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Lunatic Fringe
Stinging cold wind burned my face. The freezing water of the Green River shocked my bare hands, but I pulled my neoprene gloves off. I was about to get in the ring for some high stakes bare knuckle boxing. The river was high, 21 inches on the gage (a normal summer release is […]
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No Province for Old Men
Reaching My Limit in BC’s Coast Range and Discovering Life beyond the Progression From our overhung perch hundreds of feet above Snowcap Creek, it appeared Bett and I would have a slow if not slightly bumpy flow. We quickly assessed it as perfect for a September afternoon exploratory fix. Only after pulling a few strokes […]
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My Riot Bus Tour of ’99
I guessed what was about to happen and knew it was wrong. But, what was I going to do about? I was only 16, and it had happened so many times over the past few months it was almost funny. I was sitting in an eddy above a blind drop on a class V river […]
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The Grande Finale of the Jamie McEwan Trilogy: Denied- Linville Gorge, 1973
It was one of those early spring days that seemed no season at all, rather a pause in seasons, as if nature had come to a stop while trying to remember what should come next. We had seen signs of spring on the drive down: crocuses and daffodils pushing up beside lonely houses, a purple […]
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Jamie McEwan II: Years Later, I Added the Frame- Chattooga River, 1971
“Look at the moon,” I said, pointing. “And that star, and the little cloud.” “Yeah.” “And the ridge, and those other clouds. What a picture. What do you think–do you include the ridge and the clouds, or zoom in on just the little cloud and the moon and the star?” A hypothetical question–we had no […]
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An Analytical Look at Survivable Submersion Times
After the tragic entrapment of a canoeist on the Little River last weekend, I found myself wondering about the odds of surviving a long submersion. The canoeist’s peers, a team experienced in swiftwater rescue, persisted in their rescue efforts for 37 minutes by repeatedly swimming into a rapid that had just ensnared their friend in […]
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The first of the Jamie McEwan Trilogy: Iron Ring 1970
“What a crowd,” my brother commented as we ate a hasty breakfast at the parking lot that, by common consent, had become the paddlers’ campground. There must have been six or eight other cars there, at least a dozen paddlers, just beginning to stir. That was a crowd in those days. How little we could […]
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Life and Death Beyond the Edge
I watched a man die, for the first time, on the Green River. Witt was vertically pinned against a tombstone shaped rock at the bottom of Chiefs. I was scouting Gorilla when I heard shouting. “He’s pinned” a panicked voice rang out. I turned and looked back at Witt. He was vertical but not moving. […]
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Welcome to Site Zed
Site Zed publishes interesting and thought-provoking original content inspired from paddlesports. The name comes from the Stikine River in British Columbia, Canada. Site Zed on the Stikine is the scene of a proposed dam, a local fight against dam construction, and a massive rapid that remained un-run until 2012. The complexity of its history and […]
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Style
For participants in a sport where peeling out at the top of a rapid almost inevitably results in arriving at the bottom, kayakers seem surprisingly indifferent to matters of style. Things can go pretty badly awry, and onlookers might roll their eyes at a particularly bad line, but someone would have to be radically over […]