After several hours’ paddling, folks often begin to wonder how many kilometers lay along our day’s route, how many more portages we’ll have to complete, and most importantly, how many more hours separate us from our next camp and cup of coffee. Guides need to have these numbers ready at a moment’s notice, or at least be able to craftily outsource responsibility to the group’s leaders and navigators of the day!
Our team thought it would be fun to calculate some of the important metrics for The Land’s paddling season as it stands. We haven’t gone as fine grained as kilometers paddled, or portages traversed (yet!) but we’ve compiled some of the metrics for our most successful season in our five years of tripping for you here.
This year saw The Land team support almost 1200 participants in their ongoing pursuit of paddling and outdoor skills mastery both on our own and through our partners’ programming. From day adventures in our backyard Kawarthas, to our annual National Canoe Day Critical Mass at the Peterborough lift locks, to week-long trips down wilder northern rivers, we can proudly say we’ve held up our end of the bargain to help folks grab a boat and make it float!
From April to October we witnessed no less than 144 sunrises either already on trip or loading up early on morning one. As much as running a business requires a lot of quality time in the office, on the phone or in front of a screen, I love that my work connects me with nature as much as it does. Whether it’s loading boats and bags for another trip or reading rapids with my own crew, I’m always grateful for the fact of being outdoors and the body and soul work that it entails.
Ever wonder why it feels like a lifetime has transpired after returning from a week-long trip? Maybe you’re feeling the cumulative amount of time spent by yourself and your team while out in the wilds! With programs including such a great sum of folks, over so many days on the water, a new metric emerges that’s useful for our calculations: the concept of people-days. This figure refers to the total number of days that folks have spent on trip with us over a given timeframe. For example, a group of 10 guides upgrading their certifications on the French River for 6 days equates to 60 people-days. This season we were fortunate to deliver programs that amounted to 1591 people-days.
Finally, this season saw an expansion in our zone of operations as we continue to explore and reinvent the meaning of The Land. We continue to explore our own backyard of the Kawarthas and Northumberland, enjoying the land and waterscapes from our new homeplace in Apsley all the way down to Port Hope. Our move to North Kawartha has made our continued trips in Algonquin and Haliburton Highlands even easier. Careful planning and vigilance enabled us to explore the French River and Temagami this year, despite a very busy forest fire season, which only cramped our style a little bit. We’ve often explored Killarney by boot and snowshoe, but this year we were able to lead an amazing late-season canoe trip around the southeast and interior to hike the inimitable Silver Peak, ice and snow notwithstanding!
Two of our guides upgraded their arctic chops with sustained expeditions to Nunavut this year and their experience and research has enabled us to inch closer to our longterm goal of running trips in the far north. Furthermore, a scouting mission to the west coast and the yen to continue working with guides and friends who’ve moved down east continue to pull us into a truly tri-coastal adventure school.
Damn, I’m keen to see how this all shakes out, but in the meantime, I may just whip out the calculator one more time to relive this past season by the numbers: I wonder how many paddle strokes I took this year. How many heartbeats, how many breathes? How many moments of breathlessness, or breath-taking wonder.
