Tag: kayaking

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A Quiet Paddle

By Michael Zimny

There are paddlers who slog the Big Muddy and those who ride the white wavelets of Rapid Creek, but what about the slow-water rivers that flow east toward the Missouri — the Grand, Moreau, White, Cheyenne and Bad?

You don’t hear many a paddler’s tale about these rivers, and there are reasons. Access can be an issue. The navigable season is short, even in a wet year. Neck-level barbed wire is a hazard.

If you’re willing to negotiate the obstacles, there are spans of the Cheyenne and White that run through pristine portions of Southern Hills and Badlands. We previously hipped you to the stretch of the Cheyenne that cuts through the Wild Horse Sanctuary.

Further east, you can access the river via Forest Service Roads in the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. We started just north of the bridge near Red Shirt, on FS 7053E, a short pull-off to the west off Highway 40. There’s an easy takeout at the confluence with Battle Creek, accessible via a series of nameless Forest Service two-tracks.

This route covers approximately 8 river miles and passes alternately through grassy knolls where the river gashes a squid ink-black path through exposed Pierre Shale, into the arid outer badlands. A beaver kept pace for a mile or so. A pair of nesting bald eagles screeched as if protecting eggs or eaglets. Mother mergansers and Canada geese escorted their fuzzy young. There is one barbed wire hello, and many sandbars. Almost certainly, people will be entirely absent.

A longer route could be achieved from the Red Shirt put-in to near the Creston dinosaur, in one long day or with one night camped out on the grassland.

Michael Zimny is a content producer for South Dakota Public Broadcasting and is based in Rapid City. He blogs for SDPB and contributes columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Paddling the Cheyenne

By Michael Zimny

Floating down the Cheyenne River is like a meander through time.

Prickly pear and yucca tap the seams between multi-hued geologic age-layers, like fossil-rich black Pierre shale and the Spearfish Formation’s red racetrack. Dinosaur bones and coiled ammonites sleep off their extinction in rock cocoons.

On a particular stretch, curious wild stallions may follow you along the banks.

Birds you might not associate with the Black Hills — like pelicans, cormorants and hooded mergansers — fish the murky waters.

The Cheyenne isn’t often navigable but when spring rains swell its banks, as they did this spring, the river offers a seldom-traveled path through the Southern Hills.

We took advantage of our rain bounty on a day with flows that measured 600 cubic feet per second (according to the Bureau of Reclamation) to give you a glimpse of what’s out there.

We put in at a public access point on Rocky Ford road, on the south side of the river. (You’ll need a four-wheel drive vehicle to get there.) From there the river flows southwest before snaking east into the Angostura Reservoir, our excursion’s end.

The Cheyenne has a documented (by geomorphologists) history of stream piracy, meaning it bumrushed smaller streams and stole their flows. Sometimes the channel you’re paddling may be the cannibalized remnant of a ghost creek.

Despite its tendency toward fluvial imperialism, the Cheyenne is a gentle river. This stretch only has one rapid that might be considered a class II. The only other potential hazard is the occasional fence, but the ones we encountered were well marked and easy to pass under.

A mile or so downstream from the public access point the river winds through the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary, and while it’s worth driving in and stopping by the visitor center, it’s an excellent means of conveyance through the mustangs’ galloping grounds.

The riparian zone draws many birds, including great blue herons, ducks, geese, hawks, cliff swallows, turkey buzzards and many pelicans, which can be seen in groups large and small.

If you’re inclined you could stand in your boat and shout the lines of Edward Lear’s The Pelican Chorus.

King and Queen of the Pelicans we;
No other Birds so grand we see!
None but we have feet like fins!
With lovely leathery throats and chins!
Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee!
We think no Birds so happy as we!
Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican jill!
We think so then, and we thought so still

They’re noble birds, with a regal bearing, and look very striking (if a bit out of place) soaring over cliffs of Lakota sandstone.

They’re unique migrants in a unique landscape, a place rife with signs of an ancient sea, roamed by wild horses like the 19th century Plains. To paddle here is to explore the grandeur of the Southern Hills in a way few others do. If you get the chance, you may thank the rains.

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Angels Along the River

By Jarett C. Bies

Kayakers paddling the Missouri River from source to mouth find South Dakotans willing and eager to help. Photo by Jessica Giard.

Each spring, South Dakotans who live along the Missouri River become friends to adventure hunters attempting to paddle the entire river, starting in Montana at the source and continuing to St. Louis (or sometimes all the way to the Gulf of Mexico).

The trip has allure because the Missouri is the longest river in North America at 2,341 miles. After all, would you train to scale a mountain and then fly to Alaska to climb something other than Denali?

As paddlers descend the 500 river miles in South Dakota, they experience some of the Missouri’s most dynamic contrasts. On the state’s northern border, they’re on the inland sea that is Oahe, the”Big Bear,” whose winds can make travel impossible. Lakes Sharpe, Francis Case and Lewis & Clark aren’t much easier. Luckily the state’s long river stretches provide a reprieve, since hundreds of miles still lie ahead for them.

Those who host, help or offer companionship give priceless assistance. Paddlers live off what they can haul, so restocking backpacks and recharging batteries is a necessity. When Mike Norder took ownership of Bridge City Marina near Mobridge, the former owner told him kayakers would be coming through from Montana.”Sure enough, we had folks in that spring, and you do scratch your head,” Norder says.”It’s a crazy journey. These people are taking a year, or longer for the ones doing it each summer, and it’s amazing to me. The isolation out on the river. The personal journey. It’s admirable.”

Only a handful of paddlers came through in Norder’s first year of business, then the number jumped to eight one summer.”We enjoy hosting them, and I guess it was just the way I was brought up. We’ll let them take a cabin if we have one open, just so they can unwind and refresh their batteries,” he says. “We can offer them a place to sleep and a shower. I think when you haven’t had one for a week or longer, it’s a treat.”

Janet Moreland paddled the Missouri River from Montana to the Gulf of Mexico, the first woman to complete the 3,800-mile water journey. Photo by Jessica Giard.

He says his family enjoys the newcomers. “We like to make a party of it. One time we did a walleye feed and then another time we did a steak cookout. We make a celebration out of what they’re doing. I call them river warriors, and it’s nice to pick their minds, to hear about the motivations behind their trips. Like with Janet (Moreland), she was doing it to inspire kids and to raise river awareness. We have a big family, so that’s where we connected.”

Moreland was the first woman and first American to finish the source to sea trip. She started May 1, 2012, and completed her descent to the Gulf of Mexico the following December.

Social media — especially a Facebook page called Missouri River Paddlers — has made a huge difference for water travelers and for South Dakotans willing to help them around a dam, or offer a place to sleep or a hot meal. Pat Wellner, a kayak racer from Pierre, thinks the uptick in paddlers doing the trip is noteworthy, but that the Facebook page, created by paddling enthusiast Norman Miller of Livingston, Mont., has made a big difference in spreading the word.

“The first time I met someone doing the trip was in 2009, and now you can keep track of the river travelers thanks to Norm’s page,” Wellner says.”I guess my motivation to help is our common interests: paddling and the river. It’s fun for me to see how they’ve prepared, the boats and paddles they use, the stay-dry equipment.” He also warns paddlers that the Big Bend area is tricky and that they have plenty of wind and big water yet to come.

Wellner also appreciates the motivation behind the trips. He met Dom Liboiron, a freelance writer who would paddle, stop to work, and then return to paddling. Liboiron dedicated his 2012-13 Montana to New Orleans trip to his late uncle, Mitch, and to raise awareness for heart disease. He learned to appreciate Canadian Rod Wellington’s”no mechanical assistance” approach. Wellington manhandled all his gear and kayak around each of South Dakota’s four dams.

“What they do is tough, especially in terms of time. Finding that much time off, and the money to cover such a trip, is not easy, and that’s why it seems to be college kids or retirees doing the whole stretch,” he says.”There are so many fitness levels. Some are doing it aggressively and others are going at their own pace.” Wellner says many of the paddlers are engaged in”ninja camping” where they alight along any bank or slice of shore available to them.

Shawn Hollingsworth paddled the Missouri River in a homemade pine canoe featuring pink ribbons for breast cancer research. Photo by Rod Wellington.

Journalist Jessica Giard has met a lot of river travelers in her decade-plus of living in Chamberlain. She said many of the source-down paddlers stop in Chamberlain in part because of geography.”There’s not much between Pierre and Yankton, so it’s nice to enrich their travels a bit, but they have to rely on locals, sometimes for help, sometimes for insight on local color or guidance,” she says.”It might be as simple as a meal or a ride to the store.”

Giard’s most memorable experience with source-down travelers came when she joined a group of British adventurers for several days on the water. She says river-lovers quickly find common ground.

“They want to experience more than the terrain. They want to truly know the places they stop, and how life’s lived there,” Giard says.”Each has their own journey, with unique goals and methods, but they have all kept me motivated to keep seeking more adventures and to stop imposing limits on what I do or can do.”

Cheryl Pruett of Platte read of river travelers on Facebook and that made it possible for her to spend time as a hostess for Janet Moreland. Pruett hosted her during a windy set of days near Snake Creek.”I took her shopping and gave her a way to get to town to replenish her supplies,” Pruett says.”We ended up spending a lot of time together, and she was just so warm and truly interested in South Dakota. Janet was definitely a motivator. I was amazed by her journey, a single woman on her own. But she did it, and she made me think I need to do more new things and to never quit exploring.”

A day after Moreland’s departure, Pruett climbed aboard a watercraft and went down river, hoping to see her newfound friend.”We did find her and she’d stopped because she’d broken a rudder cable, so we were able to help her out,” Pruett says.”She called us ‘river angels,’ and it felt good to hear her say that.”

While most kayakers would never dream of replicating the source-down journey, there’s a transitive property to the face-to-face experience. Wayne Nelson-Stastny is a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service scientist, a Wagner native, and a huge proponent of the source-down travelers he’s met. In Yankton, his family hosted Moreland and helped her depart onto the first truly moving water she’d paddled in months.

“Both of my kids had a million questions for her and we had her over, let her get some laundry done. What she’s doing is amazing,” he says.”She’s enhancing the understanding we all have for this river system, but she’s also showing women that great things are possible.”

Nelson-Stastny says he and his family were out on Lake Yankton the weekend after their experience with Moreland.”I’ve been on the river since I was a kid, and I was out there almost every day in the 1990s when I was in graduate school, and you never saw people doing this trip,” he said.”Now you’ll find a dozen or more each spring. It’s inspiring people, and I know it’s inspired my kids. All we did was give her [Moreland] a little rest and a meal. She gave us a lot more.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2014 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Changing Pace

Photography by Stephen Gassman

Story by Katie Hunhoff

Kayakers float past the rocky shores of Sylvan Lake. Granite surrounding the lake is over 1.7 billion years old.

Dramatic granite spires border several Black Hills lakes, adding an atmosphere of permanence and serenity. Kelly Lane of Rapid City has been floating beneath the granite for over 50 years. But the veteran kayaker knows better than most of us that nothing lasts forever.

Kelly Lane credits kayaking for keeping him out of a wheelchair.

Lane was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease 21 years ago. Today, at age 64, he credits his passion for kayaking as the reason he isn’t in a wheelchair full-time.”You have to reassess your life when you have Parkinson’s to find value in it, because it takes away what appears to be valuable for you. I refuse to allow it to do that. I have to find value in my life.”

Lane taught science for 20 years before Parkinson’s forced him to retire. Kayaking our mountain waters has been his salvation. He began the sport when he was just 12 years old. He wrote a guidebook in 2013 and is bursting with knowledge on all Black Hills waterways.

Even though most of the lakes are manmade, he says a Black Hills kayaker sometimes feels as if he’s a frontier explorer because of the solitude, framed by rock and pines. As the seasons change, he says,”There is always something new to marvel at, a different angle of light, a new beaver dam, a newly downed tree.”

Thirty-three lakes are hidden in the deep valleys of the Black Hills. Five are natural; most of the rest were formed by dams built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. Lane says every drop of water in the Black Hills eventually drains into the Cheyenne River as it flows northeasterly to the Missouri.

Matt Howards, of Madison, Wis., lands a rainbow trout on Coxes Lake just outside of the Black Hills.

Lane loves kayaking the lakes because of the solitude.”There are so many lakes around the hills and so few people that, when paddling on them, you almost never have to share the lake with another boat,” he says. He often kayaks with his wife, Becky, a math teacher and avid outdoorswoman, and their twin daughters.

Sylvan Lake is a frequent destination.”It’s just beautiful. There’s no shore, it’s just lined with rock. But then you can go down the road to Legion Lake and there is mud and soft grass surrounding the lake. Completely different. And Coxes Lake sits just outside the Black Hills but you feel like you’re in the middle of the prairie.”

Lane’s favorite is Pactola, the largest reservoir in the Hills.”It’s our home lake. We paddle it in all seasons, even sliding on the ice in the winter. We paddle it all hours of the day and night, between dawn paddles, night paddles, and daytime uses. We teach on it, practice on it, race on it and relax on it,” he says.

Pactola is also a favorite of kayak instructor Chad Andrew, a friend of Lane.”Most of the wildlife I have seen has been at Pactola,” Andrew says. He’s spotted osprey (there is a nesting pair at Pactola), blue heron, mink, muskrat, coyote, deer, bald and golden eagles and other bird species.

Sylvan Lake is the oldest reservoir in the Hills.

Andrew guides students up Rapid Creek, which flows into Pactola near Silver City, for beginning whitewater instruction.”The further up you paddle the more intense the current will get until you can’t paddle upstream any further,” he says. To get near the creek, Andrew recommends accessing the Jenny Gulch area and then following the cove to the right toward the cliff jumping area. You will have to paddle a half-mile before you see the lake thin into Rapid Creek.

Pactola and Sheridan are great lakes for beginners, but Andrew recommends all kayakers take a safety course before getting on the water. He takes safety seriously. His brother was killed while kayaking at the Potomac Falls near Washington, D.C. Andrew is certified with the American Canoe Association as a Level 4 whitewater kayaking instructor. Both Lane and Andrew are members of a group advocating for a paddle park by M Hill in Rapid City, near the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. They believe a man-made kayaking area will offer a safe, controlled environment for tubers and kayakers.

Quickly changing weather is the biggest danger for kayakers on the usually calm Hills lakes. One year, Andrew was caught in a hailstorm while on Pactola.”By the time I reached my car, vehicles were damaged and windows were broken out,” he says. Luckily, he always wears a helmet to be a good example to his students.”With golf ball sized hail, it was a definite bonus to have my helmet,” he says.

Every spring, as ice recedes from the lakes, Lane returns to the water. Parkinson’s has robbed him of other outdoor interests like running and skiing, but friends help him continue to kayak.”Someone will say ‘I’m heading to this spot’ and I’ll just ask them to pick me up.” The disease has changed him, Lane says, but not in the ways you might think.”Parkinson’s doesn’t slow me down, it changes my pace. It doesn’t take things away, it makes me choose other things.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2012 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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More from Poinsett Summers

Our May/June issue includes a feature on Lake Poinsett, where well-known photographer Greg Latza and his family are the newest residents of a lake community that has attracted people to its shore for centuries. Latza sent us several beautiful photos taken the last few summers. We couldn’t use them all, so here are some that didn’t make the magazine.

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South Dakota Kayak Challenge

The last natural and wild stretch of the 2,300-mile Missouri River is a 75-mile corridor from Yankton to Sioux City but eagles and herons usually outnumber people along the river. That changes on a Saturday every May with the South Dakota Kayak Challenge. Started four years ago, the kayak (and canoe) race attracts more than a hundred adventurers to the scenic waterway. The challenge was held Saturday (May 25) despite overcast skies and a strong east wind. Photos by Bernie Hunhoff.