Island Life in Vermont

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   It didn’t take long after I moved to Vermont that I was presented with the reality of the Champlain Islands. You’re telling me there exists an archipelago on Lake Champlain that borders Quebec, New York and Vermont's mainland with hundreds of miles of shoreline and a quiet, lush landscape that is just 20 miles from downtown Burlington and is affectionately called “The Islands” by northern Vermonters?

   Well, color me enthralled.

   The Champlain Islands’ gravitational pull has tugged me ever since. The whole concept of a series of island towns lying in a sunny sovereign zone amid the Champlain waters captured my imagination. When I starting exploring Vermont on a Stand Up Paddleboard, a visit to the Champlain Islands was tops on the list.

  

   It’s taken a while, but we finally pulled off a trip to the island town of North Hero last week, launching from City Bay with a view of Knight Island State Park in the near-ground and Vermont’s highest peak, Mount Mansfield, above in the distance.

Setting out toward Hibbard Point east of North Hero

   One unique aspect of paddling here is that, while you are in Vermont, you are looking east, toward the Green Mountains. The rest of Vermont’s Champlain shoreline faces west offering New York Adirondack views. The islands offer those too, but we launched from an east-facing bay and had the northern part of the Green Mountain State as a backdrop.

Island Hopping ...

   With water being such a huge part of the Vermont Island lifestyle, Stand Up Paddleboarding is poised to be as big a hit here as it has become everywhere else. Why not? Island-hopping on a paddleboard, endless shorelines, lush greenery, mountain views, coves and bays. SUP was seemingly made for this place.

The North Hero House Inn is starting things off with a program of Stand Up Paddleboard rentals, lessons and guided tours. Check out this uber-romantic Vermont spot at www.northherohouse.com.

 

See you on the water ...

Past Peak Paddleboarding

Our quest to couple that quintessential Vermont foliage scene with the fresh perspective of Stand Up Paddling took us to Milton, Vt., of all places this October. There’s a dam there on the Lamoille River that creates Arrowhead Lake — typically a duck hunters' paradise, but we opened it up to SUP this year (dodging bird decoys, camouflaged boats and dudes with guns hiding in the brush — and fortunately no bullets).

The Mist of Milton Falls

Yep, hunting season on the lake coincides with the color changes. Only slightly daunted, we took a handful of trips to these backwaters and found some sweet glassy water to lay down a foundation for the Tai Chi S.U.P. discipline we are developing (why should Yogis have all the mindfulness paddleboarding fun?) as well as various skies of blue, gray and mist.

TAI CHI S.U.P. (it rhymes, and is awesome)

We missed the height of a brilliant foliage season for various reasons, but nonetheless had some great late-season outings — both pre-peak and post-peak.

In the foreground there, that's where the hunters hang out

So the peak SUPFoliage quest will continue for another cycle. Meantime, we’ll see you during mandatory wetsuit season, or when we pick it up again in the spring. 

Aloha,

— Jason

  

Odds and (summer) ends

   Let's pretend this post was written Aug. 5 instead of Sept. 5, when we really should be doing a summer wrap-up, mmmkay?
   We'll keep it brief, just a few newsworthy notes from the middle of another outstanding Stand Up Paddleboarding season in Vermont. 

The first Vermont-made paddleboard produced

You have witnessed the birth of Champlain Boards. More on this to come in a future post and on the Paddlesurf Champlain website.

Stand Up for the Lake festival on tap

All hands in Vermont's burgeoning SUPculture are on deck for this one. It's the fourth annual and there will be so much more going on than in year's past. Always an awesome event.

Now and then (surf skiing-style)

And we thought we invented it :)

See you all standing on the water ...

Junely in Vermont

June has felt so much like July this year in Vermont it's getting hard to tell them apart. See that ... And it’s not just the stretch of mid-90s heat. SUP boarders have gotten out early this year on Lake Champlain. In fact, we may have a new normal as far as when Stand Up season starts in the Green Mountains. Which is great.

In addition to the Lake, the Winooski River and the Waterbury Reservoir have also been hotspots for Vermont Paddleboarders so far this year.

           

With the summer weather receded and a refreshing stretch of much-needed rain now rolling through the Green Mountains, we have a little opportunity to slow down and catch up. And gear up for the real thing.

A glimpse of what went on this spring:

The Wednesday Night SUP’er Club launched, with a growing group gathering for weekly Wednesday night SUP trips in and around the Burlington area.

The Waterbury Reservior hosted the Vermont Paddleboard Festival

Photo courtesy Umiak Outdoor Outfitters of Stowe 

And we opened our spot at Oakledge Park for the new season of instruction, tours and rentals (and a board sale or two …)

Summer is on. Stand up and get it.

Snow Paddling, or Why I Dusted Off My Carving Board

Back in the early '90s, when snowboarding was really breaking through to the mainstream, there were two types of riders. There were carvers with hard boot set-ups and plate bindings, and there was everyone else.

History has not been kind to the carvers.

I know because I am one of them, and I will espouse the virtues of the pure, single-track snowboard carve to anyone and everyone. Somewhere along the line, snowboarding as a sport left carving in the dust. At some point the only carving riders out there were the ones competing in slalom and giant slalom races. And now, 2012, I’m not even sure there is a snowboard racing circuit left anymore. You won’t find it in the XGames.

The carving board I purchased in 1992 was my go-to riding stick for about 12 years. I mostly searched out moderate pitches and groomed courdorouy and just laid turns out. If there was fresh snow (not too deep where the edge couldn’t find the bottom) it was a pinnacle experience.

I put my carving board away in recent years. And judging by what I see out on the hill, so has everyone else. You can’t find a hard-boot setup, unless, from what I understand, you are in Europe. I don't mind being the “it's really big in Europe” guy, but for whatever reason I stopped taking the carver out.

Healside at Jay Peak VT

Then came the snow paddle. As a Stand Up Paddle boarder I'm attracted to anything where there's a board on your feet and a stick in your hands. Like other SUP people. That's why land paddles have come out, to give you the SUP feeling on a skateboard. So it was natural - as skateboarding and snowboarding are first cousins - to think about bringing paddles to the snow.

The thing about snowboarding is, it allows you to do what you can do on a surfboard, times infinity: dozens of turns at a time, enormous airs, busting off a wind lip over and over, reaching highway speeds ... it’s wave-riding unencumbered by the ephemeral nature of the wave.

With Stand Up Paddling, surfers now have a whole new bag of tricks, the most foundational of which is edging a board heavy for a bottom turn and pushing the paddle blade into the center of the turn for a second point of pressure to lean on. This is why you always see two wakes trailing a Stand Up Paddler shooting down the line on a wave: the wake of the board and the smaller wake of the paddle blade.

With the snow paddle, this SUP surfing move gets translated to the snow and is unleashed in the way only snowboarding can unleash -with more G-force, more speed and more lean. Being on snow as opposed to water gives you that solid second point of pressure that you can count on.

I knew the snow paddle and carving snowboard belonged together from the beginning (which was the fall of 2011), but I guess I didn't realize just how much. My plan for my first run on snow with a paddle in my hands was to just focus on the board and round my turn back into shape. But literally the first time I laid the board on edge and my upper body drew closer to the snow, There Was The Paddle, right where it needed to be. I couldn't do anything but lean on it. There was nothing I would rather have done but lean on it.

Sinking into the space between two pressure points

When you carve so hard that your hip's kissing the snow then pressure that second point of contact on the inside of your arc, getting your upper body highly involved, you end up suspended for that moment in the Space Between. It is enchanting. Take it from someone who has been on a carving board for years, the snow paddle takes the whole endeavor up a couple notches on the radical-body-angle meter.

And here's the thing. The slow and quiet death of American carving I really believe was an accident of snowboarding history, fueled mostly by marketability and spectator-friendliness in freestyle snowboarding and the lack of same when it comes to carving and racing.

With Stand Up Paddling gaining in popularity like a Western wildfire, I believe snowboarders are about to rediscover The Carve, prompted by the Snow Paddle. And with it in hand, it's going to be better than they ever remember it being.

For more on snow paddling, check out snowshift.com and kahunacreations.com.

More from a spring day at Jay, VT

Still standing

As much as Vermont’s Indian Summer has bummed out the Skier and Boarderhood — of which we are proud members — it has also turned into a rare and welcome extension of Stand Up Paddle season into November!

Most autumns, our final paddles of the season are foliage tours. So it was a little strange this year entering the water with the leaves already off the trees. Water temps in the Winooski River were cool at this South Burlington put-in. We enjoyed an initial upriver journey then a serene float over mostly glassy waters into Colchester, with some whitewater bumps along the way.

Going upriver over slow water ... Just like being on the lake.

Some rocks to start

That warm Indian Summer sun

Forecast calls for snow so this is likely it for SUP in VT in 2011. Bring it on and we’ll see you in the spring.

Lake Champlain SUP Cup

The 2011 Stand Up for the Lake event was the best yet, with a solid field of men, women and kid Stand Up Paddlers coming out to represent for Vermont’s burgeoning SUP community and raise a few thousand bucks for the Community Sailing Center in Burlington.

This was the third year of the event, and it happened to coincide with a national championship USA Triathlon event, but I think we had more fun. Congrats to the O’Brien family, Mike, Deb and kids, who SWEPT all divisions and took home the Lake Champlain SUP CUP.

A pig roast and Luau followed with Russ Scully from The Spot restaurant providing Master of Ceremony services.

We are psyched to see this event grow in the future and be there as Vermont gets on board with the SUP racing movement.

Here are some photos from the event (Aug. 20, 2011).

Women's winner Deb O'Brien

Canadians were having a lot of success in the men's field

The Kiddos

Photos by Deb and Mike O'Brien