Camping in the North Dakota Badlands via Boat

Lake Sakakawea Boating Trip Log, June 12-14, 2020

In this post I describe a 3-day, 2-night trip in the North Dakota badlands via Lake Sakakawea. I traveled by RIB (rigid inflatable boat) to the camp site. In a previous post I provided more background on Lake Sakakawea; feel free to read it if you want to understand the context of this trip. This article in the New York Times provides excellent descriptions of the lake and its shoreline.

Day 1: June 12

My plan was to cruise in my 22-foot RIB, a Zodiac 650, to a remote, scenic bay I call “O’Keefe Bay” on Lake Sakakawea and stay two nights. I put the boat in at Indian Hills Resort in Good Bear Bay. The Zodiac has a rigid bottom, an inflatable U-shaped collar around this bottom, plus two 70 horsepower Yamaha outboard engines yielding a maximum boat speed of 40 mph.

The prep work for this trip seemed excessive, two hours on Thursday, three hours on Friday so I started late again. I arrived at Indian Hills resort from my lake home near Coleharbor around 1600 but did not head out onto the lake until 1730, arrived at O’Keefe Bay at 1900. On the 14-mile trip from Indian Hills to O’Keefe Bay the winds were from southeast, on my back, around 15 mph. I cruised along on the south shore. There was a golden glow off the high cliffs to port. Wind from the south east at 130° so easy cruising with it at my back. The sun was gorgeous, I was cruising directly towards it and felt like I was chasing it.

North Dakota Badlands via Boat — South Shore of Lake Sakakawea near Bear Creek Bay.

It took 1.5 hours to set up camp and secure the boat. I used the Danforth anchor for the bow and the two grappling anchors plus chain and rode for the port and starboard side anchors. My Eureka tent was set up quickly. I really love the hard work to set up camp and the exhaustion it creates, but I’m getting muscle cramps from dehydration. So I need to stay hydrated and I need more training strength and stretching to continue with these rigorous trips.

North Dakota Badlands — Camp at O’Keefe Bay.

It’s hard to decompress on such short trips but they’re still awesome. My goal is finding beauty on each trip and record and share it. I’m surprised how nervous I still am when I start out, but my confidence is building each trip. Sakakawea is a big lake and there is almost no settlement on the shoreline, especially where I was going. When I first got out on the lake, no one else was on the water in the large, open portion of the lake where the Little Missouri Arm meets the bend as the river turns towards the east, and it was a bit spooky. I was not feeling strong, but that changed on the second day.

I set up camp in the same exact spot the last time I was at O’Keefe Bay over Labor Day weekend in 2019. The logs I had left last year were still there. I’m certain almost no one hikes or stays here because this bay is surrounded by very steep, rough, high hills. I’ve also never seen signs of cattle here, whereas cattle are quite common to see on Sakakawea’s shoreline. Thus O’Keefe Bay provides solitude except for the occasional curious fishing boat that stops by briefly for the view. On the second day I realized where I set up my tent is exposed to potentially falling rocks from the cliffs above me, so next time I’ll place my camp on the hill pointing into the bay that is not exposed to falling mud or rocks.

Rocks and debris from collapse of portion of the cliff face. O’Keefe Bay, Lake Sakakawea.

While checking the tent, I found extra tent guidelines to secure all parts of the tent. Noticed I can stake in the bottom of the tent as well, at the doors. Did not cook dinner, too exhausted and not hungry. Noticed this the whole trip, exhaustion and heat reduced my appetite. I also noticed I can go a full day, or even two days, eating very little while doing a massive amount of work. I assume this is good.

Looking towards the southwest from O’Keefe Bay into the Little Missouri Arm of Lake Sakakawea.

Day two: June 13, 2020

On day two I rose at 0700, spent an hour on golden hour photography and then did some video sequences.

I thought about my mindset when I’ve encountered Badlands before, being too logical and material, trying to use science to understand everything and put it in a box. Instead the right way is to not overthink it. Assume it was created this way for reasons I don’t really need to know, but I need to appreciate the beauty, like appreciating art in an impressionistic way. Just exist in it and flow into it.

The elusive “blue bird” that was really an Indigo Bunting.

At the end of the day I made the following notes: was very windy all day, excellent morning readings on the historical problems of modernity. Reviewed books on Kindle. Saw a bluebird that seemed incredibly out of place in this brown and yellow badlands hellscape. The bird lived in the cliff, disappeared before I got a good photo (I did get a not-so-great photo, see above).

Evolution can’t tell me why that bird is here, or why it’s blue, or frankly much of anything else. Later I learned it was probably an Indigo Bunting. My camp gear, including the tent, did well in the high winds that came up on this day. The shore anchoring rig for the Zodiac also worked well. The rig includes a Danforth bow anchor forward and rode plus chain from both the port and starboard stern cleats to shore. This keeps the boat perpendicular to shore so that the engines are in the deepest water possible while keeping the boat secure.

Day 3: June 14th

I woke up after a windy night during which the tent held up quite well. But the tent was noisy as it was jostled by the wind. I can see the advantage of a tunnel tent for the tundra here, where it’s more compact and less exposed to the wind. Having the tarp is essential for rain protection and comfort around camp if I switch to a tunnel tent.

Short video tour of O’Keefe Bay.

The SE wind was shaped by the surrounding hills so that it was bent and came around from the north when it hit my campsite. Interesting how the wind speed rose and fell. Woke up around 1900. Slow start, made coffee eventually, then read. Around 9am packed up and prepared for the return trip. Checked weather by VHF radio, winds from SE through the afternoon then from south later in the day, potential rain/storms throughout the day. It turned out to be fairly accurate; no storms but light rain, then later in the afternoon the sun finally came up.

Little Missouri Arm west shore in background.

During this trip I was shocked at how inaccurate the Navionics tool is, and I encountered several large submerged islands that were not marked anywhere on the Navionics map. I wonder if there is a “chart datum” setting for the lake level. It needs one.

On the return trip I passed through the Little Missouri Arm out onto the main lake, stayed on the south coast of the lake to get some protection from the strong (20 knot) SE wind, but as it was more easterly than southerly, there was a 2-3 foot chop on the big lake. I stopped in a couple bays to explore, including one that likely has a sand beach as it was surrounded by sandstone cliffs. I recorded this spot on the Navionics app.

North Dakota Badlands Trip — Beautiful bay on south shoreline *with a promising sand beach.*

On the trip east I drove at low speeds to keep the boat under control, for comfort, and to lower fuel use. I also shot video and took photos.

I discovered a Cove just across the lake from Good Bear Bay, where Indian Hills resort is located, that has exactly the same kind of beach as those found on Lake Superior . Basically a gradual change from coarse sand to pebbles to small rocks, then larger rocks, all layered vertically. It turns out this bay has a northwest exposure with a long 15+ mile fetch, so the prevailing northwest winds create consistent, fairly large wave action. There is a beach filled with this gravel and rock that’s 4 to 5 feet high. It’s amazing how similar it is to the beaches on Lake Superior. I believe there should be holding ground for anchoring, although it’s only tenable for east or south east winds. However if the winds shift, you can re-anchor in adjacent waters which have protection from north, northwest, and west winds.

Camping in the North Dakota Badlands — A Lake-Superior-type cove shoreline found on Lake Sakakawea.

I tried to swim on this beach but the main lake water was too cold for me. After lunch and a couple of hours exploring this beach, I headed across the lake and into Good Bear Bay and Indian Hill Resort, pulled out my boat and gear, and was able to get home uneventfully.

Observations

The iPhone’s small size, convenience, versatility (multiple lens), and automation makes its camera especially useful on expeditions. Of course it cannot take long-range zoom photos of wildlife, and can’t handle corner cases (like very low light or high dynamic range) that my Sony can, but I get many photos that would otherwise not happen.
With a deeper knowledge of the lake (it’s history, geology, and people) I could tell its story better. I’m going to work on that.
Once again, I am surprised at how much solitude you can achieve with an outdoor skills stack that combines multiple skills, including camping, boating, navigation and weather.

An Early Spring Overnight Canoe Trip on the St. Croix River

St Croix River Canoe Trip Log, May 10-11, 2020

The St. Croix River is a National Wild and Scenic River on the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin. It’s 169 miles in length and has historic significance in the fur trade as it was the highway that connected Lake Superior to the Mississippi. Its undeveloped, tree-lined shores are surrounded by state forests and parks. It’s a laid-back river with a few rapids thrown in. As a result, St. Croix a world-class river for canoeing and kayaking. It has numerous campsites, good fishing, and abundant wildlife along its shores.

I have canoed this river several times every year since 2005. In 2020, I was able to sneak 3 trips in. It’s a convenient, one-hour drive from my home to Grantsburg, where my outfitter is based. On these trips the outfitter takes me to canoe landings 10 to 20 miles upriver where I begin my travel downstream.

Day 1, May 10, 2020

I drove to Grantsburg to meet Jerry, who runs Wild River Outfitters with his wife Marilyn. Instead of the longer 30-river-mile Thayer to Highway 70 bridge trip, I decided to do just the run from Norway Point to Hwy 70, about 15 miles. This trip includes some easy Class 1 Rapids.

I would have preferred taking 3 days and 2 nights for the full trip but even just the overnight was worth it given the short drive from St Michael.

I put in at the Norway Point landing late at 5pm. The river was higher than normal, high enough that Jerry said I could take the Kettle River Slough, a shallow side channel that is impassable during low water. I chose not to take this route because I wanted to get to the campsite at the end of the Slough faster, and the alternate river left stretch is scenic, with endless white pines and gentle, undulating rapids. The campsite at the end of the confluence of the Kettle and St Croix Rivers was my goal for the first night. In the first hour of the trip I saw a beautiful immature bald eagle and a nesting osprey nesting near Nelson’s Landing, about 3 miles downriver from Norway Point. Turkey Vultures were lazily circling in the sky. The wind rose and fell, up to almost 15 knots, then dropping to calm again. But it was generally steady from the northwest at about 10 to 12 knots. The sky was cloudy, the temperature around 50 F.

My canoe paddle strokes were less rusty than on the previous weekend’s trip on the Kettle River. I kept the GoPro Camera clamped to front of boat, and took footage with both phone and voice control. I plan to turn on the linear (non fish eye) camera mode on more often. Also based on the high glare due to reflections of the water on this trip, I decided to purchase ND filters for cinematic views, and a polarizing filter to handle glare on the water. Another lesson: check the settings before every shot as the settings I used during the trip were not ideal. I know all this sounds obvious but I am hoping readers can learn from my mistakes.

On the first night night I targeted the South Point Camp, where the Kettle River Slough meets the St. Croix River. I have camped here many times in the past, with family and friends including with my son Andrew.

After a routine 8 mile paddle I came into camp at about 7:30pm and quickly got set up. Started a fire with an Esbit solid fuel cube. Did not cook, ate cheese and peanuts plus Federalist Lodi Zinfandel. Temperatures in camp dropped quickly after dark, to around 40 degrees, and I put on all my wool clothing and a goose down parka. I used the parka and a heavy sweater to cover my thin sleeping bag to stay warm that night. I do not like the narrow inflatable bed and plan to upgrade. Once it got dark I headed to bed. A bird made an odd call, a short buzz, on a regular 10 second or so cadence. It seemed to move around a lot. Otherwise an uneventful, rather cold night, with temps down to the mid 20s. I got up in the middle of the night to pee and saw that the sky had cleared and there was almost a full moon. Unlike previous solo trips, I had no fear of being alone. Bronze Age Mindset.

Day 2, May 11, 2020
The next morning, I slept in, until after 8am. The bright sun warmed my tent. A beautiful but chilly morning in camp.

I spent the morning and early afternoon reading, writing, and just soaking in the beauty of this magical spot, its wide, generous view of the rushing river, multiple islands and shorelines and big southern exposure, almost like a lake.

Many white wildflowers, Trillium, were coming up. I photographed them, and various parts of the rapids and the river with both the GoPro and my Sony A7III. A gorgeous bright day. I was approached by two shy deer who, after letting me take pictures for a few minutes, fled into the woods. Since this was a Monday, there was much less ATV noise from the nearby state park than the weekend before. Fabulous. That morning I did not cook, other than boiled water for coffee. Who knew fasting and hard spring travel go together. Tree swallows swarmed above my camp and the river all day, feasting on some bugs I never identified, but they must have been there because something was fueling their swarming energy. Saw eagles, ducks, mergansers, turkey vultures and more. Animals, like people, love spring.

Broke camp around 3pm and headed downriver. This time I tucked my behind in the rail behind my seat, and kept my back slightly curled, and my abs and gluts tight and this helped immensely with preventing back pain. It’s interesting how we have to relearn the basics every season for a lot of things, including canoeing.

I had two GoPro’s for filming and took quite a few shots. My plan was to fly the drone but to my surprise there were a lot of people on the river and the wind was a little high so the drone stayed grounded. GoPro settings: I found if I use the GoPro color settings, the results are pretty good. Dramatic but good. One camera was misconfigured and used 16:9 for the camera aspect ratio; the other camera had the ISO and color settings wrong. And both cameras needed polarizing and ND filters.

Otherwise the 7 mile paddle from camp to the takeout at the Highway 70 bridge was an idyll; cool, nice breeze on my back, the river just right in terms of flow. In a few places the wind veered and came upriver, briefly slowing me down, but the bright sun and quiet river made for a lovely spring trip. Pulled out at Hwy 70 and got back to St Michael on a routine return trip.

First Kettle and St. Croix River Overnight Canoeing Trip with My New Boat

Dates: May 2-3, 2020
Summary: A short, solo overnight canoe trip on the Kettle River in west central Minnesota.

Background: The Kettle River is a small, beautiful, near wilderness river that flows for about 70 miles from central Minnesota to the border with Wisconsin. I chose a stretch with both flat water and some rapids with outstanding camp sites available along the whole route.

May 2, 2020
I started the trip where the Kettle River crosses the Highway 48 bridge at roughly 2pm. Strong wind from NW at 20 to 25mph, a nice tail wind. Clear sky and 3/4 moon. Sunset was at 8:30pm so lights out by roughly 9pm, so plenty of time to cover the first 18 miles (I hoped).

I covered the exact trip described in the excellent book “Paddling Minnesota” [Trip 69] except I paddled into the St. Croix River and went all the way to Hwy 70.

The first 7 miles were bottomland forest. Strong NW wind at my back plus the fast current from moderately high water moved me along at 4+ knots. Saw a few other parties camping/fishing on the river, they had arrived via small motorboats the dropped in at a boat landing. No rapids in first 7 miles.

While paddling, I considered the best spot for the first night’s camp. Since this was the first canoe trip of 2020, my strokes were really rusty and I was sore and tired after only a few hours. I need more conditioning before the season starts. After a short stop to hydrate (and lose my camp chair when I forgot to repack it in the canoe), and another stop at the Big Eddy put in, I was able to get a picture of a map of the rest of trip on the Kettle River. (I’m such a pro I had forgotten my maps at home).

The time was roughly 6pm. Since I had another three hours of light I decided to go ahead and paddle through the 7 miles of rapids, keeping an eye out for possible campsites. Three were available, the last being Two Rivers, where the Kettle River enters the Kettle River slough, a side branch of the St. Croix River.

To make a long story short, I got through the 7 mile stretch of rapids with no problems, stopping only at Maple River and Big Eddy to scout rapids and check maps. The ledge at Big Eddy required some maneuvering and back ferrying and I was rusty both on boat positioning and ferrying. A couple of near misses were the result. I had done this stretch during the MCA training two years before.

With the wind and higher current through this stretch, I was sometimes going as fast as 7 to 8 knots. My Navionics maps were very helpful in checking position and speed. Saw quite a few people on the St. Croix, river left, the state park side. River right was the Chengwatana State Forest, saw no one on that side.

During 2 hours traveling I missed two campsites on river left; from the Navionics map I knew I should be close to Two Rivers camp, and sure enough, reached it around 8:15pm.

After unpacking gear, stowing the canoe, getting a bite to eat and some wine to relax with, I spent 30 minutes taking golden hour photos. I then got the tent set up and watched the first of the stars come out. Mars and Venus raced across the sky. Turkeys, rails, coyotes, and other animool frens greeted me with their voices. Finally fell asleep. Unlike my previous solo trips, that night I had no worries or fears. My animool frens would look out for me.

Day 2: May 3, 2020Spent the morning in camp taking photographs. The White Pines at river’s edge were stately, desperately resisting the river’s attempts to undercut and destroy them. Lots of signs of high water recently, with grass and branches from waterflow stuck in bottom land and trees. Did not cook dinner the previous night or make breakfast, stuck with cold food. Frankly just wasn’t that hungry, probably from adrenaline and stress. Very sore. No fire on day 1 or 2. Windy and cold, but sunny. This time of year the days are already very long (almost 15 hours) but it’s still chilly most mornings.

Finally set out at noon, with another 14 miles to go. Got the GoPro out for pics and filming. After 1st mile encountered the ledge and steep rapids as the Kettle joins the St. Croix. Stayed river right which worked well, but when I followed a channel to the right, I had to stop and scout. Lining upriver was not an option due to a large tree trunk blocking the way, so I found a route through the channel while scouting and was able to easily pass through. The rapids-running rust in my system was getting washed away.

The rest of the trip was easy paddling with the high current and a North wind that was again right on my back. Saw many fisherman along the way, most said fishing was slow. Sunny skies. Cool, but not cold. Weather was perfect. Most campsites on this stretch were used, but not the one at the confluence of the St. Croix and Kettle.

Stopped at the ssland a couple miles north of Hwy 70 bridge (across from Sandrocks Cliffes) for lunch. A sweet memory as this was the last place I swam together with Duke, my 13-year-old lab who passed away the previous fall.

A plane was flying oddly low over the park on the Wisconsin side. Canoed pass a group of red winged blackbirds who all in unison raged a me for getting too close, apparently. Water too cold for swimming.

Made it to Hwy 70 bridge, pulled out the canoe and gear, and the trip home was routine.

Top Principles for Successful Light Expeditions

I recently introduced the concept of light expeditions as journeys accessible to anyone willing to develop the necessary strength, courage, and mastery. A light expedition is a short, performable (in personal cost, preparation time and duration) journey with a purpose that leverages and develops masculine skills and confidence while building self-understanding. It also affords opportunities to discover secrets and achieve firsts.

There are basic principles of execution that apply to all light expeditions. I’ve organized them into five groups: planning and organizing; equipment care and maintenance; training for skills; in the field; and post-mortem reviews. Following these principles can help you safely and efficiently complete your mission while focusing on the task at hand and recording your efforts.

Planning and Organizing

Have a Trip Plan and Give the Plan to a Family Member

Write up your travel route, planned and potentially unplanned stops, dates, and most importantly, the expected time and date of your return. Give the plan to a responsible family member or friend with instructions on how to contact the appropriate agencies (e.g., Coast Guard, National Park Service, etc.) in case the return date passes without them hearing from you.

Although this principle seems obvious, it’s often violated with sometimes deadly results. This past summer, a young family kayaking between the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior fell into the lake when their kayak overturned during a sudden storm; although wearing life jackets, 4 of 5 family members died from hypothermia while in the water. If a trip plan had been deposited with family or friends, it’s likely a search party would have gone out shortly after the storm hit and rescued the family.

2. Use Your Imagination to Determine Worst Case Scenarios

Think hard about worst case scenarios on your trip. If your sailing, what is the worst weather and wave conditions you might experience? What shoals (shallow water) and other navigation hazards exist on or near your route? If you’re white water canoeing, where are the large waterfalls and most dangerous rapids and what portage trails are available to avoid them?

Even as a beginner, it’s your job to know the most likely disaster scenarios. Then have a credible plan to adjust to these worst-case conditions, i.e., portaging around rapids (insure there is an actual route for that) or a safe harbor within reasonable distance.

3. Organize Gear Before and After Your Trip

Have a organized process for storing and staging your gear before your trip, then cleaning and repairing your gear after the trip. I avoided this for years until the complexity of my trips, which often included multiple different activities each with their own equipment (i.e., camping, boating, and kayaking in a single trip) made a haphazard system too error prone and time consuming.

4. Map out Team Dynamics and Have a Plan for Managing the Team

The more challenging and grueling the trip will be, the more you need to understand each team member’s strengths and limitations, their best and worst potential roles, and how the team will work together.

Training

5. Be in Shape and Eat Right

Light expeditions are physically challenging trips that require a base level of endurance and strength. Being overweight and out-of-shape increases risks and distracts you from the mission.

6. Train for the Particular Skills You Plan to Use

It’s tempting to assume you can train for the skills you need while on the trip. In a few cases that is possible, but best practice is to train before your trip in progressively more difficult conditions. Training during your expedition significantly increases risk and and stress levels. Ideally you should train with a mentor or in a formal class setting. Before training begins, study and read about the skills you will train on. Get into a rhythm of training pre-trip, keep track of your progress during the trip, then up your training levels to match your new skill level. Skills like sailing, whitewater canoeing and surfing take a lifetime to master and you can always learn more.

7. Learn to Cook

Eating well during a light expedition is important for health and energy. But it also plays a big role in the quality of your experience. I personally find tremendous satisfaction in preparing a great meal after a difficult day. I once prepared dinner after a difficult 12-hour day of portaging and canoeing 15 miles in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. A huge rainstorm was about to hit when we reached camped and we had just enough time to set up a tarp and get the burners going before the rain came down in torrents. In a few minutes I was ankle deep in mud and water working on the meal while the rest of the team finished setting up camp. Dinner never tasted as good as that night.

Although packaged de-hydrated meals are available for expeditions, light weight and convenience are emphasized; taste is not and they are expensive. With the advent of lightweight, portable cooling and cooking techniques, it’s generally possible to take real, fresh foods and cook them in a way similar to home. This has the added benefit of of allowing you to train yourself for field cooking right at home by learning to cook there.

Equipment

8. Be as Light as Possible, but No Lighter

As a general rule, use the lightest gear possible that you can afford and that meets the requirements for your expedition. For example, unless I’m in an area that is known for lots of rain, cold and wind, I use the lightest rain jacket possible so I can reduce weight and space required. For cooking, I use very small, light propane burners and find ways to work around their small, intense flame to get the cooking results I’m looking for.

9. Bring Spare Parts, Extra Fuel, and Emergency Food and Water

Bring spare parts to make repairs to critical equipment, extra fuel kept in canisters separate from the fuel tank, and 20% more food and water (or be able to produce fresh water in an emergency) than you need for your scheduled trip in case you are delayed.

10. Obtain and Know How to Use Communication and Signaling Gear

Light expeditions are generally in remote areas that lack cell phone coverage. Although some purists argue you should totally cut yourself off from civilization, that is irresponsible in the age of low-cost satellite phones and SPOT messengers ($75 at this writing plus $200/year subscription).

SPOT messenger leverages satellites to allow others to track your location at all times, and you can send and receive short messages to communicate in an emergency. From a review of cases where people became lost or accidents incapacitated them during an expedition, I would estimate that 90% of the time SPOT could be used to quickly find them. If a trip plan was filed and someone is watching and monitoring your progress, then it’s almost impossible to get into critical situations where you are lost or hurt and unable to obtain help.

11. Have an Emergency Transmitter (EPIRB or SPOT)

In addition to SPOT messenger devices, an EPIRB is an emergency transmitter that sends a signal to local authorities that you have a critical emergency and need help immediately. My recommendation is to use SPOT to allow tracking and messaging with friends and family, and leverage EPIRB in case of a dire emergency where the SPOT system fails or is lost. Having a backup for critical, life-saving devices is always a good idea.

12. Have the Right Safety Equipment, Including that Required By Law

Make sure you have the required safety gear and especially a way to signal your location both at night and during the day. Flares are helpful but if you are on the ground and want to be spotted by an aircraft searching for you, creating smoke is the best approach. Smoke “flares” are available and it’s a great idea to bring 2 or 3 on an expedition.

13. Adapting in the Field

When conditions change drastically and dangerously in the field, be it weather, lost supplies, massive equipment failure or something similar, you have three choices: adapt, migrate, or die. The third is unacceptable, the second is useful if there is no alternative other than a new location, but if you have to stay where you are at, adapting on-the-fly is critical. If you’ve followed step 2, you’ve thought through many potential worst-case scenarios and have to come up with a plan.

14. Situational Awareness and Workload Management

Situational awareness is “the perception of environmental elements and events with respect to time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their future status.” It means being aware of what is going on around you in real time, and making sure you have enough margin (in time and space) to react to the situation appropriately.

It sounds simple and obvious, but it’s not.

Successful situational awareness requires workload management: you need to be able to keep up with the your operational tasks in real time while still maintaining awareness of your current situation. If your workload increases dramatically in a short period of time, you typically need to slow down your progress so that you can maintain that workload and situational awareness simultaneously. The biggest danger is focusing exclusively on a single task (e.g., trying to restart your motor or get a sail back up when your drifting in to a pier or shoal) and losing your situational awareness altogether. (Note: the people in the boat that was thrown into the pier in the video survived with only minor injuries, a minor miracle.)

Losing Situational Awareness Can Be Very Dangerous.

15. Be Able to Fix Equipment in the Field

Make sure you have the skill sets and training to make critical repairs in the field.

16. Know the Basics of First Aid

Understand how to stop bleeding wounds via pressure, how to tie a tourniquet to stop severe bleeding, and recognize the three stages of hypothermia and how to deal with each. Knowing how to set a broken bone is also useful. Your goal is to stabilize the injured person’s condition and then get them to medical help as quickly as possible leveraging your emergency communications tools. Minor injuries (e.g., a lightly twisted ankle) can wait till you return. Serious life-threatening injuries must be dealt with via experts, so your job is to get to that expert help as quickly as possible.

17. Know a Core Set of Knots

Know the two half hitches, bowline, sheet bend, and truckers hitch and you can create a non-slip loop, tie two ropes together, and have an adjustable-length line. That covers 90% of the use cases for knots in the field.

18. Record your Trips with Photos, Video, Logs, a Diary, and Drawings

We are entering a golden age for amateurs to record and artistically express what they have accomplished on light expeditions. Incredibly cheap yet sophisticated digital cameras like GoPro’s, combined with cheap film editing tools like iMovie and Final Cut Pro allow literally anyone to beautifully record their light expedition.

Post-Mortem Trip Review and Organizing

19. Review what went right and what went wrong on your trip and aim to fix the latter.

Once you’ve returned from a light expedition, don’t just clean your gear and put it away. Write down what went right and what went wrong, and what you can do better next time. Yes it’s work, but writing forces you to think, and thinking is what helps you learn the most from your experience.

Light Expeditions, Lake Superior Style

Part 3 of 3

In Part 1 of this 3 part series, I introduced light expeditions, journeys accessible to anyone willing to develop the necessary strength, courage, and mastery. A light expedition is a short, performable (in personal cost, preparation time and duration) journey with a purpose that leverages and develops the righ t skills and confidence while building self-understanding. It also affords opportunities to discover secrets and achieve firsts.

In part 3 of 3, I’ll provide several light expedition examples.

A Personal First: A Week-Long, 120 mile Long Canoe Trip in the Quetico

Cherokee Creek, Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Photo by Matthew O’Keefe

My first light expedition was a week-long canoe trip in the Quetico as a teenager with 4 other Scouts and an adult leader. The Quetico is a large wilderness park in Canada that lies on the Minnesota border, adjacent to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW). Together these two parks comprise 2.27 million acres. With no development allowed and highly restricted access and use, you can paddle and hike for days without seeing a single person outside your group. Six of us traveled 120 miles in canoes, nearly 20 miles a day, a brutal pace. The purpose of this trip was to put enough miles behind us that we would be alone and could experience the North American wilderness pre-settlement, and we succeeded: we saw only one other group of paddlers other than the days we left and returned.

And that was the last big trip I did for the next 22 years, as I built a career, a company and raised a family. I completely put aside this part of me, the need to explore the unknown and to push my physical limits. A divorce and the loss of my youngest cousin in a freak accident reminded me that my time on earth was limited, and that living life fully with my true friends and family required big changes. At the time it wasn’t exactly clear to me why what I now call light expeditions were so appealing and fulfilling, but they were.

Anegada, British Virgin Islands. Photo by Matthew O’Keefe

I took up whitewater canoeing, sailing, and light backpacking with friends and family because I enjoyed them. Gradually I began to realize what Sir Wilfred Thesiger had said (quoted in Part 1of this series) was the key:

I went there to find peace in the hardship of desert travel and the company of desert peoples… It is not the goal but the way there that matters, and the harder the way the more worthwhile the journey.

Our true nature is to seek out ways to test our strength, courage, and mastery and to achieve some recognition (honor) for that. We’re never really satisfied until we’re suffering through a journey towards a goal, perhaps to be the first to achieve something or to reveal some secret, but more often just to find peace through the effort.

Here are a few other light expeditions to give you a better sense for the concept.

A First: Diving the Edmund Fitzgerald via SCUBA

The Fitzgerald is the best known Great Lakes shipwreck, going down during a horrific storm on November 19, 1975 with all 29 men. Their bodies are still entombed in the ship. The storm that sank the Fitzgerald was one of the worst gales ever recorded on the lake, with mountainous seas reaching 40+ feet. The wreck was studied first via remote cameras mounted on submersibles, and more recently by submarines manned by people.

In 1995, two expert divers drove a truck from Florida to Lake Superior. They were the first to dive the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald via SCUBA, taking only 6 minutes to reach the wreck at 530 feet, and 3 hours to return. They only had 15 minutes on the bottom.

Terence Tysall and fellow diver Mike Zee (a former student of Tysall’s) were not foolhardy thrill seekers. Tysall had performed more than 8,000 dives for the Navy, NASA, NOAA and other organizations. Yet, given their extreme skill levels in SCUBA diving plus experience and the simple logistics (they simply chartered a boat to take them to the wreck site for the one day they had a weather window), they were able to make the dive strictly with their own personal resources. The Fitzgerald dive was not only the deepest SCUBA dive ever in the Great Lakes, it was the deepest such dive to any wreck.

From a recent article on the expedition:

The two picked a date, arranged a team and drove a small pickup truck from Florida to Michigan, taking turns sleeping on the oxygen tanks in the truck bed. When they arrived in the Upper Peninsula, the weather gave them a window of one morning when the water was millpond calm for the expedition.

On the lake bed, the pair saw a hull towering above them, illuminated by heavy-duty lights they’d dropped on a camera line. The lights gave them about 60 feet of visibility on the bow area and of the iron ore scattered around the bottom. They floated up the hull side, past the words “Edmund Fitzgerald,” to the pilothouse.

“In an era when people can experience so many things virtually, Tysall said he considers diving a way to maintain a physical connection with history. “The Fitzgerald was another step in that for me,” he said. “I think it was important for us to be there.”

Looking for a Secret: Remote Surf on Lake Superior

Lake Superior is home to hundreds of shipwrecks that testify to the lake’s potential for destruction. It’s southwest coast near Grand Marais, Michigan is popular with surfers. The sheer number of ships sunk there led to that area being called “the Shipwreck Coast”.

Superior is also one of the few freshwater lakes on the planet that generates ocean-sized surf. Surfing requires water big enough to allow swells to develop, which means winds blowing over hundreds of miles of open water. The topography (bathymetry) of the lake floor must also be conducive to forming waves that peel rather than closing out all at once. Stony Point is a popular surfing destination for the lake, yet surfing there began only two decades ago.

Superior’s frigid waters require that surfers wear the thickest wetsuits possible because the best surfing happens in the coldest months, fall through spring. Rocky shores demand solid skills to avoid injury.

Stoney Point is close to Duluth, a medium-sized port town with an accessible airport. However, there is a lot of isolated shoreline in Lake Superior with high potential for surfable waves, yet these are usually so remote and inaccessible they have never been surfed. The problem is exacerbated by the sporadic nature of swells in an inland lake and the fog, high winds, and big seas that often accompany swell-generating weather. To understand these challenges while scouting for solid surf locations, a light expedition was needed.

Ryan Patin preparing to surf Isle Royale’s south shore. Photo by Matthew O’Keefe.

I met two Lake Superior surfers, Ryan Patin and Stefan Ronchetti (we all work for the same software company) who’ve surfed Lake Superior for years, almost since the beginning. They were passionate about finding new surfing locations on the lake, and had already executed several driving trips (light expeditions actually) to surf remote parts of the north shore of Superior in Minnesota. They were excited about the potential for surfing Isle Royale, an island 20 nautical miles offshore in the northern part of Lake Superior. The bathymetry looked very promising in the southeast portion of the island, which was also exposed to hundreds of mile of fetch (stretches of open water over which the wind can blow) from the southeast and southwest.

Matthew O’Keefe and Ryan Patin (left), Windigo, Michigan

Ryan and I traveled to Isle Royale, a national park, in July 2018 to scout potential surf locations. Over the course of three days were able to circle the island in my Zodiac 650 RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat), mapping and photographing dozens of sites with solid potential. We also practiced getting a surfer in and out of the boat safely, and operating the Zodiac in the shallow reefs where surfable waves happen. Ryan even did a little surfing in a dying swell on our first full day on the island. Since this trip was in the summer, the weather was ideal for testing the logistics and scouting potential sites, but not ideal for surfing, which happens in the colder months.

This light expedition combined my boating and camping experience plus navigation skills, with Ryan’s surfing expertise and talent. Based on this trip, we are considering another trip in October or April timed to coincide with strong surfing potential based on Lake Superior weather forecasts and wave models. We will be able to refine the logistics and safety planning along with focusing on the potential surf sites with the most potential. Perhaps we will be able to find a huge wave where no one else has.

At Beaver Island, Isle Royale National Park.

The links below point to all three essays in this series on light expeditions.

Part 1: The Power of Light Expeditions

Part 2: The Best Skills to Master for Light Expeditions

Part 3: Light Expeditions, Lake Superior Style

The Best Skills to Master for Light Expeditions

Part 2 of 3.

In Part 1 of this 3 part series, I introduced light expeditions, journeys accessible to anyone willing to develop the necessary strength, courage, and mastery. A light expedition is a short, performable (in personal cost, preparation time and duration) journey with a purpose that leverages and develops masculine skills and confidence while building self-understanding. It also affords opportunities to discover secrets and achieve firsts.

What kind of journey’s make you better at being a man from the perspective of Jack Donovan’s male virtues?

And what journeys and skills have good masculine aesthetics and appearance, can be recorded and inspire creative works, and provide the chance to socialize with family, friends, and interesting women?

From my perspective, the pro-masculine skills to master for light expeditions should answer the following questions affirmatively.

(0) Are there low-overhead, low-cost ways of participating almost anywhere? This allows you to practice the skill regularly.

And can you start out with a one-time experience (e.g., bucket list checkoff) and then incrementally grow it to a hobby, from a hobby to proficiency, and from proficiency to mastery?

(1) Does the skill allow practicing to scale, so that practicing on a small scale applies at a large scale as well? Can you experience the skill at both small and large scales?

For example, sailing a dinghy (i.e., a small personal sailboat like the Laser show in this photo) is low-cost and easy to learn; can be done on almost any body of water, large or small; and yet it significantly improves your understanding of winds and waves. Racing dinghy’s also increases your understanding of race tactics for all types of boats and race courses.

(2) Are there upper limits to mastery, and who can reach them? Are there deeply experienced masters of the skill willing to teach you and are they readily available?

Skills to Master for Light Expeditions — Canoeing the Seal River during a forest fire. Photo: Hap Wilson.

(3) Can you get killed doing it if you don’t have a minimum level of mastery? This seriously reinforces the need for strength and courage.

(4) Can you test your courage with the skill by pushing beyond the limits of your current mastery to achieve more mastery, in ways that are prudent and not reckless? By doing so can you accrue honor in some form?

(5) Can the skill take you to remote places that few others get to see regularly? This is key to having unique explorations, and to finding secrets. It also likely means it requires some courage to make the journey there.

Master for Light Expeditions — Outer Island, Lake Superior. Photo by Matthew O’Keefe

(6) Does the skill easily allow you to bring others — friends, family, attractive woman, LTRs, etc. — to see places few others get to see, on explorations that excite the imagination?

(7) Are the aesthics of the skill good and is your expedition worth recording, either in photos, film, paintings or drawings?

(8) Are new technologies continually changing the sport keeping things interesting, requiring more mastery, offering more chances to push your current mastery envelope and the state-of-the-art to gain honor via accomplishing firsts and finding secrets?

What skills emphasize the masculine and male virtues and provide the richest experiences? With these questions in mind, I’ll make my case.

Some Good Skills for Light Expeditions

Sailing: In sailing, more strength and more stamina translates directly to better performance: trimming sails, grinding winches, heaving anchor, and overnight watches all can be performed better with more pure muscular strength and stamina.

Moving heavy boats (or small ones) in big seas requires experience (mastery) and a calm demeanor (courage). As your mastery increases, you can push the envelope on the size of waves and wind your willing to sail in, but new, tougher conditions almost always require increased courage to overcome the sailor’s initial nerves when facing the new situation.

Sailboat Riva completing the Pacific Cup Race, 2010.

New, challenging conditions can happen suddenly (wind gusts, storms, lightning, etc.) and must be faced and mastered. Honor can be won in sailing via achievements in competitive races, either inshore or offshore, and by completing long, difficult voyages against your current level of skill. As your mastery increases, your courage and strength become important as you push the level of difficulty.

Whitewater canoeing and rafting: Strength, courage, and mastery all play a role in successful whitewater canoeing and rafting. Mastery is required to plan properly based on your current skill level across a spectrum of required tasks: logistics, routing, navigation, paddling technique and form, reading and running rapids (or not), lining, packing, camp-craft etc. Depending on the area, you may need to contend with bears (black, polar, or grizzly) or other aggressive wildlife.

Attean Lake, Maine. Photo by Matthew O’Keefe.

Canoeing scales up and down quite well, as experience gained on local waters, even flat water, translates directly to trip expertise. Finding whitewater can be tougher than finding flat water, depending on where you live, but modern air travel and support from canoe and raft outfitters on the best rivers can easily overcome this.

Surfing: Strength, courage and mastery are all critical in surfing, for safety reasons and to be able to push the envelope on the size of waves you can surf. The skill scales up quite well, and the search for the perfect wave or to be the first to surf some remote, beautiful, undiscovered location with huge waves (a form of secret) is intoxicating.

The best Master Skills to for Light Expeditions — Stony Point, Lake Superior. Photo: Surfing Magazine.

In addition, taking family and friends to the beach always gets a positive response, and there is no question surfers are thought of as masculine by many women. Surfing aesthetics are excellent, and it can be practiced with friends and family nearby.

Hunting: Hunting is an ancient sport and one that early men performed in small groups. It requires all 4 masculine virtues, and provides intense socialization with other men. In some cultures, deer hunting is something the whole family does together. It’s rather mysterious but the male bonding the comes from a joint, successful hunt is primordial and seems to tap into something deep in the male soul. Fishing has similar characteristics. Hunting and fishing are also excellent ancillary skills for light expeditions, even if they are not the end purpose of the trip.

Motorcycles: Motorcycles have great masculine aesthetics, are associated with small gangs of men, and are legendary for the variety and depth of the journeys one can achieve with them. Given the dangers to bikers on the open road, it requires and signals a base level of courage to even ride them.

You might think that my emphasis on aesthetics is superfluous, and yet… we are entering a golden age for gifted amateurs to record and artistically express what they have accomplished on light expeditions. Incredibly cheap yet sophisticated digital cameras like GoPro’s, combined with cheap film editing tools like iMovie and Final Cut Pro allow literally anyone to beautifully record their light expedition.

Although this list is not complete, these four skills are excellent for developing masculine traits and performing light expeditions. I hope this essay has you thinking about other potential skills that could be leveraged for light expeditions. The links below point to all three essays in this series on light expeditions.

Part 1: The Power of Light Expeditions

Part 2: The Best Skills to Master for Light Expeditions

Part 3: Light Expeditions, Lake Superior Style

The Power of Light Expeditions

Expedition ( \ ˌek-spə-ˈdi-shən \): A journey undertaken by a group of men with a particular purpose, especially that of exploration, research, or war. OED

“Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, which takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.” Arnold J. Toynbee. H/T @MMLoneWanderer

Sir Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003) was an English explorer famous for being the first man to cross the Rub’ al Khali (“the Empty Quarter”), an enormous 250,000 square mile desert located in the Arabian Peninsula. Incredibly hot and dry, with sand dunes towering over 1000 feet, Thesiger crossed this desert not once but twice, between 1946 and 1949.

Thesiger later wrote: “For years the Empty Quarter had represented to me the final, unattainable challenge which the desert offered…To others my journey would have little importance. It would produce nothing except a rather inaccurate map which no one was ever likely to use. It was a personal experience, and the reward had been a drink of clean, nearly tasteless water. I was content with that.”

He continued: “I did not go to the Arabian Desert to collect plants nor to make a map; such things were incidental. I went there to find peace in the hardship of desert travel and the company of desert peoples… It is not the goal but the way there that matters, and the harder the way the more worthwhile the journey.”

Can you think of a small but difficult expedition in your past that pushed you to your limits? Perhaps a long canoe trip in Boy Scouts, a long sailing trip with your friends, or a backpacking trip? How did you feel once you successfully completed the trip? What did you see along the way and how did it affect you? Did you bond in some special way with your fellow travelers?

Part of Becoming a Man is Testing your Limits

Testing yourself to find your limits and move beyond them, under the supervision of men you know and respect, is central to becoming and being a man. After you’ve become fit, learned how to approach and connect with the opposite sex, established a career and mission within your own frame, what’s left?

In this piece, I’ll argue that you should make light expeditions and the related necessary skills part of your mission.

Power of Light Expeditions — Jack Donovan

Jack Donovan in his seminal work ,“The Way of Men”, argued that four virtues — strength, courage, mastery, and honor — are what make someone good at being a man (which is distinct from being a “good man”). Donovan argues that these virtues were born by warfare among small groups led by men, who established and defended a perimeter from which civilization was born. As civilization advanced and war was no longer a necessity, today just as in Roman times, men lost touch with this warrior instinct and masculinity waned.

Donovan is right that we can’t fully recreate this brutal early environment (barring a zombie apocalypse). And yet that environment, small groups of men in warfare with other small groups of men, has clear advantages in developing a deep, powerful masculinity, great men, and ultimately great civilizations (e.g., the Founding of Rome). What’s the closest we can come today without the overhead of lots of violence and bloodshed?

What is a Light Expedition?

The Power of Light Expeditions — 1922 British Team that attempted Everest. Mallory is second from left, back row.

I argue that we can capture some of its essence via “light” expeditions. A “heavy” expedition requires months or years of training and other preparation, is expensive, time-consuming and inherently extremely dangerous. Examples include Thesiger’s journey through the Rub’ al Khali, Mallory’s fatal attempt on Everest in 1924, and Teddy Roosevelt’s nearly fatal trip down the Amazon’s “River of Doubt”. Very few men are wealthy or skilled enough to even attempt such trip, and in fact modern transportation and communications technology has made true exploration at that scale nearly extinct, except in the deep sea or outer space.

Light expeditions, in contrast, are accessible to anyone willing to develop the necessary strength, courage, and mastery. A light expedition is a short, performable (in personal cost, preparation time and duration) but potentially difficult journey with a purpose, that leverages and develops masculine skills and confidence. Successful light expeditions create experiences that deepen our self-understanding, build confidence, add color and depth to the story of our lives, and make us more interesting and admirable to others, often via shared experience.

Secrets and Firsts

The Power of Light Expeditions - what is? — Heaven Bay. Photo by Matthew O’Keefe.

Now some may not be interested in self-understanding, so perhaps practicing the actual skills themselves in the field will be enough reward for you. Or the potentially rich experiences might hold attraction.

But there is another reward from light expeditions: finding secrets and performing firsts. Large-scale explorations (e.g., Lewis and Clark) have become nearly extinct due to technology as every part of the globe has been mapped and is somehow accessible. But there are secrets and firsts everywhere. Traditionally secrets or firsts like a heavy expedition require huge efforts that are typically beyond what one or small number of individuals can afford to find or complete.

But secrets exist locally and at small-scale. For example, in fall 1971, a small floatplane disappeared after taking off in heavy fog at the Canada-Minnesota border. It’s loss was a complete mystery, until nearly 12 years later, in spring 1983, a forestry survey crew found the crash site by accident a few miles north of Hovland, a small village on Lake Superior in northern Minnesota. The plane and the crash victim’s remains laid there undiscovered in a site fairly close to people, yet so hidden from view no one noticed its secret location. Before the plane crashed, it was heard close to ground by someone near the crash site. A light expedition that concentrated in that area, methodically combing through the forest, would likely have found the plane.

Similarly, smaller-scale firsts are attainable. For example, there are quite a few remote but accessible locations that could possibly be surfed but have not been attempted. Up until the 1980’s, there were numerous rivers in northern Canada that had never been canoed by non-natives. My father, in his 60s, was the first person to travel the whole Lewis and Clark trail via float plane. Really any activity you personally perform for the first time qualifies, as personal firsts are critical to developing further mastery and courage, in particular, and serve to contribute to your own sense of personal honor.

If you’ve read this far, you probably wondering what skills might best support light expeditions and why. In the second of this three-part series, I’ll outline the principals and characteristic qualifying skills should have and why, and walk you through my list of preferred skills. In the third, I’ll describe some example light expeditions I’ve done and propose others.

The links below point to all three essays in this series on light expeditions.

Part 1: The Power of Light Expeditions

Part 2: The Best Skills to Master for Light Expeditions

Part 3: Light Expeditions, Lake Superior Style