Joe during his 24-hour attempt

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One kayaker, one river, one day, one goal...

The idea for this record attempt came to me late last winter when, after considering a solo 6-7 month paddling trip across Canada and coming to the conclusion I would not be able to put the expedition together for this year, I was looking for "something else to do," something which would be easier to pull off as far as time and money was concerned.

The world record I was going after was the record for "The greatest distance ever paddled in 24 hours on moving water." The record, I found, was held by Eco-Challenge Champion & world famous adventure racer Ian Adamson. In 1998, Ian paddled his Futura Surfski 349 kilometers in 24 hours on the Yukon River in Canada's Yukon Territory.

To make an attempt on this record, I would need a fast kayak! And a fast river! Fast current, long enough for the record attempt and relatively free of major whitewater in order to allow the use of a long, fast kayak for the attempt. Finally, sufficient training & conditioning to enable myself to paddle hard for 24 hours!

First off, the kayak
Over the years I have paddled numerous sea kayaks from a number of manufacturers and so far, the Necky Looksha II Race was the best bet for what I had in mind. Twenty feet long, twenty inches wide, carbon fiber deck and a carbon reinforced kevlar hull - this is one fast sea kayak! I paddled one of these kayaks back in 1997 in the province of New Brunswick and I had been impressed with it ever since. It is fast, comfortable and has great stability for a 20" wide kayak.

I contacted Dave Vanderveen from Necky Kayaks and told him what I had in mind and asked if they would be interested in sponsoring me for this event with one of their Looksha II kayaks. A few weeks later Dave showed up at my doorstep with a shiny new Carbon/ Kevlar Looksha II Race kayak for me to train in and use for my upcoming world record attempt.

Next was "The River"
What I was looking for when choosing a river for my record attempt was a high volume, fast flowing river that had little or no big whitewater. It also needed to have numerous access points along the route for potential take-out locations. I needed a suitable stretch of river between 350 and 400 kilometers long. All of these variables certainly eliminated a lot of rivers right from the start! The first river to come to mind, of course, was the Yukon River where the existing record was set in 1998. However, there was another river on my mind - the Peace River.

The Peace River runs through northern British Columbia and Alberta, beginning below the Peace Canyon Dam and the WAC Bennett Dam at Hudson Hope, BC and flows 1923 Kilometers to Lake Athabasca in Northern Alberta. Strong current, relatively good access and essentially no whitewater!

Back in 1999 I followed the progress of a young paddler from Montreal Quebec, Ilya Klvana, who became the first SOLO paddler to paddle all the way across Canada in one paddling season! Ilya began his epic journey in Prince Rupert British Columbia and finished on the northern tip of Newfoundland roughly seven months later. Roman Rockcliff and Frank Wolf also did a similar trip in the 1990s in a tandem canoe when they paddled from the mouth of the St. John River in New Brunswick to Vancouver British Columbia in just one paddling season. These are the only two expeditions to successfully paddle all the way across Canada in one season!

Thinking back to Ilya's trip across Canada, I remembered that the Peace River was part of Ilya's route and that it might be worth consideration. After reading through Ilya's journal once again and exchanging a couple of emails with Ilya in Montreal, I made my decision! In 1999 Ilya had paddled 140 kilometers in a 14-hour day on the Peace - in a loaded sea kayak, which he had built himself!

"About 15 minutes after watching an adult moose swim across the river, passing me by less than 100 meters, I soon saw a bear swim across the river..."

The Training
Originally I had hoped to make my attempt around the summer solstice to take advantage of maximum daylight. This idea never even entered my mind until the end of late February, however! As June approached, I knew that I needed more time to train so I picked late August as my target date.

My training consisted of long hours on the water - mainly paddling the North and South Thompson Rivers in and around Kamloops BC. A typical workout consisted of half-upriver paddling and half-downriver, and paddling back to my put-in.

Endurance building was the main objective and I paddled 2-3 hours on my shorter workouts while doing a longer session on the weekends ranging from about 8 and 14 hours. I had a number of strong paddlers to train with including some of Canada's top adventure racers as well as Darryl Spencer, organizer of this year's Canadian Marathon Canoe & Kayak Championships.

In late July I raced the Necky against the ICF sprint kayaks in the Canadian Marathon Canoe & Kayak Championships, finishing in 5th place - not bad for a sea kayak! One week later, along with my Dad Earl visiting from Nova Scotia, I headed to the Peace River for a practice run to check out the river firsthand. It was exciting to see the river for the first time in person. We arrived in Hudson Hope at just past 6:00 PM on a Saturday evening and soon found a place to camp along the river just outside town. I was excited to launch my kayak into this river the next morning to scout it out.

We awoke the next morning to much lower water levels from what we saw the previous evening. I was not overly concerned though until after my second day of scouting the river where upon taking out, I found out that the water levels were down due to a damaged turbine at one of the dams, reducing water flow by 25%!