Personally I only tried the ME out a couple of times tandem. I found it to be kind of squirrely tandem. A little too reactive for my taste. I liked it much better as a solo craft. As far as the picture of the Howler, the bow looks like the flashback and stern looks like an ME. Maybe I would have liked trying one out. However, I’m pretty sure the “hard chine” would have resulted in an immediate out of boat experience. I liked Madriver’s designs. I’ve only paddled a courier, an explorer, a flashback and the mad river adventurer, which is actually a confluence watersport product. I like how the boats paddled but found them to be a bit wet, especially the flashback for ww.
Getting back to the OP I wouldn’t recommend any of those boats for a grand canyon float. Then again, I crossed over into decked boats (c1s) because I wanted to run bigger water with less hassle.
Whitesell canoes were heavy and I doubt I would have liked the perception saddle that they were using in the 80s . That bein’ said, I saw a lot of them on the New and Gauley Rivers, punching a lot of big holes and folks could roll them well. They kind of faded away and it seemed like the probe (Mohawk) and the Ocoee replaced Nolan’s boats to some extent . Perhaps he just got tired of making them. I think the probe was a bit more “sporty” but Mohawk’s canoes were heavy too.
So what big water canoe would I choose? Only owned one Esquif design (the taureau) and wasn’t very good at paddling it. I was amazed at how dry it was for such a short boat. Unfortunately, with the hips and knees going bad, I had to crank up the saddle height which made the boat really tippy. I guess if money wasn’t an object I would check out one of Esquif’s other designs.
Personally, when it’s my turn to see the grand canyon I’ll be in a raft but if I had to be in a canoe it would be a full sized boat (at least 16’)- not a blackfly, silver birch, spanish fly, taurea, ledge or other short canoe. I would want more boat under me on the boil lines and over the big waves. I would want to feel connected to the boat- meaning it handles predictably. I wouldn’t be looking for something edgier or more rocker. In general if I’m paddling big water then I want a big boat.
Now that’s a very old school approach. How much gear are you going to carrying in your boat? That can make a huge difference in how the boat handles or will the rafts be carrying all the gear? In general, Id rather have too big a boat than too small. You swim less that way.
A couple more thoughts- the op talked about wanting more rocker and chine, great for skill development and zipping around but maybe not congruent with a big water experience. Mostly though it is about the paddler. I’ve got a ton of old vhs videos and many of the boats would be considered sub par in today/s market.
The Howler’s bow has some flair right at the top. The stern is somewhat unique with the 10" rocker. In my experience, it is a fun big solo WW boat and normally has 10’ or less in the water. Tandem though, I think the my brother-in-law & I were way too heavy for good performance. We were 400lb+ together when we paddled (a long time ago). My rough feel is that ~300lb load would probably about right. He & I bought the Howler after we were pushing the limits of a Mad River Explorer when we ran the Big South Fork of the Cumberland at ~3500 cfs.
The Howler has been passed down a generation and is in need of repairs after an ‘incident’ on the Nolichucky a couple of years ago.
I’m comfortable in most eastern Class IIIs in a canoe/hardshell kayak. Class IV using a ducky…But I want no part of the GC in a canoe!
And as much as I’d wanna be on that river and experience it up-close, I have serious doubts about signing on with one of those group ww rafting junkets.
(Mostly having to do with relinquishing my own personal boat control.)
John Wesley Powell can keep all the glory in eternity with him.
I really like that he kept it real and talked about the big water swim and how to deal with swimmers. His advice about practicing rescues and reentry without going to shore has me thinking the original big water kayakers are sea kayakers. After all, the ocean is a pretty big place.
Years ago I was in an open boat whitewater clinic at the Nantahala Outdoor Center back when NOC still had a stable of whitewater canoes available. One of the clinic participants was a big man. He had tried a variety of canoes including an Encore, Mohawk Viper, and a couple of other Mad River designs but nothing clicked for him until he got into a Howler with a triple saddle.
He could really make use of that boat’s differential rocker by leaning back and transferring weight to the highly-rockered stern to free up the bow and he could have spent the whole weekend on the wave at Surfer’s Rapid if he had wanted to.
I became curious about the Howler so I jumped into the bow and paddled through the gates above Big Wesser at NOC while our instructor, Gordon Black, watched rather nervously from the river left bank. Together we were putting a little more than 400 lbs in the canoe. We did OK but it felt decidedly touchy from my position in the bow.
I know a couple in PA who regularly paddled a Howler tandem and I paddled the Lower Yough with them many times. They are of relatively moderate size and are very skilled and they really like the Howler and do very well in it.
A few years back I was paddling the St. Francis in MO and noticed a nice Howler which was the first one I had seen in years and probably the first I had seen in the Midwest. Later that day as I was getting ready to depart I saw the same Howler again, on top of a car with the bow nearly torn off and hanging at about an 80 degree angle to the rest of the bow, attached only by what remained of the gunwales. I didn’t have a chance to ask the owner(s) what had happened.
I finally watched that big water video - really cool, but holy crap! That water is huge. I was trying to think of where you would even find water like that around here, and it would probably be the Kennebeck up in ME. Some of the locals do a summer trip every year up to the Ottawa - must be what they are doing. Personally, I’ll stick to low volume, rock dodging that is typical of my usual rivers, but that is really cool to watch.
Buddy of mine doing the Kennebec here from about 0.40 to 2.30. The small rocky stuff at the end is more typical of what I do.
That is amazing. I remember walking along the boardwalk below the falls thinking “that’s not so bad”, then then we turned a corner and the waves were crashing over my head. They were enormous. Not sure which is more amazing - the canoe or the kayak run. I guess both
Question, is there a pump in the canoe pumping water out constantly, or is he just paddling with a boat full of water?
No, I’m pretty sure that is the 14’ Piranha that Nolan is paddling in that video, Tom.
Whitesell was definitely a fearless, badass dude back in the day, and very, very skilled. I used to run into him on the Ocoee from time to time back in the early 1990s. He did a one-day clinic for the Tennessee Valley Canoe Club back around then.
I last saw him and talked to him a few years back when he decided to sell off some of his boats that he had tucked away at his place down on the Nantahala. He finally realized that having blown out his knees years before, he was never going to be paddling a canoe again. I believe he does still occasionally paddle whitewater in a Shredder these days but at the time I spoke with him, he was more into horses IIRC.
In younger years I got to paddle with the first woman to ever paddle the Niagara Gorge, Carrie Ashton who was also a member of the 1972 US Olympic Whitewater Team. At the time she was teaching canoeing and running an outdoor adventure program in Suwanee at the University of the South. But she paddled a kayak on the Niagara Gorge.
Back in those days we didn’t have good compact batteries to run electric bilge pumps, or if they existed they were out of my price range. I do recall one guy who ran the Ocoee frequently who had an electric pump which he ran off a sealed lead-acid motorcycle battery.
I used to see Nolan paddling the Ocoee in a Piranha back in the 1990s and I don’t think he ever put a battery and pump in his boat. It would have been pointless in the Niagara Gorge as the gunwales would have been underwater a fair percentage of the time and a dozen pumps would not have been able to keep up.
That brings to mind a run I made years ago on the New River Gorge with an excellent open boater named Hugh Worthy, now long departed. Hugh was shepherding me and a few others down the gorge at moderately high water. There was a considerable eddy fence coming off off Whale Rock on Upper Keeney and I took on a fair bit of water breaking through it to get in the eddy. I started to bail it out with my bleach bottle bailer. Hugh said “What are you doing?” which I thought was pretty obvious.
He then told me to look at the waves in Middle Keeney which were breaking around 7-8 feet high that day and said, “After you go through that first wave you will probably have at least as much water in your boat as you do now and you will have two more waves to go. You might as well start out wet so you will get a feel of how the boat is handling full of water.”
I think Nolan had plenty of experience paddling a canoe full of water. He was also quite good at “paddle bailing” and intentionally left a little open space in front of his Perception saddle so that he could scoop water out with his paddle blade which he did with incredible rapidity.
I guess I need to practice that - it is just so unstable paddling with a boat full of water, I can’t imagine going through those waves like that and staying upright.
I noticed the empty space in front of the saddle - I just assumed he couldn’t find bags big enough to fill the boat.
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