Booking Solo Passage Kayaker Negotiates Icy Seas, Rain And Bear In 19-Foot Boat

To look at this wispy, easygoing graybeard, you’d never guess he’d been through the dripping fangs of hell.

Clarence “Kay” Swanson has an almost legendary past that’s slipping downstream in paddling history with little fanfare.

The man simply doesn’t know how to brag.

“Today’s expert kayakers are going over waterfalls and doing things that are way over my head,” Swanson said.

But when the 67-year-old Spokane emergency physician bought his first fiberglass kayak 30 years ago, few people had begun testing the limits of Western rivers.

Swanson learned from a book when he lived in Columbus, Mont.

“I read the Eskimo roll chapter, and tried it in the Stillwater River,” he said. “I’d reread and try again. Reread and try. It took me two weeks just for that.”

Later that winter, Swanson was at a medical conference when he met another physician with a kayak. “I don’t know where I’d have gone with kayaking if I hadn’t met Walt Blackadar,” Swanson said.

Blackadar already had made a name as a daring whitewater pioneer. By spring, Swanson was paddling in his wake on an expedition down the wild, remote Middle Fork of the Salmon River.

“We got into monster waves,” Swanson said. “I hadn’t paddled anything that big. I hadn’t even SEEN anything that big.”

Swanson turned over and had to be pulled out by Blackadar 12 times on the trip.

“I was a little surprised at the end when he said I was good enough to try something tougher,” Swanson said. “But he told me no matter how good I got, I should never trust a river.”

So he and Blackadar trusted themselves from Alaska’s Susitna to Georgia and a wild river Blackadar had to run after reading the book “Deliverance.”

“We did OK in Alaska, but demolished our boats in Georgia,” Swanson said.

News of their prowess in frothing wilderness rivers began to filter out to mainstream America. In the mid-‘70s, The American Sportsman television crews followed Blackadar, Swanson and other daring kayakers down the Grand Canyon.

“In all, I boated 1,500 wild miles with Blackadar,” Swanson said. “The water just kept getting bigger and bigger until I finally stopped. I figured he’d kill me.”

Indeed, in 1978, Blackadar made one careless and deadly mistake at a log jam on the North Fork of the Payette, an Idaho river he’d paddled numerous times.

Coincidentally, perhaps, that’s when Swanson began exploring a form of kayaking that relied more on endurance than adrenaline.

“Sea kayaking generally is more relaxing,” he said. But doing it Swanson-style isn’t an old man’s sport.

His latest epic, completed this summer, spanned 1,039 miles from Juneau to Seattle in 58 days.

He soloed most of the adventure in his 19-foot boat, although he was joined for a portion of the trip along Vancouver Island by Jeff Frost of Olympia.

Such a trip gives one plenty of time to ponder details. “Considering I had five rest days in the trip, I averaged 19.6 miles a day,” he said. “I lost 7 pounds, down to 143.”

Solo paddling is tedious. Striking out on an open-water crossing is more dangerous because there’s no possibility of quick assistance. Pitching a tent takes more time. The weight of gear can’t be shared.

“My first few days were around Admiralty Island, which has brown bears at a density of about one per square mile,” he said. “I was so concerned about bears that I carried a pistol, a flare gun, pepper spray and a shotgun.”

The weather generally ranged from gloom and rain to rain and gloom. He could go days without seeing another human and more than a week without talking to one.

He jigged occasionally for rock fish, but more often he was so tired after 10 or more hours of battling winds and currents, he’d simply eat a cold bagel with peanut butter, peel a few leafs off a head of cabbage and call it a salad.

“Then I’d just crash in the tent,” he said.

“Much of the shoreline is steep and rocky, so you could paddle for miles just looking for a place to camp.”

In Ketchikan, he met another kayaker who was headed north. “He had written down GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates for good campsites. I had marked my sites, too, so we were able to help each other.”

Every 200 miles or so, Swanson would find a port to shower, resupply and boost his spirits with conversation, a beer and ice cream.

“I had one 9-mile crossing where I had to pick the right weather and hope it didn’t change,” he said. “But there were only two times I got into water I shouldn’t have been in.

“The first was in open water with big winds that gave me no time to relax. Huge trailing seas would lift me up and try to broach my boat. It was exhausting.”

The second was near an island in Johnstone Strait, when he nosed into a riverlike rip current.

“I did a hard brace and thought that I’d had it,” he said, noting that an upset would have been fatal. The current was strong and the water a numbing 50 degrees.

With a weather radio and a GPS navigation unit, he was able to paddle some days in thick fog.

“I’m not sure that’s smart at my age,” he said. “I don’t know whether my hearing is good enough anymore to hear the oncoming ships.”

Although he soloed most of the trip, Swanson enjoyed daily visits by creatures such as orca and humpback whales, seals and sea otters, sea fowl and campground raccoons.

“I saw only one bear, probably because I often was far from shore and not really looking for them,” he said.

He was heading into a place in Johnstone Strait called Dent Rapids, a rugged saltwater current that rips through islands with a force familiar to Swanson.

“It has a roar like a raging river,” he said, “and a whirlpool that’s pulled down powerboats.

“I waited for slack tide to start, but by the time I got to the second rapid there was a hellacious current and much of the shore was sheer rock. I worked up through eddies, and at one point I grabbed onto some kelp trying to get to shore for a rest.

But in the only hope for sanctuary was a huge brown bear.

“There I was with a bear a few feet to one side and a 6-naut current on the other.”

His journey took him past areas where natives had camped 6,000 years ago. “You have to admire them,” he said. “They had no GoreTex or GPS. I learned to figure currents by simply looking at the charts and figuring how it logically should be. Then I was wrong half the time.”

Yes, after all these years, Swanson said he’s still learning.

“If I do that trip again, I won’t take the shotgun and I’ll make sure to have more companions,” he said. “I just plain got lonesome.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos; Graphic: Kay Swanson’s 1,039 mile kayak tour

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: SEEING THE WORLD TOP TO BOTTOM This is the first of two parts about adventurers at the earth’s extremes. Next week: John Roskelley climbs in Tierra del Fuego.