When is it "too cold" to paddle?

[GearFreak]

As the title says - when do you say it's too cold to consider using the canoe? Well, if you do consider it - at what point do you decide to be smart and stay on dry(ish) ground. I was hoping that the weather this fall was going to be more like last year with positive temps deep into November but it's not looking good for deer opener next week despite my staring at the weather network and wishing. Just curious what temps others put the boat to bed at?

EDIT: actually the 13th is the opener so its two weekends away.

 

[Canotrouge]

When you can no longer brake the ice at every paddle stroke....

 

[Odyssey]

Cold paddling conditions don't concern me as much as the cold camping conditions. Especially these days. My blood must be getting thinner. Most evenings from April thru October when I step out onto my back porch and look up into a sky framed by a ghostly birch low on my left and an imposing spruce high on my right, I wish I were canoe tripping. But when the temps dip towards 10 C/ 50F I'm glad I'm not. On those evenings I step back inside closing the screen door, but leaving the inside door ajar so I can sit reading in the kitchen and feel the cold breath of a hard night brush by me, and remind me just what I'm missing.

 

[Bothwell Voyageur]

Done below -10 C. Water was getting a bit thick. We regularly used to paddle whitewater at temperatures close to freezing in the UK but would wear drysuits in case of immersion. Flatwater paddling at those temperatures would be in thick pile/pertex and rubber muck boots. Ice makes a real mess of wooden paddles! I think you'd want a sheltered location and a forecast with little wind.

 

[Mason]

Lowest so far is 14F (-10C). The water was moving, so it wasn't freezing.

Lakes still need to be liquid. I was paddling into a multi-day caribou hunt in Alaska some years back. We had to break ice for maybe 100m to clear a path to the first portage. Thinking about camping, and then the lakes freezing over while we were out, I convinced my partner to make it a day hunt, and we camped back at the truck.

 

[Guest]

We have done lots of winter day paddles here in wny when the water wasn't froze. I drysuit, boots and gloves and your good. I also cant get excited about cold weather canoe camping even though I winter camp on land.

 

[red langford]

Cold paddling conditions don't concern me as much as the cold camping conditions. Especially these days. My blood must be getting thinner. Most evenings from April thru October when I step out onto my back porch and look up into a sky framed by a ghostly birch low on my left and an imposing spruce high on my right, I wish I were canoe tripping. But when the temps dip towards 10 C/ 50F I'm glad I'm not. On those evenings I step back inside closing the screen door, but leaving the inside door ajar so I can sit reading in the kitchen and feel the cold breath of a hard night brush by me, and remind me just what I'm missing.

I’ve camped in summer where single digit temps at night are common.

I’ve paddled the end of March at an opening in the river when people were still driving on the lake.

I’ve camped during hunting season where the coffee pot water is frozen in the morning.

I’ve slept in a tent in the backyard at -30C.

I canoed Algonquin in November when it was snowing. I was the only vehicle in the Canoe Lake parking lot.

Comfort is a personal thing and only you can decide what is too cold.

This year I may finally take the plunge and try some actual winter camping. I’ve tried the canvas tent thing this fall hunting and wowzers do I ever like it. Winters are long here. As a matter of fact snow came Thursday and it’s snowed every day since. Won’t see any grass til April I’m sure. Get out there, have fun and be safe. Remember the old proverb “There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing”

 

[Cruiser]

If the water is liquid you are good to go, although I think a better question is what temperature are you geared to paddle in?

Once the temperature starts dropping I think gear becomes the dominant consideration as to what temperature you are prepared for.

What got taken into Algonquin in early May of this year (we left shore in a snow storm), was pretty different than what got packed in August and September .... for one thing I took the swim suit off the list for the spring trip (lol).


Brian

 

[GearFreak]

I am lovin' the responses - I laughed lots! Thanks everyone - good to know I am not crazy to be thinking it.

For gear - I got hot to not. I just have more faith in my paddling skills than my '71 9.9 Johnson.

 

[Bothwell Voyageur]

One thing to watch for is overheating and sweating too much. This is a real problem if you wear a rain jacket to block the wind, anything waterproof will trap moisture, even Goretex, which is why pertex and pile (fleece) is so popular for all season paddling in the UK. Paramo clothing is also very popular for uk shoulder season outdoor activities where sweating can wet out insulation and help bring on hypothermia.

 

[JoeO]

I have paddle every month but February usually by then the canoe is under a foot or two of snow. Also cold enough to break the boat on a good bump so I just waits until March. When it is cold I am paddling white water in a dry suit I have swam in Nov and March. I use to use a wet suit. and when I was first learning I use to swim a lot. Went one year in March 18 degrees Fahrenheit air temp went for a swim water was a little warmer not much !. Another time we went on the Pemi in North Woodstock NH 1st weekend in March every time we went under the bridge the plows hit us with snow!

 

[dougd]

Coldest was years ago on the local river. It was -16 and why we went is still beyond me. This was long before we had wet or dry suits just a lot of layer of wool and fleece. I froze my arse off! The worst was using our poles to push our way over a very large jagged ice shelf to get to the take out. In years past we paddled every month until freeze over, some years that didn't happen so we got every month in. I will admit it is quite fun to beach on a large ice flow and get a free ride for a while!

dougd

 

[stripperguy]

My gang and I often trip in the shoulder seasons in the ADK's. So from ice out to ice in, mostly. We did have a few trips where night time temps dropped to the teens (F). Sometimes we would have to wait for the skim ice to subside, other times break through thin ice to reach open water.
But those times when the water is cold, we stick to protected water in our open canoes, and we're always careful especially ingress/egress and breaching beaver dams.
A few of us (me included) have taken a dunking in cold water and air. A quickly started fire and proper clothing choices make those potentially dangerous situations merely uncomfortable. No dry uits or wetsuits, but all wool and/or synthetics, with a warm fire never far away.

 

[gumpus]

I've found that it's hard to have fun paddling if it's below 20F...but if it's calm and sunny 20F ain't too bad. Unfortunately my coonhound mutt paddling partner is only good down to 40-45F before she starts shivering and her teeth chatter so loudly that she sounds like a woodpecker.

 

[DuctTape]

I have a friend who uses a 100 degree rule. As long as the sum of the water temp and air temp exceeds 100, he is good to go.

Me, I use the liquid water rule. That gets stretched to the limits sometimes.

 

[Guest]

Gearfreak 103117

I’ve been paddling in the F teens, but most pleasantly in sunshine, no wind and shallow tidal no-ice waters. Without a wind chill those temps are OK if warmly dressed. But even there I stay closer to shore than usual.

If it is really cold I stick to shallow (knee deep at most) tidal bays close to shore, or small class nothing rivers and streams that I know well, where I’m never more than 15 feet from shore, and excepting some pools rarely more than waist deep.

I’ve had one, er, maybe two cold weather swims, but there was no actual swimming, more like stand up, wade 10 feet to shore and quickly get into warm, dry clothes.

There are a lot of possible strikes for my risk assessment/avoidance beyond just temperature. Probably would be even if I used a drysuit.

Big open water/waves
Wind (wind chill & waves)
Deep water
Far from shore
Ice

I don’t like ice. See especially “Get trapped under” or “Break through repeatedly struggling to wade to shore”. If it has been a long cold spell I don’t trust the little class nothing stuff not to be frozen over at some point. Sometimes the tidal bays will ice over as well.

Oft told iced-out story:

My hunting buddy Ron and I were all set to dawn sneakboat a local stream for ducks. We set a downstream shuttle in the wee dark hours and noticed a little rim ice in places near the bridge.

Drove up to the put in and noticed a little rim ice here and there.

Launched a half hour before sunrise at the first sound of legal gunshots, went a couple miles downstream to find thick ice from bank to bank. Walked the shoreline for a mile downstream. Solid ice as far as the eye could see.

Paddled, dragged, pushed and poled the canoe back upstream and un-ran the shuttle. I was back home in bed by 8am. I still claim Diane muttered “My husband will be home later”

This thread was a good reminder; it’s the time of year to repack the compression bag with spare full-on winter duds. Wool socks (liners too), capilene top and bottom, fleece top and bottom, down vest, gloves, knit hat, shammy towel, square of plastic to stand on, garbage bag for wet clothes. . . . .

The compression bag goes in a small dry bag and the spare winter clothes stay packed ‘til late spring. Easy to stash for day trips, and on winter campers that little dry bag would be the first thing I grabbed for in a swim.

I’ve got double or triples off all that stuff, so dedicating a full set of old spares that I may not unpack for 6 months makes more sense than packing it before every trip.

 

[GearFreak]

Thanks Mike for clothing list! your making this easy! but have to ask - is the "Gearfreak 103117" kinda like "Jenny 8675309"?

Found a good site to pass along with some layering advice.
https://paddleboston.com/resources-s...ater-paddling/

As for ice - I really want to try ice diving one day as well as cave diving. Not super serious get the C-card type but a discovery type outing. Local shop does a session and one of these days I will do it - always think of this video when I think of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIs0...Is00QjiJZQ#t=1

That is just way too cool not to try.

 

[Mason]

As for ice - I really want to try ice diving one day as well as cave diving. Not super serious get the C-card type but a discovery type outing. Local shop does a session and one of these days I will do it - always think of this video when I think of it.

That is just way too cool not to try.

One of my paddling partners was a diver in Antarctica. Saw some pretty neat stuff (new species to science).

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I don't care to paddle much below 60[FONT=&quot]° F. I prefer t-shirt weather and warm waters and don't like to paddle with bulky clothing.

That's now.

In previous centuries I paddled every month of the year in California and New England. Wetsuits, then an early adopter of drysuits. Dragging canoes in thigh deep snow in the New Hampshire mountains. Carving around hundreds of ice floes in the Roeliff Jansen Kill and mid-Hudson. I vividly recall our first exploratory down the class 3-4 upper Hudson in March of '85. Every canoe had a coating of ice over the entire hull, as the spray and plunge water would freeze instantly. Our barbate members had icicles hanging from their chins.

Having not needed to turn on my furnace for the entire month of October this year, I recall, in contrast, how our entire group of paddlers voted to end a trip, due to bitter cold cutting winds, on the class 3-4 Farmington River in Massachusetts in mid-October in the mid-'80's. No one wanted to risk a swim or pin or rescue in that temperature.

Paddling through a snowy landscape on a placid river can be spiritual, but I prefer paddling in Eden now.[/FONT]

 

[frozentripper]

If it's government work, any weather's good enough... floater coats are standard issue to grunts on the water and in those it's more likely to be too warm than too cold. The only time breaking through the ice was stepping off a helicopter to collect water samples and that was because of the rush because helicopter time is real expensive... and the noise of the blades drowns out any ominous cracking sounds. Nice and quiet in a canoe and then you can feel around a bit.