Check out WTIP North Shore Radio’s, “Pack & Paddle,” featuring Scott from Bull Moose Patrol for wilderness tips you can use on your next outdoor adventure!
Scott chats with North Shore Radio host, Mark Abrahamson, about the lost art of canoe poling, and its practical use for today's canoeists.
Pack & Paddle: Canoe Poling Transcript
0:00:00.0 Mark: Scott Oeth is a registered Maine guide, an Eagle scout, and Minnesota master naturalist. He is an instructor for the Okpik National Cold Weather Leader School. Scott recently gave a presentation at Midwest Mountaineering's Outdoor Expo, entitled The Lost Art of Canoe Poling. He joins us now by phone. Welcome, Scott.
0:00:21.3 Scott Oeth: Good morning, Mark.
0:00:23.6 Mark: What is canoe poling? I have to say, I've done a lot of boundary waters trips where I've just flipped my paddle along around and tried to push through the muck. I think this is probably more sophisticated. [laughter]
0:00:36.1 SO: Yeah, it's kind of a mystery. It's relatively unknown, but canoe poling is usually where you're standing in a canoe and using an 11, 12-foot-long pole and using that to push off the bottom and propel yourself. So if you look at a lot of old National Geographic magazines, you'll see people all over the world standing in dugout canoes or in rafts pushing with bamboo poles, and it's a skill that was once very popular throughout the Northwoods, with the natives and certainly lumberjacks using pike poles to ride logs down the river. And then that translated to more recreational moving a canoe, but it's died out in our region, and it's a great skill for shallow, rocky rivers, so not something that would typically be done as often in the boundary waters, although you can actually travel deep water using, like, a kayak pole paddle.
0:01:25.2 Mark: Now, on rivers, is it used when you're going through rapids, too, or how does that work?
0:01:32.7 SO: Yeah, it's a really cool skill, and like paddling, it can be used at many different levels, so you can stand in the canoe and peacefully glide down a gentle river or just kinda give yourself nice pushes to help move yourself along or maybe reach out in front of yourself to slow your descent or navigate side to side on the river, so it can be an easy, kind of peaceful approach, or there's some folks that really like to challenge themselves and go up and down really fast, aggressive Class III Rapids, so some of the folks that I've traveled with out in the Northeast, it's amazing seeing what they can do with a pole, climbing up ledges of a couple of feet by using the pole.
0:02:19.8 Mark: Wow. Now, the pole itself, I assume this is made out of wood?
0:02:25.8 SO: Well, that's the traditional approach. So black spruce was the most favored, and traditionally guides or Northwoods travelers would find a nice straight black spruce or maybe an ash, and limb it, and debark it, and usually put a metal tip on the fat end so that it doesn't get all frayed and split and boom out from being used against the bottom, but that's the classic approach. Some people make really nice wooden poles, but believe or not, there's a little niche community and sport poling is actually a category within the American Canoe Association, and it's taught within the British Canoe Union, and Canoe Paddle Canada, and a more sport approach is using an aluminum pole or sometimes fiberglass.
0:03:11.1 Mark: Now, is a pole flexible?
0:03:14.2 SO: It has a bit of give. You want it to have a bit of give, but it needs to be fairly stiff. It's an interesting combination, and it's kind of a riddle, because no one in this area, in Minnesota, or Wisconsin, Ontario, is really making canoe poles. There's a couple of people out east here making traditional wooden poles or aluminum poles, but you need it to be light. Otherwise, it'll tire you out, just like you wouldn't want to have a really heavy canoe paddle, but it needs to have a bit of weight so it sinks to the bottom, especially if you're in a strong current.
0:03:43.1 Mark: Sure.
0:03:43.2 SO: If it's too light, the current will push it back before it grabs in the bottom, and it needs a pretty good side wall strength so it doesn't bend or kink over.
0:03:53.0 Mark: Now, I would imagine a little bit wider canoe would be best for being able to stand, and talk about what kind of canoes are best.
0:04:00.9 SO: Yeah, well, there again, like paddling, there's trade-offs. So traditionally, if you look in Maine, New Brunswick, Labrador, where poling really reached its height and there's still a handful of full-time guides or traditionalists that keep it alive, they tended to like long, 18 and a half foot, 20-foot-long canoes. The wood canvas canoes, the beautiful EM Whites, and they would be fairly flat-bottomed, and one of the things they really liked about poling is that area is laced with rivers with rocky bottoms, and later in the season, the water level's low, and with the long canoes, they can still carry a huge load and not draw much water and use the pole to work their way. If they're taking a client up to the moose hunting camp or trout fishing, they can work their way up river with that client and a couple of weeks' worth of supplies, and then same thing come back down and protect their canoe with a moose in there.
0:05:00.0 SO: So that's the traditional approach, and I have a 20-foot prospector type canoe, and it's big, and it's heavy, but it's very forgiving because it has a very wide beam, and it's very stable. So in some ways it's easy, and if you're ascending, going up ledges, a long canoe, it works like a teeter-totter.
0:05:17.6 Mark: Sure.
0:05:17.6 SO: You get your weight way back like you're pulling a wheelie, and you get that nose up on the ledge, and you give a couple of good pushes. You start working your way forward, and that's how you kind of teeter-totter your way up some ledges. But what I use mostly now and what's a lot of fun, is more of a 16-foot prospector type canoe, so kind of classic canoe design with a bit of rock or a bit of a round bottom, and that's a very sporty, fun canoe, and you can do a lot. I use a Wenonah Prospector. They have a material called T-Formex, and I have one of their older Royalex ones. So those are very tough, rugged materials that can take a bit of a beating. It makes them a lot of fun to play with.
0:05:54.7 Mark: Now, you sound like you'd be an excellent teacher for this. I betcha you teach it, huh?
0:06:00.1 SO: I do. So I have a business, sort of guiding operation, where I take people on trips, and if they're interested, we try and give some lessons in the skills, and probably be doing some more clinics. I've done a lot of presentation-type training and clinics for different groups, like the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association.
0:06:17.1 Mark: If somebody would want to see this, is there an online video I could watch or...
0:06:23.9 SO: Well, if you go to YouTube and you just search for canoe poling, there's a couple videos on there. Not too many, but there are a few. I've written about it on my blog, on bullmoosepatrol.com, and hope to have quite a bit more coming through my channels from Bull Moose Patrol, both in terms of written stuff and getting some videos up. But there are a few videos out there on YouTube, and one of the best teachers, there's, they say, several real masters out in the Northeast. There's a fellow named Harry Rock, and he actually produced an instructional DVD that's excellent. You can find that online and buy it, if you're really interested in diving into this.
0:07:00.1 Mark: Now, do you think you'd be spending any time up in the boundary waters or on the North Shore here?
0:07:03.7 SO: Oh, Mark, I love the boundary waters and the North Shore, and every time... I live in the Twin Cities, and every time I go up there, I think, "Why aren't I here more often?" It is pretty often, so yes, absolutely love it.
0:07:17.6 Mark: You can follow Scott Oeth's adventures at www.bullmoosepatrol.com. This has been fascinating, Scott. Anything else you wanna add?
0:07:29.8 SO: It's been a pleasure, Mark, and hopefully, maybe when the water is down a little bit later in the summer, I'll get to explore some of those really fast, rocky, fun rivers you have blowing down into Lake Superior up in the North Shore.
0:07:40.1 Mark: All right, well, thank you very much for speaking with us today.
0:07:42.7 SO: Thanks a lot, Mark.