NRS has recalled one of their paddlefloats. I guess the inflation tube was breaking off causing the entire thing to deflate when you needed it most. They are offering a replacement to the 1000 or so that got past the quality assurance at the factory.

If you have been having trouble, I would suggest this type of float.

More info on the recall here.

Arcata CA - Connecting the Drops is a two-month canoeing, hiking, and mountaineering expedition that will depart on June 19, 2007. The team includes Don van Hout and David Lavallee who will be exploring the entire 1538 kilometer Athabasca River from the Columbia Icefields, the hydrological apex of North America, to the internationally protected Peace-Athabasca Delta, the largest inland freshwater delta in the world. They will ski to summit of Mount Snowdome and then hike and paddle the headwaters of the Athabasca River in remote Jasper National Park, across Alberta to Lake Athabasca.

For those interested in the different types of plastic used for molding boats, there is a really interesting technical discussion going on right now at playak.com. Several companies have weighed in on the issue of strength verses weight including representatives of Dragorossi and Eric Jackson of Jackson Kayak.

Eric even did a quick podcast talking about raw plastic that they use. Very interesting. Here is the link.

It has been a crazy week and a half since I got back from my expedition on the North Shore of Lake Superior. I have had zero time since getting back to collect my thoughts but I finally got a couple minutes so here is a short breakdown of our trip.

I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty details of our trip as I don't have the time and you will probably stop reading in about two sentences. Trust me, could easily make it super boring...

Way back in December 2006, Sean and I decided to do a trip up on Lake Superior. We wanted to do a really hard push trip with some long crossings so we thought why not early spring? Yes, the water is only 2 degrees C but who cares; we had drysuits.

Click Read More for full details...

I recently stumbled upon this really cool gadget. Trackstick will automatically record your journey via a built in GPS. With over 1 Mb of information, it can store months of travel information during your journey. Included with it is special software that will export your track and import it directly into Google Earth.

Not quite sure how this is beneficial to instructors, but it is a pretty cool gadget non-the-less. I guess it could be helpful for people going on a long expedition.

No you all know what to buy for me to make me happy... If you need a better hint, buy me a Trackstick...

More info after the jump.