Paddling News

Imagine that you are Tim Keen. Don't know who Tim Keen is?

He is, among other things, a very skilled, very experienced 41-year-old kayaker from Nashville. About four months ago, his buddy, Russell Farrow, told him about the Vacation To Hell. Imagine that you are Tim Keen.

Don't know who Tim Keen is?

He is, among other things, a very skilled, very experienced 41-year-old kayaker from Nashville. About four months ago, his buddy, Russell Farrow, told him about the Vacation To Hell.

Not the Vacation From Hell, which many people have experienced and is a story that often begins at the airport with a long security line, a missed connection and a crying baby.

This is the Vacation To Hell, a contest sponsored by Immersion Research, a Confluence-based kayak accessory company. Entrants put together a team, compile a video and send it in for the chance to win an all-expense-paid trip to one of the most fantastic kayaking locales imaginable.

The only hitch is, while the group from Immersion Research knows where the team will go, they keep it a secret until they announce the winner. The people entering the contest don't know where they'll end up if they win.

They just know it won't be easy.

This was Keen's position when Farrow called in early September and told him that his four-man team, named Team Sweetwater, which includes two Floridians and one man from Budapest, had won.

"At first, (my reaction) was just overall excitement, that I couldn't believe we won," Keen said. "Hell to one person can be another man's heaven, and I had kind of put myself in that category. I didn't care where they sent us."

Then, Farrow told him the itinerary.

The group will travel to the Canadian high Arctic, where it will paddle from Pond Inlet on the northern side of Baffin Island to Grise Fjord on the southern end of Ellesmere Island. It is a 385-mile trip and, along the way, the group will encounter floating ice, frigid temperatures and polar bears.

It also will have to travel 50 miles over land across Devon Island, the largest uninhabited island in the world and a place so remote, so harsh, that NASA uses it to test vehicles that will ultimately be expected to function on Mars.

"Later that night I was at a friend's house and he said, 'Have you looked at the globe to see where you're going?' and I said, 'No, but I have a rough idea,'" said Keen, whose team made a successful expedition to northern Labrador in 2005. "He dragged me over to the globe, said, 'Here's where you were (in northern Labrador), and spun it to the very top and said, 'This is where you're starting, and this is where you'll end.'

"It's bigger than anything we've done so far, and the initial excitement has been washed over with, 'Oh my God, that's a pretty big commitment.'

"(When it first sunk in), we were kind of concerned it was a suicide mission, to tell you the truth."

Spirit of adventure

John and Kara Weld, who started Immersion Research out of their Confluence home 10 years ago, both started kayaking as children as a family activity. While Kara turned to slalom racing and eventually made the U.S. National Team, John's passions turned toward adventure.

His idea for the Vacation To Hell grants came from the Shipton/Tilman grants that Gore-Tex manufacturers W.L. Gore and Associates bestow each year upon explorers and adventurers, most often in the area of mountaineering.

Weld, 38, and his friends received two of those grants in the 1990s, one in 1992 to kayak the icy waters around Baffin Island and one in 1997 to kayak through the rain forests of Borneo.

"Those were life-changing events for me," Weld said.

With so many rivers around the world still to be run, Weld saw the opportunity to help push the sport into new areas.

The Welds and Immersion Research have been on the cutting edge of kayaking for some time.

In addition to John Weld's trip to Borneo, three things happened at the Weld household in 1997 that would have a big impact not only on their lives but the sport itself in the coming years.

One, John Weld was teaching kayaking for Kara's father at the family-owned Riversport paddling school and, at the same time, sewing board shorts for his buddies in the basement as a hobby.

Two, both John and Kara Weld were noticing that the average age of the clientele enrolling in the paddling school was getting younger and younger every year.

And, three, John Weld was wondering what was going to come next in his life, given that he was 28 years old, had been out of college a few years and was a self-described kayak bum. Kara Weld had just retired from racing.

From the first two conditions came his answer.

Recognizing that their sport was on the verge of becoming a more extreme pursuit with a younger, more aggressive following, and that the gear needed to reflect that shift, the Welds founded Immersion Research.

Ten years later, the company is one of the biggest accessory companies in the U.S. for whitewater kayaking, producing everything from spray skirts to waterproof paddling jackets to hoods and boots -- everything but the boat, paddle and helmet, John Weld said.

"We started the company with the idea of making gear for younger people, thinking we could be like (snowboard pioneer and industry leader) Burton for kayaking," Weld said. "There was no one else doing it at the time. We hit the nail on the head because we started growing like gangbusters."

Kara Weld never shared quite the passion for expedition kayaking as her husband, whom she met when he came to work for her father initially in 1989, but she certainly shared his passion for the sport.

She learned slalom kayaking -- in which poles are hung over the river and racers have to maneuver between them going both upstream and downstream -- as a teenager and became a three-time national champion. She narrowly missed making the Olympic teams in 1992 and 1996.

Kara Weld did share in her husband's vision for the Vacation To Hell, however, and in 2006 she voted for the winning team in the first contest, The Range Life, out of Seattle.

That group traveled to Peru, where they attempted to make the first descent of the Rio Huallaga, a major tributary of the Amazon River.

The team didn't make it.

It made it further down the river than anyone before them, but ended up hiking out when the group felt the river became too constricted, too difficult to scout and too filled with dangers such as swirling hydraulics and rocks that can easily trap and drown boaters.

The paddlers kept in touch with their sponsors via satellite phone, and Kara Weld said they knew the team hiked out shortly after their decision to go no further.

"In a way it was a relief, because I knew they were going to be safe, but we had a lot of questions," she said. "I'm always nervous when all these guys are going on their big trips, even my husband. I'd rather be there than watch someone else go."

Onward and upward
Keen said that Team Sweetwater is now in the planning stages for its trip, which should take 5-6 weeks to complete during a narrow window late next summer during which the Arctic ice will melt enough to be passable.

"We're all very cautious; we're all over 40, so we're not rippled with testosterone like we're in our 20s," Keen said. "Our education has increased and we now do believe it's doable. We still haven't gotten past the point that it's going to be a huge endeavor and it's not going to be easy. But we are going forward and we believe we can do it. We all want to come back healthy, alive, with all 10 fingers and toes."

Article Source: pittsburghlive.com