Paddling the Lapie

Summer holidays are in full swing and it's sooooo wonderful! The end of school was a frantic time of exams, applying for jobs for September and packing up. Right after that was all done Shea and I traveled a dusty eight hours north-east, toward Ross River (still in the Yukon), to paddle the Lapie River. Trevor, a good mate of Shea's, runs a canoe school and one of the courses offered is the Lapie Extravaganza! Shea was teaching a group on the four day course and I was a participant in another group. It was brilliant; very challenging yet a good progression through the hard skills involved with paddling white water rivers. It was interesting to begin the course with the cock and swagger of a lass who believes herself to be a pretty awesome, though beginner, paddler. I mean, every time I go paddling with Shea we're like, totally awesome. We make those eddy turns, we surf waves, we spin our paddles above our heads and whoop and holler with joy!

It's interesting to note that when you put aforementioned lass in a canoe with another beginner on a white water river, we don't actually make all those eddy turns, we couldn't make it onto the waves to surf and instead of whooping I was swimming. A whooole lot. I think I swam (meaning I was dumped out of my boat through error) more than anyone on the course!

Could my cock and swagger have been a result of a confidence built from always paddling with a canoe instructor?