#10: Learning to Kayak. Check!

Remember my To Do List for 2011?  Number 10 on that list was learning to kayak. Well, late June I stumbled on the perfect opportunity - join a paddling club!

 As it turns out HRM has a number of Canoe Clubs. I signed up for the "Masters" program at Sackawa on First Lake in Lower Sackville. All "Masters" means is "adult". It by no means implies any level of competency. In fact, most of us were newbies, and spent the first evening just trying to staying afloat in the kayak, let alone actually paddle anywhere.

But confidence and experience, and maybe even a little skill, comes with practice. Sure enough, by the second evening I could get in the kayak without flipping it, and by the third evening was paddling across the (narrow part of the) lake without too much trouble.  And by the end of summer, I felt pretty chuffed with the praise I received from my instructor and for my ability to not tip, even in choppy waters (and in a leaky boat, too, I might add!).

 

These kayaks are a little different - they're racing kayaks, which are a bit more tippy than recreational kayaks. And they have rudders (which took some getting used to). One week we did have the numbers (12-14) to try the war canoe, but holy cow it was hard! It was all I could do to keep myself balanced, let alone paddle. And all kinds of muscles were killing me afterwards (for days!). Since I'm a novice in the kayak, I figured I would focus on that this summer and maybe try the war canoe (if there's enough people) or solo canoe next year.

 

Kudos to R. for mastering the solo canoe in just 3 evenings!  

Cottage Highlights

As promised, here are some pictures and highlights from my vacation week at the cottage:

My birthday dinner, celebrated with as many family as could be there. (The best way to celebrate family, in my opinion!). Truth is, it's not just a celebration of my birthday, but all the July birthdays and anniversaries in the family - there are many in July. But I got to pick the cake: a Lime Coconut Cheesecake. Thanks, Mom!


My very first pedicure. I don't usually go for frivolous things like pedicures, but it was one of those things I'd always been curious about. It was fun, and I was pleased with the end result. It's not something I'll do very often; the price is a bit hard to justify.

Peace and quiet with only the sound of birds, the occasionally plopping of fish jumping in the water, the wind through the trees.

Perfect spot for hulling straberries, eh?

 Gorgeous sunsets that never disappoint.(Click for larger images)

And the best seat in the house

There were also some stunning sunrises...though, admittedly, I missed the first few. 

 

I went for a few bike rides, to check out a couple spots I had never been on the other side of the lake. Like this old cottage.

There was some "communing with nature", mostly in the form of spying on a bunny that frequented the lawns around the cottage, and pestering a very large (bull?) frog under the wharf. Seriously, this frog didn't even blink at us for a good few minutes. It wasn't until we "tickled" *giggle giggle* it with a stick that it actually moved. And, yes, we are grown-ups. I couldn't bring myself to actually try to grab it; I'm okay with the baby frogs, but the big ones make me shudder!

There was also a rescue mission (well, for my mom, not me): to rescue a baby bird from certain doom where it was in the middle of the dirt road. Mom figured it had fall from his nest, and that the nest was nearby given that the parents were flying around mimicing broken-wings. We searched for the nest but couldn't find it. Also, we think the birds were yellow-bellied warblers.

There was a whole lot of reading on the porch swing, and knitting whilst watching long period dramas. Very few photos of those activities.:) And there was a visit from friends, during which we had a spectacular thunder and lightning storm. Our power went out for about 6 hours and the lightning lasted for at least 2 hours (started around 10pm, ended around 12:30am). Taking photos of lightning over the lake proved difficult, but I did get a pretty great video which is about 8mins of me narrating the storm. If you're interested, here it is.

I'm already looking forward to next year's stay at the cottage. Or, maybe, with a little arm-twisting, I can squeeze another weekend in before the summer is over?

Hell's Gate

Sadly, this post is not going to demonstrate my new-found prowess as an outdoors woman. In fact, it may do just the opposite, and reinforce the obvious - that I have a lot to learn and should probably equip myself with some basic tools (ie. compass, map, water, whistle, matches, etc.) before going into unfamiliar territory, because who knows what kind of trouble I could get myself into.

Destination: Hells Gate Falls, aka "Three Pools", which technically isn't a public hiking trail as it's on Nova Scotia Power property. With that said, it's a popular trail and as long as you're careful and not stupid (ie. climb on the slippery rocks, or jump off the 70 ft cliff into the shallow water below), you'll be fine. Also, we felt slightly justified trespassing as our grandfather used to work at Hells Gate at one point in time.

Estimated hiking distance/time: 4 km /1 hour. Time spent: 2.5+ hours.
If the hike was only 1 hour, why did it take us 2.5 hours to get in and get out you may ask? Well, we may have lost track of where we were going a few times. In our defense, we (my cousin and I) were mainly there to chat and catch-up; finding the falls was really secondary or, rather, it gave us an excuse to get out of the house and enjoy a nice afternoon. If we were truly focussed on the task at hand we would've looked up Hells Gate Falls on a map and planned our route.

The entrance we took that would, in a round about way, lead us to Hells Gate Falls/Three Pools.

Instead, our approach was to start at the entrance (a wire gate that had been vandalised) and follow the path to see where it took us. I figured it's a popular spot, it should be pretty obvious what direction we should take. This is sort of what got us in trouble a couple times - there are many, many paths in the area, none of them had signs that helped to point us to our desination. Good thing, after a bit of aimless hiking, we stumbled upon Marvin (Marvin #1 on the map), who proceeded to give us directions... which neither of us paid close enough attention to.

So here's where I think a map might be helpful. It's sort of hard to tell where the trails are on GoogleMaps, but I did my best. The pink line is our route, the blue line is Marvin's recommended route.

He said something about following the pipeline (the greyish line running from the surge towers to the dam) till we got to an ATV trail. We caught that much. So we started to walk until we reached a dam, at which point we realised we must've missed the ATV trail, so when we doubled back we took a couple side trails on the wrong side of the pipeline (duh!). Both trails took us into a pit, which clearly wasn't where the Falls would be. Unbeknownst to us, we were being watched. Marvin had seen us go in the wrong direction and knew we were "misplaced" (not lost!). He laughed when we ran into him again (Marvin #2 on map) and then proceeded to walk us to Hells Gate Falls, which was less than a 5 minute walk away.

Okay, it was a bit embarrassing how close we were and yet how far off track at the same time. Also, it was more than embarrassing when he assumed we were city girls. I mean, I am, but it's not exactly the image I was going for. Sigh.

Marvin left us at the 2nd pool, and told us how to get to the 1st. He also mentioned something about climbing down the steep hill where we would find a decent trail where he sometimes brought his 4 wheeler. Now this is where we sort of lost him again. He was telling stories about how kids would get lost in the woods all the time and find themselves in predicaments because they didn't know the terrain. His directions were basically just repeating the routes these kids would take and get themselves lost, but he did say the trail would take us out. Where "out" was wasn't clarified.

So we carried on. Have I mentioned this is a gorgeous spot? Not only are there waterfalls, but absolutely stunning woodland with moss-covered forest floor and rocks. The rock formations make it look like an ancient forest, actually. The terrain is pretty treacherous though, if you're not careful. The path starts out high, and involves a very scary descent down a steep moss-covered cliff, with loose needles and dirt that make it hard to get good footing (below). Climbing down involved a combination (for me) of grabbing roots and scooching down on my bum. The pictures are really unflattering!

This picture really doesn't do justice to the height of the cliff. Once you're at the bottom, it's a spectacular sight. Also, once you're at the bottom the walk is easy. The path follows the river and takes you right out to Hell's Gate. This is where we got confused about Marvin's directions "out". Did he mean the trail would take us here? We told him our grandfather used to work at Hell's Gate so maybe he thought this is where we were headed?

There was a road/trail to our right and we started up it (the blue line from Hell's Gate to the Surge Tanks). We got about half way up when S. started to question if it was wise to keep going up a road we didn't know (not knowing that in fact it would take us exactly to where we wanted to be), and suggested it might be best to double back the same way we came. So we did, which added an extra 4 miles (according to Marvin) onto our hike. Also, it meant having to climb up that scary cliff we had just climbed down.

Needless to say the hike was more of a workout than we had anticipated, but a fun time just the same. Best of all, it's time well spent when you get to have a good visit with family, plus enjoy the outdoors!

View of the surge towers from a distance, close to our starting point. If you look closely, you can see the red of Hell's Gate at the base of the towers inthe second picture. It gives a bit of perspective to the height of the path we started out on (same level as the surge towers) to where we ended up (at Hell's Gate).

Becoming an Outdoors Woman

...That's what I was doing last weekend.

I found out about BOW at the beginning of August and signed-up immediately. If you ask my co-workers, they'll tell you that I was bouncing off the walls with excitement the day I registered. If you haven't heard about it, BOW is short for Becoming an Outdoors Woman and is an international, non-profit organization which aims to educate women in outdoorsy skills and activities. They offer a wide variety of workshops from hunting and fishing courses to basic skills for hiking/wilderness survival, to sports like mountain biking, and kayaking and hobbies like geocaching and birding. There's something for everyone! More information and a full list of the workshops they offer is available here.

So much was packed into this BOW weekend, that it's taken me this long to digest everything. There's really so much I want to share, that I haven't quite figured out where to begin, and how to keep this post manageable without going on and on about how much fun I had, and how much I learned. Also, I wish I had more photos from the weekend, but sadly I was to busy to take pictures and only have a couple dozen to share.

I was really happy with my workshop choices this year:

1. Wilderness Navigation: learning how to read topographical maps, how to use a compass, and how to use both of these together, learning the difference between true north and magnetic north, how to calculate distance travelled. It was really, really fun and really quite empowering to learn these skills. I'm by no means an expert but it's confidence building to know that you have the skills to get yourself in and out of the woods with these tools. I'm definitely putting a compass on my Christmas list this year, if I can wait that long!

2. Mountain Biking: learning about the gear and parts of the biking, learning how to shift gears properly and use the gears for different terrain, and how to change a flat tire. I learned that I won't shy away from biking through the muck and puddles (that's the fun part about mountain biking), but that I quickly lose stamina going uphill, even in the lowest gear, and have to do the walk of shame up the hill.

3. Kayaking: This was a close tie with Wilderness Navigation for my favourite workshop of the weekend. We learned about the kayaks, paddles and the gear that goes with it all, body positioning and movements, paddlings strokes, how to recover from a capsized kayak (including some entertaining demonstrations). I started out in the tandem with a partner having never been in a kayak before and close to the end got to try out a single. I was not very stable in the single and was sure I was going to tip. It's a miracle I didn't actually!

4. Birding: This wasn't my first choice (I wanted to do the geocaching workshop as I still haven't figured out how to do certain things with my GPS yet), but I quite enjoyed it just the same! We learned about migration patterns of birds, about different species of birds and about the bird atlas for Nova Scotia, we learned about identification techniques and how to adjust binoculars (adjust the left lens first, then fine-tune the right), and we learned a great technique for attracting birds ("phish"ing: shpish-psh-psh). We spotted a couple species of vireos, grouse and finches, and of course were visited by curious chickadees. Also our instructor had a rather neat gadget that she uses to call birds - a tiny little speaker that plugs into her mp3 player and will play mp3s of bird calls! How neat!

The workshops were the main focus of the weekend, but in the evenings we had the opportunity to learn fly-tying or knot-tying. I chose knots and learned how to five knots: the bowline knot, the reef knot, the clove hitch, the handcuff knot and the monkey's fist. Now I just have to be sure to practice, so I will remember them when I need them.

On the second night the plan was to have an astronomy lesson but the weather wasn't cooperating (did I mention it rained the whole weekend?), so instead we had a demo of really neat software called Stellarium. You can type your location into the program and it will pull up the night sky, which you can then click and drag so it matches what you see from your exact location. Then, with another click the program will show you the constellations and the artwork that goes with the constellations. Really cool, eh?! And here's the best part - the software is free!

And, of course, no outdoorsy weekend would be complete without a campfire or two. Here's a picture of our second campfire, complete with planked salmon cooked by the fire!

If you're interested in hearing more about what the weekend was like, CBC's Phlis McGregor was there interviewing folks and here is her spot about BOW on CBC NS's Information Morning.