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In the summer of 2016 I retraced the route of Lewis and Clark by kayak and on foot.
Years ago, when I was planning to hike the Appalachian Trail, I learned of the tradition of “trail names.” Most hikers adopt a name they will be known by on their journey. Some names are bestowed by fellow hikers, others are chosen. I was just finishing up a book about John Colter, a hunter and member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. After two years of wilderness exploration with the Corp of Discovery, Colter headed back to the Rockies before they had even returned to St. Louis. I admired his spirit, so I chose his name, Colter, as my trail name, a name I have used on subsequent long trails. Little did I know I would attempt Colter’s westward journey myself one day.
I started at at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers near St. Louis. I walked the first 800 miles or so to avoid the hundreds of wing-dams on the lower river. These dams force an upstream paddler into very fast current in the middle of the river, or through the potentially hazardous currents flowing over the wing-dams.
My kayaking gear was stored at Yankton. There I started paddling up the Missouri River as far as Three Forks, Montana, approximately 1,510 river miles. From Three Forks I followed the Lewis and Clark Trail on foot, up the Jefferson and Beaverhead Rivers, then over Lemhi Pass to Salmon, Idaho. I crossed Lost Trail Pass to Lolo, Montana. From there I crossed Lolo Pass, following the Lolo Trail/Lewis and Clark Trail/Nez Perce Trail to Canoe Camp on the Clearwater River, nearly 500 miles. It was about 513 river miles from Canoe Camp down the Clearwater, Snake and Columbia Rivers, to the Pacific. The total mileage was about 3,323 miles.
All forward progress along the route was by foot or by kayak. If I got a ride to a grocery store, for example, I returned to where I left the route to proceed under my own power. I did all of my own portages, the longest about 20 miles at Great Falls, which was also Lewis and Clark’s longest portage. Like Lewis and Clark, I left my boat in Montana, unlike them I didn’t use horses for crossing the Rockies and craft a new boat, I hiked and had a friend haul my kayak to the Clearwater River.
I began my journey March 24, 2016.
You can see my hiking gear list here.
My kayaking gear list is here.
You can see my progress on the below map.
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Thanks for visiting! Buck aka “Colter”
I looked at your gear list, and have three suggestions.
First, get a spray skirt. If you encounter wind and waves or other rough water, and you start taking water in your cockpit, your kayak will sit lower in the water and will be less stable, which will increase your chances of taking on more water. And if you swamp your kayak in the middle of a reservoir, it’ll hard to recover without assistance. Your bilge pump won’t be much help, because as long as the water stays rough, you’ll be so low in the water that you’ll be taking on more water faster than you can pump water out. Even if you don’t know how to roll a kayak, a spray skirt will increase your margin of safety.
Second, pick up a big absorbent sponge at a hardware store. It’ll be real handy for getting small amounts of water out of your kayak.
Third, pick up a pair of light paddling gloves. They’ll be more comfortable than your neoprene gloves, and will help you avoid getting blisters, particularly on top of the balls of your thumbs. You are more likely to get blisters when kayaking than when canoeing, because your hands will be wet most of the time. And once you get a blister, it’ll crack on the bottom, and you’ll get another blister in the same spot, and it’ll suck. The problem with looking for a pair of light non-cotton gloves at a hardware store is that it’ll probably have a seam which runs right over the ball of your thumb, right where you don’t want it.
Thanks for the suggestions. I have a spray skirt. Maybe I’ll get a sponge and gloves as well.
Here’s another suggestion – pack a bottle of your favorite anti-inflammatory (Advil or Aleve). You are going to go from not paddling at all to paddling every day, and paddling pretty hard when fighting your way upstream, and it would be pretty easy to develop a bad case of tendonitis. “Tennis Elbow” on the outside of your elbow is perhaps the most likely. And if you develop a case of tendonitis, it can be hard to make it go away, and it could screw up your trip. So if you start developing sore elbows, wrists, or shoulders, immediately start pounding down an anti-inflammatory dose of Advil or Aleve. Do it right away; don’t wait until the problems get bad. I can provide some strategy and technique suggestions for avoiding tendonitis on long kayak trips if you’re interested, and some war stories about tendonitis problems I have seen.
Prevention is easier than healing, isn’t it?
OK, prevention. Here are some suggestions:
1. Take it easy. There will be times when you need to paddle your guts out, like when fighting to go upstream through a section of fast current, or when fighting a vicious headwind. But when you don’t need to paddle your guts out, take it easy. Save your muscles, joints, and ligaments for when you really need them. Particularly on reservoirs, just glide along with a minimum of effort. Due to the hull speed limitations of any kayak, squeezing the last 20 percent of speed out of a kayak takes way more work than the first 80 percent. So chill out. You have a lot of paddling a ahead of you. You’ll get there eventually, unless you develop tendonitis by pushing too hard.
2. Use your upper body. Extend your arms straight forward shoulder width apart on the paddle shaft, and paddle by rotating your upper body and arms as a unit, using the core muscles of your torso. Try to use your arm muscles as little as possible. If you pull your elbow back with every stroke, you’re likely to give yourself a nasty case of tennis elbow. Hold the paddle low above your lap.
3. Hold your paddle gently. If you hold your paddle with a vise-like grip, you could develop carpel tunnel syndrome and/or numbness on the back of your hands and wrists. Hold it with a relaxed grip. If you have gloves with slippery palms which force you to squeeze the paddle shaft to keep it from twisting in your hands, throw those suckers away and get some better gloves. I have used bent shaft paddles for many years, because they provide a more natural and neutral (non-twisted) wrist position, and give you excellent control of the angle of your paddle blade with a relaxed grip. Good bent-shaft paddles are expensive, but worth every penny.
4. Don’t move your wrists. Don’t raise and lower your hands with each paddle stroke. Keep your hands in a neutral position and in line with your forearms with each stroke. If you develop a habit of raising and lowering your hands with each stroke, you’ll probably develop wrist problems.
5. Anti-inflammatories are your friends. If you start developing any pain or soreness at all, hit it with anti-inflammatories immediately. Don’t wait until the problem gets serious. Once you develop tendonitis, it can be difficult and time-consuming to get rid of it. An anti-inflammatory dose of Aleve is 2 tabs two times a day, and an anti-inflammatory dose of Advil is 3 tabs three times a day.
6. Do stretching exercises if necessary. I have a kayaker friend who has fought tendonitis issues for many years, and has a number of simple stretching exercises which help keep his problems under control. If you start to develop soreness in your elbows, shoulders, or wrists, e-mail me and I’ll get him to suggest some exercises. For example, an exercise I do frequently for tennis elbow issues is to straighten my arms, bend my hands up as far as they’ll go, and twist my lower arms back and forth, stretching the tendon on the outside of my elbow. If it hurts, that’s good. Keep stretching that tendon.
Here are a couple of representative tendonitis war stories: (a) I was on an 8-day Middle Fork of the Salmon trip in Idaho. One of the kayakers on the trip was an intermediate kayaker who was not in shape. After about two days, one of his wrists blew up like a balloon. We had a couple of physicians along who dosed him with anti-inflammatories, but he ended up riding on a raft for the rest of the trip. (b) On one of my Grand Canyon kayak trips, we encountered a group of unsupported (self-contained) kayakers. One of the kayakers had developed a nasty case of tendonitis in his left arm, and was kind of shuffling down the river by paddling with the paddle shaft tucked between his left upper arm and his chest, except when they hit a rapid and he had to hold the paddle in his hand. He was a young and experienced kayaker, but I suspect that he had long-standing tendonitis issues which blew up after a couple hundred mile of paddling. (c) I have a friend whose daughter has been competing on the national whitewater playboating circuit. She has been fighting tendonitis in her shoulders for about two years, and recently mentioned that she thought she was going to have to take a year off of competition in hopes that the problems would subside.
Bottom line is, don’t over-do it.
That sounds like wise advice, Peter. I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience. Buck
Incidentally, I’m the pmmpete who gave you some suggestions about kayak selection on the Hobie Cat forum. That’s where I learned about your trip.
As you follow Lewis and Clark’s route, you are no doubt thinking “What trip should I do next?” Here’s an idea – a guy from here in Missoula is hiking the Continental Divide Trail – barefoot. See http://missoulian.com/news/local/toeing-the-line-hiker-prepares-to-cross-the-cdt-barefoot/article_975875a4-214d-5837-9d55-d13919ac3d1b.html .
I’ve hiked the CDT. Barefoot is not for me and I wouldn’t be surprised if he changes his plans at some point.
If barefoot backpacking doesn’t appeal to you (and it certainly doesn’t appeal to me), here’s a book you could read on this hike which may suggest future hikes: Trespassing Across America, by Ken Ilgunas, which describes a cross-county off-road hike along the route of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Fort McMurray, Alberta to Port Arthur, Texas. Which basically sounds like 1,700 miles of trespassing.