Posts

My Inauguration into 'Old Fartdom' on Upper Cherry

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 This blog is cross-posted on the Kokatat team blog I grew up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and yet until last summer, I hadn’t yet done any of the high elevation Sierra classic overnighters. I didn’t learn to kayak until after I left home and by the time I was skilled enough to run them, I was no longer living in California. But more importantly, I never made it a priority of mine, and for years got swept up in other events and didn’t follow up on what my heart was telling me to do. Growing up just an 1.5hr drive from Upper Cherry, and yet never running it, had been a niggling thorn in my side for over a decade. This last year, I decided to do something about that missing part of my soul and I made a point to return to my roots with a best friend from college, Dan Menten and a new friend James McCleod. Leif (my husband) dropped us off at the West Cherry hike and went back to my parents’ place to hang out with our two kids (Davis 4yrs, Calvin 1.5yrs). We barely snuck in a narrow windo
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Turning competition from stress to fun in whitewater kayaking

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An introspective based on 16 years of competition to help motivate more paddlers, especially women, to consider competition as a fun avenue for self-improvement to push their skills.  This blog is cross-posted on Kokatat's team blog titled: Motivations for competing in whitewater kayaking When I first started competing in 2005 it was fun because I had no expectations for myself with regards to results - I just did it for fun. Then, I spent many years competing in whitewater and feeling really stressed about it. I would enter competitions with high expectations and invariably be disappointed in the results. In 2019, I finally started having some fun competing again by being more intentional with my practice and more fully present with those who surround me. I am now able to experience the joys of focused improvement and share in the joys of others’ successes. And, results have followed. In this blog I use my own maturation as a competitor, as well as informal conversations with my f
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A Word on Wood

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A slightly shortened version of this post was cross-posted on the Kokatat team blog on March 14, 2021 . -All photos by Leif Anderson. I have spent a large portion of my professional career thinking deeply about wood in rivers and how important it is for the ecosystems of the world; from the headwaters where logs enter our drainage systems to the estuaries and oceans where they are integral for ocean food webs. I am also a boater and am usually able to feel okay about the wood removal that the boating community does because, in general, it is fairly tactful and minimal while also appropriately mitigating risks.  Melissa Vaughn with Bryar Skinner and Michael Jonnson, Thunder Creek, WA  However, this past spring there was a log removal project on one of my local runs that made me pretty sad and upset and this past winter, during the high flow season I have noticed a knee-jerk mentality among my fellow paddlers that all wood, if inconvenient to you, must be removed and chopped up immediat
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Levelling Up your Kayaking (without scaring the sh*t out of Yourself!)

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This blog was cross-posted on the Kokatat Team blog on Oct 12 2020. link here .  In this blog, I present some specific strategies that you can use to progress to harder water more safely. I don’t prescribe one 'right way’ because everyone’s life situation, mental states and experiences are different. However, I will present a framework that you can use to tailor your own progression to your own situation. My ultimate goal is to provide some insights so that everyone can have a lifelong, challenging, fulfilling and positive relationship with whitewater, where you don’t stop because you feel like you stalled out or because of a scary experience. This blog is a revised and more succinct version of the live webinar I gave for CaliCollective ( access the recording here ), May 2020. The ideas and essential skills I present are based on deep reflection into my own kayaking progression into harder whitewater, which included very few injuries and incidents, and fostered in me a ver
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Location: White Salmon, WA, USA
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