A Top Five list of paddling pet peeves
By Mike Svob
Canoeing and kayaking offer a host of enticements, including relaxation, natural beauty, excitement, access to remote places and personal skill development. One of the biggest benefits of paddling is the
quality of the people attracted to it. For the most part, they enjoy the peace and quiet, are environmentally oriented, are active and interested in all sorts of things, and are fun to be with. By and large, they represent the best that society has to offer.
 No large group is without yahoos, however, and
unfortunately, paddlesport has its own contingent of self–centered, obnoxious boaters. The good news is that their numbers are quite small, but the bad news is that they create more than their share of ill will and sometimes diminish the image of the paddling community.
To make matters worse, there are others outside the paddling community who – to say the least – do little to promote the sport.
1. Weekend Warriors
Perhaps the most egregious of all are the "weekend warriors" – people who aren't serious about the sport but are interested only in "having a blast." They are commonly recognized by their loudness, plentiful alcohol supply, inadequate equipment and lack of paddling skill.
Canoeing is merely a pretext for partying, which generally includes lots of intentional boat–ramming, capsizing and uproarious guffawing. Weekend warriors often "raft up" (i.e., float down the river side by side), clutching beer cans and other libations. Their boisterous din and propensity for littering makes them the bane of bankside landowners, who sometimes tend to think of them as representing canoeists in
general. Serious paddlers give them a wide berth.
Unfortunately, weekend warriors have gravitated toward certain streams (usually those requiring little skill) that have consequently acquired reputations as "party rivers." For example, Sugar Creek in Indiana and the Current River in Missouri are gorgeous waterways, but canoeists and kayakers must be prepared to share the water with legions of party animals in rental boats. Even the fabled Kickapoo River in southwest Wisconsin has become increasingly populated with boat–bangers on busy weekends, and the pristine stillness of the Wolf River in northeastern Wisconsin is often pierced by the atavistic shouts of drunken rafters.
Don't get me wrong: rental boats and rafts provide a wonderful opportunity for beginning and occasional paddlers to have a good time
on the water. It's only the ill–mannered renters (together with some who own their own boats) who are repulsive. They not only show no reverence whatsoever for beautiful surroundings, but also manifest no respect for the equipment they're renting.
2. Whitewater Snobs
Weekend warriors represent the lowest level of paddlesport – the mindless, unskilled rabble, as it were. Unfortunately, boorish behavior is
also found at the opposite end of the skill continuum, among the elite group of hot–dog paddlers whose finesse and talent are truly amazing. These folks take their sport seriously, seizing every opportunity to head for the nearest play spot or to push the envelope with a challenging – perhaps hazardous – whitewater run. They're fun to watch at slaloms, rodeos and local play holes.
The trouble is, they know they're good, and for a few of them – please
note the "few" – this results in an intolerable ego that makes them (in their own minds) the ubermenschen of the waterways. Thus, they aren't reluctant to show disdain toward the merely mortal intermediate and beginning whitewater paddlers (or – horrors! – the rafters) who have the nerve to get in their way. Holes and waves are ordained for their use, so they often refuse to share playtime proportionately with lesser paddlers, or to yield to those who are coming downstream. Their monomaniacal
preoccupation with cutting–edge paddling often makes them incredibly boring. In the evening at local bars, you can readily recognize them from afar, hands and arms flailing in Duffek gestures as they animatedly recount ad nauseam their tiresome war stories.
If weekend warriors are the slobs of paddlesport, egotistic hotshots are the snobs, openly contemptuous of everyone less skilled than themselves, especially of mere quietwater paddlers, those lily–dipping
amateurs who are too dull to aspire to "awesome dude" status like their own.
Fortunately for the reputation and vitality of whitewater paddling, the brash, me–first hole hogs and chest thumpers are outnumbered by the many highly skilled boaters who observe the basics of courtesy and river etiquette, and who recognize that all kinds of paddling in all kinds of boats have an equally legitimate place in the canoeing and kayaking spectrum.
3. Motorized Craft
Anybody who paddles a lot can be expected to add river–hogging motorboaters to his list of pet peeves. Here again, the vast majority of powerboaters are nice people who considerately slow down as they approach canoeists, kayakers and anchored fishermen, thus lessening
the after–effects of the wakes they create. For novice paddlers, such courtesy can make all the difference between having a good time and ending up in the drink.
But some streams (and lakes, of course) seem to be magnets for the don't–give–a–damn fraternity of power boaters. For example, you might as well forget about the Fox River from Wilmot (in Wisconsin) to the Fox Chain O' Lakes (in Illinois), or the Rock River from Rockford to
Oregon, or the Wolf River from Shawano to Lake Poygan. Motorized discourtesy tends to prevail on all three. Fortunately, there are shallower stretches on all three rivers (and many others) that are hard on propellers and thus more paddler–friendly.
If Dante were writing his Divine Comedy today and if he were a paddler, he would undoubtedly reserve a special place in the Inferno for jet skiers. Often youngish, macho and self–centered, these enthusiasts
not only pollute the air and water, but often prefer to careen full–bore wherever they go. On many occasions my companions and I have been out enjoying a quiet stream, only to be astonished by the sudden arrival of one or more jet skis roaring around a bend and blasting us with huge wakes and noise. Mind you, I'm not asking that the contrivances be banned altogether, but it would be nice if they were manufactured to be less environmentally harmful and if operators were to exercise more
consideration for other people.
4. Intrusive Landowners
Bankside landowners have every right to expect boaters to stay off their property (except with permission), to leave no litter behind, and to keep the noise level down. On the other hand, they can be a real bane to the
paddling community when they make it difficult or impossible for canoeists and kayakers to float past their land. Usually, this is not a problem in Wisconsin, which has relatively liberal access laws and a facilitative stance toward recreational use of resources. In Illinois and other states, however, a trip can turn ugly in a hurry. Over the years, I've had some nasty experiences on the Rock River in Illinois (near Grand Detour) and on Big Pine Creek in Indiana, when riparian
landowners imperiously acted as if they could control traffic on the waterway.
Fortunately, both situations have improved in recent years, as has the former problem on the Kishwaukee River upstream from Cherry Valley. In Illinois and elsewhere, it would help if the DNR and other state agencies were more proactive in promoting the interests of paddlers vis–à–vis private landowners. There has been some progress, as manifested in the state–funded construction of some canoe landings here
and there, and in the development of the N.E. Illinois Canoe Trails network (with DNR involvement), but there's a long way to go.
A related situation in which more advocacy by the state would help paddlers in Illinois and surrounding states is that of the Vermilion River from Lowell to Oglesby. This beautiful stream is extremely popular with whitewater paddlers, but would be safer and even more popular if some effort were made to develop decent accesses and to clean up the mess
at the cement company dam location.
5. Useless Dams
Next to strainers, the commonest and worst peril faced by paddlers is the continuing presence of useless dams. Please note the word "useless." Even dyed–in–the–wool environmentalists recognize (perhaps
begrudgingly) that we'll always have dams and that many dams serve worthwhile purposes. Unfortunately, however, we still have a lot of dams in our midst that have fallen into disrepair, no longer have any meaningful reason to exist, and have potential to claim lives. Such, for example, are the notorious Bernadotte Dam on the Spoon River in Illinois, and the Johnsonville, River Bend and Waelderhaus dams on the Sheboygan River in Wisconsin.
Here, too, there's a bright side. In the last decade Wisconsin has led the nation in dam removals. Partly this has happened as a result of self–interest on the part of dam owners, who recognize that it costs far more to replace or repair a decrepit, useless old dam than to remove it. As a result, paddling has become much safer and more enjoyable on parts of the Milwaukee, Prairie, Baraboo, Manitowoc and other Wisconsin rivers. Even in Illinois there has been some progress, although
meager (e.g., the partial removal of the Springfield Waterworks Dam on the Sangamon). Here's hoping that the trend continues!
It wouldn't be difficult to expand the Pet Peeve list to a "Top Ten," but that's enough negativity for one column. Fortunately (as noted), each of the downers has an upside; and overall, paddling remains the most positive, satisfying sport I've ever been involved in.
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