not very accurate. I had forgot to start the Waypoint Tracking on my GPS. From Draper's Cabin on it's very accurate!

You can download the gpx file of the trip on EveryTrail by clicking here: http://www.everytrail.com/downloadGPX.php?trip_id=1016499.

Lower Colorado River Canoe Trip

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Lower Colorado Canoe Trip Video

Put together a video of our trip to the Lower Colorado River. See the full trip report here: http://www.alwaysjanuary.com/2011/02/lower-colorado-canoe-trip.html

Red Cross Canoeing

Aside from canoeing down the Lower Colorado river and picking up a new canoe, I've been spending a lot of time helping out to get ready for another season of teaching canoeing with the other volunteers in the Red Cross Canoeing committee. I've mentioned it a few times here, but it really is a great program of canoeing classes in Sacramento. The program has been around for over 35 years, and there are some seriously good paddlers teaching for it.

Anyways, one of the things I have been doing to help out in the program, and in promoting canoeing in the area in general, is to work on the Red Cross Canoeing website. In the past the canoeing classes were just mixed in with all the other American Red Cross courses. This year I have been working with the folks at the Capital Region Chapter to create a bit of an identity for the program. To start with we added a dedicated canoeing section for prospective students to check out. From there, a description of each class and a photo illustrating the class can be found. I'm also adding a photo gallery for pictures we have, and in the future hope to add photos submitted by students of the class and the canoeing they do after taking the class. It's coming together pretty good, and I'm hoping it will help to boost enrollment this year.

Check it out here: http://redcrosscrc.org/canoeing

Navarro Canoe

Jennifer and I have been keeping our eyes open on the local craigslist for a little bigger canoe (okay, maybe it was mainly me looking). We looked into an 18 foot Kevlar Wenonah Jensen, but I had too many questions about it that we passed on it. At the same time a friend of mine told me about a Navarro Canoe that might be coming available. I had seen a few here and there, and let me tell you they are some beautiful canoes. I started searching for more about them and found one listed, but it was in Ashland Oregon (some 4.5 hours away). Seemed too far to go, but I emailed the guy selling it anyhow to get more information about these boats that I was quickly becoming highly interested in. I exchanged a few emails with him, and long story short, he and his wife offered us a very good deal on not only a beautiful 17 foot boat, but some nice paddles, a canoe cart that's more heavy duty than my old one (see my Daddy daughter canoe trip report to see what happened to my last one), and a bunch of miscellaneous PFDs and flotation pads (we can always use extras for guests). They liked the idea of selling the canoe to us, as they too had a boy and girl and used to enjoy canoeing with them when they were younger. It was just too good of a deal to pass up.

Seven Wonders

"There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million." -Walt Streightiff

Lower Colorado Canoe Trip

This will be my second season being involved with the Red Cross Canoeing Committee here in Sacramento, and this year some of the core members decided to organize a group paddling trip down 43 miles of the Lower Colorado River starting at Walter's Camp near Blythe and finishing at Squaw Lake.

I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical about paddling the Lower Colorado in Southern California. I grew up in Riverside, which is within a couple of hours of the area, and I made it a point to avoid such places as Blythe which is the nearest town to our put-in. On top of that, it's a pretty major commitment to dedicate a whole week to a trip, not just for me, but for my wife who would be home all alone with our two young kids (7 and 3 years old). Still, I have this unrelenting hunger for adventure, and this trip promised plenty of it, so knowing that I'd owe Jennifer big time (which I'm sure I'll be reminded of for quite some time) I hopped on-board for a journey that did not disappoint in the slightest.

Sledding

It was a beautiful weekend in Northern California, so the family and I headed up to our little secret spot for sledding. It's really just a pile of rocks in a campground, but it makes for some fun quick sled rides in all directions. I took my new GoPro Hero HD camera along to see if I can get any fun clips. I'm really impressed at the video coming out of such a small camera!

Here's a video of us sledding:



And here's us making a snowman with the camera set to snap a photo every two seconds. The memory card ran out just before we finished, which is why it jumps a bit at the end, but I have the remedy for that on the way in the form of a 16GB SD card. Definitely a fun little camera!

Washington DC

I was on a business trip in the vicinity of Washington DC in early December, so I took advantage of the circumstance and make a couple quick visits into the capitol to see some of the sights. I only had a few hours one night (which was freezing quite literally!), and another couple of hours in the day before my flight back, but I tried to make the most of it.

Yosemite in November

Catching up on some old trips. For Thanksgiving this year we went down to Southern California to visit some family, but not without stopping on the way to spend a few nights at Yosemite with it covered in snow.

Winter Paddle

Here's a little video of my seven year old daughter Megan and I paddling around Willow Creek on Lake Natoma in late December. There are perks to living in California.

Sawyer Stingray Paddle

The first paddle I bought was a Bending Branches Arrow, and that was fine for starting out.  It was starting to show some wear though (some of the wood grain was splitting on the shaft) and it isn't really cut out for white water paddling, which is what I'm starting to get into.  I wanted my next paddle to be really nice (and really durable).  It was a tough choice picking a good paddle for white water, that I also wouldn't mind using on the flat waters that I frequent.  I pretty much had it narrowed down between a Mitchell Premier, which is what just about everyone I paddle with uses, or a Sawyer Stringray that I ran across on Sawyer's website.

Daddy - Daughter Canoe Camping Trip

I spent two nights last weekend canoe camping with my soon to be seven year old daughter Megan. We had a bit of a rough start, but ended up having a wonderful trip.

Lassen Volcanic National Park

Finding yourself depressed in late July as the wild flowers are gone, the heat has sunk in, and everything is turning brown?  Head on up to Lassen Volcanic National Park where Spring is just kicking into gear.

My family and I did just that, deciding to embark on our longest straight camping endeavor with the family totaling six nights.

Utica Reservoir

My wife and I had our first opportunity to get out for a few nights without the kids to get a little sanity time. We talked about everything from backpacking to staying at a B&B someplace, then the idea came up to get out far enough away from people like backpacking and yet take some of the comforts with us. This is made possible by traveling in a way that natives people have done for thousands of years. By canoe.

Desire to Create

I feel strange today. I have this desire to create, but I have no vision. I feel really disconnected from my artistic side yet I yearn to get it back.

I was going through some images I have created and this one seemed to reflect my mood. It's inspired by an Arno Rafael Minkkinen image done in the same pose (though much better than mine). Sometimes all we can do is marvel in the creation of the masters and hope to glean a spark of their imagination.

Camping at Lake Britton

My family and I spent Memorial weekend car camping at Lake Britton and exploring the area. It was kind of a last minute decision (within a couple of weeks) to go camping over the holiday weekend, and as expected just about every place we looked into in the Northern California within 3 to 4 hours of Sacramento was all booked up on reservations. This led me to start looking for "first come first serve" spots, and it turns out that PG&E has quite a few of them. I narrowed my search to the Hat Creek and Burney area and decided we would just go from campground to campground until we found a spot. First stop, Lake Britton where the majestic McArthur Burney Falls pours in to.

Lost Coast Again

I've been real quiet in blog-land, but I finally got out on another adventure; this time back to The Lost Coast. This year I decided to just do a portion of the trail so that I could explore some of the ridges above the beach, and so that I wouldn't have to pay for the shuttle (which is reasonable if you must do the whole 25.5 miles, but still $200 is a bit expensive). I got a hold of my nephew Josh and he readily agreed to accompany me on a few night stay.