Obscure watersports activities

Companies have promoted some pretty outrageous boating sports over the years.  I have to admit that I am a sucker for cool/new/interesting activities and I will try just about anything given the opportunity.  Whether I would introduce them to my campers, though, is another story. I was inspired to write this entry after seeing the below promotional video online.  The product was so preposterous that I decided to dig into my memory banks for a few others from over the years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-VgA32p_6fE

I'll get to the subwing in a couple of paragraphs.

First on my list of disastrous boating activities would have to be the flying tube from around 2006.  On paper it looked awesome; who doesn't like getting launched into the air while tubing?  Achieving sustained flight behind the boat seemed like a no-brainer and countless families, organizations, and boating enthusiasts cleared store shelves of the new item.  About a month into that boating season it was clear that the flying tubes were actually unstable death traps.  The tubes would take flight, as advertised, but once airborne could not be controlled and unpredictably plummeted, inverted, and crashed at high speeds into the water.  After two reported deaths, broken bones, collapsed lungs, and countless face and body lacerations, the manufacturer issued a voluntary recall of the fledgling product.  Various new models have been released since then with added safety features but the stigma has remained and the flying tube has not been able to gain widespread popularity.

The next boat sport that came to mind was one from the early 90's called disk boarding.  I honestly cannot find a picture or any evidence that it ever existed on the web but I distinctly remember it from my early days of learning how to waterski at camp.  It was just a slightly concave disk like you would use to go sledding but it had a plastic hitch to lock the rope handle into for when you were sick of holding on.  Basically all you could do when moving was spin in circles and attempt to go to the left or right over the wake which was made difficult to nearly impossible due to the lack of fins.  Disc boarding was not dangerous but just a massive dud of a sport.  I'm sure someone else has heard of this, anyone?

Not all dumb watersports ideas need be motor-boat reliant to make this list.  I am including the floating iceberg climbing tower/slide because like the flying tube it just was not properly thought out by its designers.  I was at a camp fair in 2009 when I saw a picture of one at another camp's booth.  The director told me that he loved the iceberg at his camp - he chose to purchase a 25 foot high variant - save two major issues.  The first was that he needed about fifty of his staff members to carry it out of storage each season because of its cumbersome size and weight.  The second, more important, issue was that the number of broken arms and ankles at his camp skyrocketed in the first summer that he had the floating iceberg.  Apparently the climbing rungs were designed in such a way that if a climber lost his/her grip and fell it was easy to get caught on the way down and break whatever appendage got hung up.  The manufacturer has since corrected this design flaw and under careful supervision the floating iceberg is a great toy for camp groups.

OK, on to the subwing.  Honestly my first reaction was "that thing looks awesome, I can't wait to try it, where can I buy it?"  Then I thought a bit more.  Here are my three big concerns:

1. At any kind of speed, even under 10 mph behind the boat, you would need some impeccably clear water in order to see approaching obstacles.  I foresee large numbers of tangled lines, smashed faces, and, probably, some drowning/crash related fatalities.
2. Up in New Hampshire our lakes make it up to about 80 degrees by the middle of the summer - on the surface.  Anyone who has dived down five or ten feet knows that the temperature plummets quickly.  Once you are in water that is steadily in the low 60's or 50's you lose body heat at a rapid pace.  I do not see subwing participants spending an extended amount of time at great depths before there are chattering teeth and blue lips.
3. The subwing effectively makes the boat spotter irrelevant.  Spotters make sure that skiers or wakeboarders have not fallen or let go or gotten hurt.  With the subwing the spotter may not see a rider let go (or smash into an underwater rock) and by the time he/she is noticed the boat may be quite a distance away.

Almost certain death is enough reason to lead me not to offer the subwing to my campers but if I can get my hands on one this summer I will certainly give it a go (and get some video).  The subwing could be the future of boating fun; I guess if no one ever tossed their surf board behind a boat and rode the wake two feet from the prop we would never have had wake surfing, right?

Extreme Crutching

After breaking my leg two weeks ago I was told I could not walk on it for at least eight weeks.  That is an eternity for an adventure-seeker such as myself, especially when the weather is as unseasonably warm as it has been this spring.  I am mostly couch-bound while my friends are out biking, kite surfing, rock climbing, and enjoying the outdoors and just generally rubbing it in my face. Well I may not be able to walk but I certainly cannot let everyone else have all the fun.

Extreme crutching - noun - the adventure activity defined by making simple movement on crutches exponentially more difficult by adding spins, maneuvers, and obstacles whenever possible.

Extreme crutching is not for everyone.  In fact, it really should not be for anyone, but that has not deterred me thus far.  My major obstacle is my 13 year old yellow lab who manages to get in my way whenever I try to move around the house.  His erratic and senile movements make my extreme crutching that much more exciting as I never know how or if he will move as I hobble towards him (most of the time he continues in his normal state of sleeping and snoring).  Stairs and inclines are also fun, as is hopping in and out of the shower without pulling down towel racks or slipping and breaking other bones.

So maybe it is not as adrenaline pumping an activity as many others but sometimes you've just got to improvise!

5 lessons I learned after a snowboarding accident in Colorado

On Thursday, March 1 2012 at about 3:00 PM MST I was in a pretty dire situation.  It was the final run on the final day of a six day snowboard trip in Colorado.  Riding at a high speed through about 20 inches of powder, my board got caught on a totally submerged tree and stopped abruptly but my body continued moving at the same speed I was traveling.  I found myself laying prostrate on a steep, wooded, back country trail unable to ride or even move my shattered right leg as my body quickly approached hypothermia.

My Wilderness First Responder training was utterly useless at this point; it only functioned to inform me how many ways I had already messed up and what my slim odds were of getting rescued.  I obviously made it out alive and while recovering in the (amazing) Vail Hospital I thought of my top five blunders and lessons learned from my accident.

1. Never, ever ride alone - This rule applies to almost every outdoor sport.  For activities like wakeboarding it is easy to follow because you need a driver and a spotter to get out on the lake.  On this day it was too easy for me to break this cardinal rule.  My friends were tired and they chose to take an easier run to the bottom.  I felt that even after six straight days of riding over 20 thousand feet of vertical each day I was up to an experts-only, back country chute trail on my own.  Ignoring all of my leadership and survival training I set off on my own for one last run in the fresh, deep powder.  There are reasons that we should not ride alone.  Equipment can fail.  Inclement weather can roll in unexpectedly.  Accidents can happen.  Having 20 years of snowboarding experience on multiple continents in every imaginable terrain made me feel invincible and I did something that I have taught my groups not to do for the past seven summers.
2. Be prepared - While I was still "in-bounds" on the mountain I should have had some emergency equipment with me if I was going to attempt back country terrain.  If I had not been found in the vast terrain by a skier I could have been stuck on the mountain for hours, overnight, or longer.  With no emergency blanket, first aid kit, lighter or matches, compass, shovel, food, or water I would have had 0% chance of surviving for any lengthy period of time.  When leading adventure trips I always carry an emergency pack.  While running wakeboarding camps we always have a first aid kit on the boat.  I should not have left the main trail system without the proper gear; rookie mistake.
3. Charge your cell phone - After my snowboarding crash I assessed my injuries and my predicament and reached for my phone.  It had shut off due to lack of power.  I pressed and held the "POWER" button and it turned on but instantly turned off again.  I managed to warm up the battery enough to send one text message to a friend to call 911 but then the phone died for good and I had no way of knowing if my friend received my message or if help would come.  The cell phone is a revolutionary safety device only if it is powered up in case of an emergency.  I spent the whole day wasting its juice on staying in touch with friends on the mountain, using silly apps to track my speed, number of runs, and vertical feet, and to take fun pictures and videos.  As I sat shivering in the snow with my fingers crossed that someone would show up I regretted every wasted bar of power from that day.
4. Having a plan makes all the difference - Here is something that I actually did right.  Before departing on my own I told my friend exactly which run I was taking and where we would meet.  When I did not show up my friend knew something was wrong and got in touch with ski patrol.  Having an emergency plan is so critically important for situations like this.  Had my friend not waited for me at that particular lift I could have been stranded for a much longer amount of time.
5. Practice what you preach - Basically I should have known better.  I teach young adults how to responsibly have fun in the outdoors and would be disappointed in any of my campers who left my program and did something stupid like this.  As one of my close friends said after hearing about my accident: "Too many people love you, don't be an idiot next time."  She is right.  I made some crucial judgement mistakes and am fortunate that all I have to show for it is a leg injury which will heal in a few months' time.

So here is how I was rescued and what happened afterwards:

Within about 10 minutes of the accident a skier heard my calls for help and hiked to where I was on the ground.  He called 911 who sent ski patrol to my location.  Simultaneously my friend at the bottom of the mountain called ski patrol who told her that they were on their way and to wait for me at the emergency clinic.  Ski patrol arrived about 15 minutes later, splinted my injured leg, and strapped me in to their sled.  It took about an hour for three of them to ski me down the steep terrain and back to the main ski area and to the medical clinic.  At the clinic they assessed the injury through x-rays and tests and recommended immediate surgery.  I was transferred by ambulance to the hospital at Vail where a world-class orthopedic surgeon was ready and waiting.  I underwent surgery that night where he dropped a large titanium rod through the center of my tibia and screwed it in place below the knee and at the ankle.  I spent three days recovering in the Vail hospital and am now back in New Hampshire going through physical therapy and recovery for multiple tibia fractures as well as a shattered fibula.

I would say lesson learned; the pain will go away in the coming weeks but the physical and emotional scars will function to remind me not to break my own outdoors safety rules in the future.

Why I love watersports (camps)

I learned to waterski when I was eight years old - summer of 1993 - at a day camp in southern NH.  They had a rickety old outboard boat that was broken down more days than it worked but I would race to the dock every morning and jostle in line with the older kids in order to get one of the limited slots to ski.  By the end of that summer I was absolutely hooked.  Nothing beat the feeling of cruising over the water, cutting across the wake, and showboating to the other campers on shore. When I started searching for overnight camps two years later my only requirement was that they offered waterskiing.  During that first summer at overnight camp I got bored with skiing on two skis and focused on dropping a ski and ultimately getting up on one ski.  Perseverance turned out to be the key as day in and day out I dragged through the water, drinking half the lake in the process.  My instructor, Chris, would not let me quit until I had gotten up on just one ski and after a month at camp I was slalom skiing.

The camp bought a new boat the next year with a pylon that raised the rope seven feet or so into the air.  A second-hand wakeboard came from somewhere and it was the new rage.  We could not get enough of jumping the little wake that the ski boat created, trying to get higher into the air than the other kids, landing face first in the water and begging for another pull.  I attended that overnight camp for five summers, until I was 15 in the year 2000.  By that last summer I had coerced the camp director to just block off my class rotation with "ski".  I would head out on the boat at 9am and get back to camp at 4:15pm having skied, tubed, or wakeboarded at least once or twice an hour, all day long.

In probably the most memorable experience I had at camp, three of us coerced one of the boat drivers to take us out at 5am when the lake was glassy and calm.  En route to the lake we encountered a massive male moose who just looked at us like "what are these crazy people doing before sunrise at MY lake?"  We took turns behind the boat getting pulled through perfectly smooth water and as the sun crept up we all congratulated each other on an epic early morning shred session.  Arriving back at camp for breakfast we silently snuck into the cafe, all four of us collaborators returning from a victorious secret mission.

Predictably when I started working as a camp counselor in 2004 it was as a boat driver and ski/wakeboard instructor.  While the boats have gotten incrementally more advanced and powerful and the skis/boards are lighter and packed with cutting edge design, it is still just about being on a boat with awesome people and enjoying some great sports.  Today, 19 years since I first squeezed my feet into a pair of old wooden skis at day camp, I am still out there every summer teaching, learning, ripping behind a boat, and hopefully creating these kinds of lasting memories for my campers at Water Monkey Camp.

Top 5: Reasons why Merrymeeting Lake is the ultimate camp location

There is a tendency for summers at Merrymeeting Lake to drift by in a blur of sun, sand, water, boats, and BBQ.  You fall in to a routine like nowhere else on the planet.  Early morning, purple sunrises with the fog lifting off the water and floating over the mountains.  Sunny days spent out on the boat with friends.  Evenings eating outside on the deck.  Night cruises around the coves and inlets blanketed by a million shining stars.  There are some unique aspects to Merrymeeting that make it the ultimate spot to host a summer camp.

1. So clean you could drink it - The depth and flow of the lake keep it so clean that you could literally bottle the water and sell it at the store.  Merrymeeting is consistently ranked as one of the top cleanest lakes in the country and that is a stat the local residents are proud of and try hard to maintain.  Everyone takes the health of the lake seriously so you rarely, if ever, see floating debris, foreign invasive plants, or oil/gas in the water.
2. Uncrowded/undeveloped - Merrymeeting has a total of one marina on its shores and one public boat ramp yet is miles in length and big enough to cruise around and have fun.  Larger lakes in the area tend to draw the crowds and thus it is common on Merrymeeting to be out on the water mid-week and never have another boat in sight.  Few boats mean less traffic-produced waves which equals glassy conditions most days for boarding/skiing.  Decreased boating also yields an unparalleled playground for sailing, kayaking, and swimming without the risk of getting chopped up by a passing propeller.
3. Perfect temperature/weather - The depth of the lake (125 feet at its deepest point) comes in to play again in maintaining an ideal water temperature.  We have gorgeous summers in New Hampshire with the air temp hovering around 80 most days and the water getting into the 70's by the end of July and staying that way into September.  Not too hot, not too cold, but juuuuust right.
4. Friendly people - There is a camaraderie between the people who share their time out on Merrymeeting.  Everyone is a little more chilled out, happier, and thus friendlier than elsewhere in the real world.  You'll always get a salutation from any passing kayak, canoe, or motorboat and the only road traffic is caused by people stopping in the middle of the road to chat.  While wakeboarding or skiing on the lake you will hear hoots and see fist pumps as you pass people on shore or in other boats...everyone gets stoked to see people having fun on the water.
5. Wildlife - In my years at Merrymeeting I have seen some amazing wildlife.  The lake is home to a few pairs of loons, whose calls you can hear most evenings, and at night you cannot escape the croaking of giant bullfrogs.  There are turtles that lounge on docks, moose and deer that creep to the shores to drink, and bald eagles that circle around and swoop in for their fishy feasts.  I have also see a mountain lion, a few bear, and lots of foxes.  The animals mostly have a complete indifference to us and are happy to just go about their business and leave us to enjoy the perfect lake.

All of these reasons why Merrymeeting is great also remind us to share the lake, keep it clean, and preserve it for years to come.  Everyone surely has their favorite spot to spend the summer but for me it is Merrymeeting Lake so that is where Water Monkey Camp calls home.