Ontario Greenland Kayak Camp! (Nena's Story)

Warning, it's a long one. I wanted to be explicit so I would actually remember the things I learned! See below for Heather's account of the trip!
 
Ok, it's taken me about 15 minutes to figure out how to start this post so as to accurately profess my excitement about the past weekend. I guess I'll just start from the beginning! This weekend, Heather Adams (fellow Rough Rider from Rochester) and I headed up to Bracebridge, Canada, for the first annual Ontario Greenland Camp, hosted by LearnToKayak, Kayak Ways, and The Complete Paddler.

Day 1: The Drive Up & First Impressions
After an overwhelmingly stressful week of classes, work, TAing, and homework, I departed Ithaca on Friday morning for Rochester. Upon arrival at Heather's house, we loaded my boat onto her car and started the 6 hour drive to Bracebridge, Canada! The drive up was fairly uneventful, and we made it to Camp Tamarack around 5pm. We were feeling a little daunted about meeting a whole new group of kayakers, but we were very excited to meet so many Greenland enthusiasts and kayak lovers like ourselves! After a warm welcome by some of the camp organizers, we settled into our bunk beds (a strange experience since I never went to camp as a kid) and headed over to the main cabin for dinner.

Day 2 AM: Yoga-for-Kayakers, Greenland Strokes, and Rolling Demo
The next day I got up super early for some yoga-for-kayakers. Cheri had us doing all kinds of funny maneuvers on the ground to mimic rolling in our boats. I can only imagine how goofy we all looked, but she kept a straight face! After breakfast we headed over to the beach where all the kayaks were ready to play!

Such a variety of boats! So many homemade skin-on-frames and sea kayaks brands that I'd never seen before! I must say, there was only one other purple boat in the mix...

The first item on the agenda was practicing Greenland strokes. Although I was eager to practice rolling, getting to brush up on the basic strokes was incredibly helpful. They're similar, but not exactly the same as Euro-style strokes. For example, the sculling draw stroke, which moves you sideways, is done with an open top hand, rather than keeping a closed-fist grip on the paddle and cocking your wrist back at an awkward angle to turn the paddle face towards the kayak. We also spent a good chunk of time practicing the forward stroke, which can be really hard to perfect if you're a convert from Euro-style paddling. They had us paddle past the gauntlet of instructors and gave us each feedback about our stroke. Heather's stroke was perfect from the very beginning, and after a few modifications, my forward stroke was getting positive feedback. I was always under the impression that the proper way to do it is to keep your elbows at your sides, but that's not the case! As long as you're rotating your torso rather than bending your elbows, it's good to extend your arms a bit. I'm excited to get out and put in some miles with this new knowledge!

Before lunch we got to watch a rolling demo during which Turner yelled out rolls in order of difficulty, and all the mentors then rolled in unison. It looked really neat! This session wrapped up with an upside down paddling race!

Day 2 PM: Rolling Practice, Greenland Ropes, General Chillage!
The afternoon was dedicated to rolling practice. Cheri and Turner went through the dynamics of the standard Greenland roll:

Heather and I joined the group that wanted to work on forward-finishing rolls. Rather than demoing it on the water, Turner had us go through the motions on land. He broke it down into 3 steps:

1. Laying sideways on the ground, with your leg out in front of you (like an L), and your chest and shoulders square to the ground. 
2. Starting to roll your top hip towards the ground at the same time as kicking the lower knee up. 
3. Sliding your upper body, with your shoulders still square to the ground and head facing down, across and over your knees, staying curled towards your knees. 

Okay, so maybe that wasn't the clearest description, but I'm just recording it so I won't forget! Once we had the motion set in memory, we transferred to the boats and started practicing the motion using an avotek (sp?), basically a big balloon (see above picture), for support. After getting that down, I tried it with a paddle. It took me a few tries to do an entire 360 degree roll, but after a few tries and help from Heather Lamon & Kelly McDowell, I managed to smooth it all together!

Once we were chilled to the bone from rolling, we took a hot shower and headed over to watch Heather Lamon and Adam Hansen demonstrate moves on the rolling ropes:

This is how Greenlanders practiced rolling off the water (and was also just a way to have fun!). There are seemingly endless qajaasaarneq moves that are tested in Greenland competitions. We got to try out a couple of them -- it's lots of fun! It uses all kinds of muscles you never knew you had.

That evening after dinner there were three presentations: One by the curator of the Canadian Canoe Museum, another by Heather Lamon about her trip to the Greenland rolling competition this summer, and another by Adam Hansen about growing up in Greenland. While sitting around the campfire and enjoying some wine, I spent some time talking to Kelly McDowell, who owns The Complete Paddler shop in Toronto. It was neat to hear stories about a kayaking shop other than BayCreek!

Day 3: Harpoons, Greenland Weddings, and More Rolling (of course)
The next morning Heather and I made it to breakfast just in time! After breakfast we got to practice more of the things we learned the day before. I still had my reverse sweep (forward-finishing) roll! Turner also showed me how to do a forward butterfly roll (links from kayakways.net). We also had the chance to try throwing a harpoon from our kayaks (notice that the harpoon is headed straight for the water... I definitely would not have been able to feed my family had I depended on this source of food...):

 

 Just before lunch we split into four teams of five to play a big Greenland-style relay game. This involved 4 components:

1. Forward sprint
2. Towing a swimmer
3. Paddling backwards
4. Greenland wedding

Since I was on a team with 4 guys who did not want to be the bride in the "Greenland Wedding" portion, I was designated the 'bride' by default. The bride's job is to sit back-to-back with the 'husband' and balance on the back of the kayak as he paddles out and around a buoy. As a veteran of balancing on kayaks, I thought this was very exciting... just kidding, but I wanted an excuse to include this photo in one of my entries:

Anyways, the stakes were high: rolling sticks for each member of the top two teams! We were behind until the last leg, when the top two teams had brides fall of the boats! It was a very exciting moment when my 'husband' (I don't actually remember his name...) and I paddled into shore, victorious!

Picture courtesy of Roger Botting

Here are a few more pictures of the weekend!

Everyone together!

Turner, me, and Cheri

I definitely recommend this camp for anyone who's even remotely interested in Greenland-style kayaking. It always amazes me that you can become much better friends with people by spending two days kayaking with them rather than sitting in a class together for an entire semester.  Magical things happen when you bring people together from all ages and walks of life whose only shared attribute is a love for kayaking!

I can't wait 'til next year!
- Nena

Greenland Kayak Camp: Guest Blog by Heather Adams!

Here Heather eloquently describes the first night and morning of our trip to the first annual Ontario Greenland Camp, in Bracebridge, ON. Enjoy! -Nena

“It’s the Canadian Shield”, Alan explained, when I asked him to tell me about the beautiful rock formations that we began seeing about 30 or so miles south of Stonleigh Lake (just north and east of Bracebridge, ON), where Nena & I were heading for the weekend of Sept 11-12^th. The Shield is exposed bedrock extending over 3 million square miles in central and northeast Canada, the Adirondack mountains, and then across the water to Greenland. This common ground brought together paddlers from Canada, the US and Greenland last weekend for the first annual Ontario Greenland Camp. James Roberts and Dympna Hayes, co-owners of LearntoKayak.ca (Toronto, ON) hosted the event with support from Kelly McDowell, owner of the shop, The Complete Paddler (Etobicoke, ON). I admit to feeling rather star-struck as we arrived at camp and I met our instructors for the weekend – a Who’s-Who list of Greenland paddling champions – Adam Hansen, Heather Lamon, Cheri Perry, and Turner Wilson!

Our lovely mentors for the weekend!

Alan, one of the other students at OGC, told me about the Canadian Shield during the social hour on Friday night – an opportunity to meet our fellow paddlers and get oriented to the weekend activities. After dinner, Cheri & Turner presented a slide show about their own trips to the Greenland games and then showed an old film from the 1930s with the cast entirely drawn from native Greenlandic people. The plot and acting were weak, to say the least, but there were important moments in the film where traditional Greenlandic life was depicted, including hunting from kayaks. For the early-birds in the group, Saturday morning began at 6:30 a.m. with a yoga class led by Cheri.  Nena made the class while I just kept on sleeping. After breakfast, we walked down to the lake for Turner’s paddle strokes class.  We began the lesson on shore, with a discussion of fluid dynamics (Nena to provide some engineering comments here!) and how the Greenland paddle operates on the principle of lift, compared to the euro blade which operates on the principle of drag. Turner explained that a euro blade, at the ‘catch’ (when the paddle first scoops into the water) essentially pulls the kayak forward as the paddle drags itself through the water. The shape and movement of the Greenland paddle through the water creates lift, not unlike an airplane wing. Another difference…most power from the euro blade stroke comes during the entry phase; the Greenland paddle stroke contains most of its power during the 2^nd half of the blade’s time in the water. 

Turner describing how the Greenland paddle does its magical work! Nena looking  either confused or pensive in the background... Photo courtesy of The Complete Paddler.

After this introduction to the Greenland paddle, we jumped in our boats and headed onto the water. Stonleigh Lake is a narrow lake running north to south. The camp is situated on the west side of the lake. Earlier in the morning, the lake was shrouded in mist but by the time we started paddling, the sun was well up and the lake was clear. We worked on our forward paddle stroke, reverse sweep, forward sweep, and two kinds of bow rudders – including one with the end of the paddle tucked under the armpit! Turner then introduced a draw stroke by saying that he had learned it from Maligiaq and demonstrated the simple technique of turning one’s top hand open to the work. I was given much corrective feedback about my edge turn, which I had been performing as a lean turn. Edge, lean, edge, lean. But too soon, lunch was waiting onshore, so we paddled back in, practicing one last technique along the way – the sliding stroke. This is most effectively used in high winds (and with a storm paddle) in order to minimize the amount of blade that will catch in the wind.

There is much more to tell about our weekend at the Ontario Greenland Camp – tons of rolling, Greenland ropes demo & practice, Greenland Games (Nena was on the winning team!), talks by Heather Lamon about her trip earlier this summer to the Games, and by Adam Hansen, about his life growing up in Greenland.  For all this, I’ll turn the blog back over to Nena for the rest of the report. I’ll just close by saying that when I arrived at camp, my singular goal for the weekend was to come away with as many new Greenland rolls as I could learn in two days. 

Working on rolling! Photo courtesy of The Complete Paddler.

When we left on Sunday, sure, I had some new rolls, but more importantly, I had gained a deeper appreciation and knowledge of Greenlandic kayak culture, and made many new like-minded, “skinny-stick” friends. I am looking forward to seeing them all on the water again in future! 

- Heather Adams 

Click here for another post with more details about the first annual Greenland Kayak Camp by Nena!