Archive for May, 2012

Four…

After backpacking all last week (which generally causes everything else that may be happening in my life to fall away), suddenly the Baltic is right here! As the last car coming back to Boston from Gettysburg, my trunk was packed with four people’s worth of kayaking gear and camping equipment that needs to be distributed between the students flying out of Logan next Saturday (big thanks to Ben and Emily Kohlbrenner for spending all of last week putting that stuff together). The pile of bags and boxes is currently dominating my parent’s living room, but they had fun going through and looking at everything we’re bringing. I think they are a little skeptical that it is all actually going to fit in the boats, but I assured them it would. And if it doesn’t, then I guess it’s not coming with us.

Though we are leaving in just a few days, the list of logistics never seems to get any shorter. Right now we are working on securing the cargo crate that will ship our kayaks back to the States from Helsinki in July (assuming, of course, that we don’t change our minds and simply paddle them ourselves across the Atlantic). We need to figure out both where to put the container, as well as when we will be able to load the boats. It is difficult, however, to worry about how we are going to get everything home while all I can think about is how excited I am to get over there. Four more days and counting!

Emily Heeren

2012
05/29
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The big day is almost here!

The last few weeks have been a blur, after finals week the five of us have been running around getting last minute things prepared. Tucker and Haven are successfully now wilderness first responders (congrats!!), which is essentially a crash course on EMT training for the backcountry. Ben and I spent the last week taking inventory and packing up all the gear we need, and even managed to squeeze in a few days facilitating a ropes course workshop to raise more money for the trip.  Emily is leading a week long backpacking trip this week on the Appalachian Trail; the money she earns with her superb facilitation skills will also be raised for the expedition.

As the final week approaches, the challenge is extended to now making sure we are ready on a personal level. I feel like this last year has been so focused on getting this expedition off the ground, that my own mental preparation has taken a back seat. I hate that looming sensation of forgetting something, so as Memorial Day weekend approaches I am scrambling to go over my packing list again and again. As with all the larger trips we run, usually all of the stress is at the forefront before we even leave campus and once we get on the trail, rock or water everything else is instinctual. I expect this will also be the case for this expedition and within a week on the water we will fall into the pattern of expedition life.

 

Thanks for following!

Emily Kohlbrenner

 

Some images to inspire:

 Yoga on the Baltic

  Kayaks taking a break

Aaland Islands

Baltic Sea in the middle of the night

 Us in a few weeks!

Ben and Emily hard at work

2012
05/24
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The Plan

Beautiful Stockholm, Sweden, our starting city.

For those of you who haven’t gotten the chance to read through everything we have up on the Gettysburg College page, you might not know what our rough game plan for the expedition is. This post hopes to remedy that.

How and when will we post to the blog?

Because the islands in the Baltic Sea are popular summer vacation spots, cell coverage is shockingly reliable (or so we’ve been informed). We’ll be writing blog posts every couple of days during the trip and then whenever we pop into 3G coverage (or maybe we’ll even find accessible wifi) we’ll quickly publish any posts that have been written.

Where will we sleep?

We’ve also been asked a bunch of times how we plan to get any shut eye. Thankfully there are roughly (and this is an approximation) forty trillion islands between Stockholm and Helsinki that we can camp on. Although a lot of these islands are built up and have houses on them, the standard law/custom is that camping is fine as long as you stay out of sight and you knock on the door and ask to camp. And custom is that the answer is always yes. Nonetheless, the islands are quite small, and so we might have to split up at times in order to not overcrowd someone’s property.

When are we going and what is our route?

Although we’ll spend a few days in both Stockholm and Helsinki on either end, mostly for doing prep but also taking in the sights, our plan is to push off onto the water June 7th, spending the next month or so on the water. We’ll first head north for a several days. By crossing over to Aland from Sweden in the north, we’ll be able to minimize our time on open water. I’m sure most of you haven’t spent as much time pouring over the charts as us, but there is quite a bit of open, island-less water between the coast of Sweden and the Aland islands. There’s a six-mile gap between islands that we’ll have to paddle, however this is much better than the 18-mile one that looks to be the next best alternative. We plan to paddle into Helsinki on July 8th.

Hopefully we should have a Google Earth rough route posted before too long, so you can check out the finer details of our game plan.

So now that everyone knows what to expect, let’s get psyched. It’s going to be awesome.

2012
05/20
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The Kokatat Gear is Here!

Kokatat sent us PFDs, hydration packs, paddle gloves, and thermal skull caps. You can check out their stuff at http://www.kokatat.com/

Kris and Emily Heeren trying out the new gear

2012
05/18
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