Graduate student Mike Cook paddles in his kayak at the beginning of the Campus to Coast kayak and canoe race April 5, 2013 at Wonch Park. The race finished at Grand Haven State Park. Katie Stiefel/The State News
For Colin Bright, three days on a river in the Michigan wilderness seemed like the perfect way to test his outdoor limits.
“I was the kid that had to be yelled at to come inside, always in a tree or in the lake or something,” the environmental biology and zoology senior said early Friday morning, just before jumping in his kayak.
Bright was one of 42 outdoor enthusiasts who raced down the Red Cedar River in the MSU Outdoors Club’s Campus to Coast canoe and kayak race last weekend.
The race commenced at Wonch Park, in Okemos, in the Red Cedar River, and continued west into the Grand River, eventually ending at Lake Michigan in Grand Haven, Mich.
The paddlers departed at dawn on a chilly Friday morning and finishers arrived at Lake Michigan at varying times between late Saturday and Sunday night, said Clint Adams, the club’s alumni adviser who coordinated the event. The race is a long, difficult, 160-mile-plus journey, Adams said Sunday afternoon when eight of the 22 teams participating finished the entire course.
While Bright was at first dreading the cold weather and long hours of paddling, his trek came to an end when his team dropped out of the race early Sunday morning, Adams said. Club volunteers were monitoring racers throughout the course and waiting at designated checkpoints to provide help when needed, Adams said.
“We could call this just a canoe-kayak race, but it’s not. It’s really an adventure race,” he said. “You have to be prepared for so many different things, it’s not just paddling — (it’s) so long and you vary in so many different types of water.”
Adams said some teams canoed for up to 17 hours straight, or more in some cases, while portaging over dams and camping overnight in designated areas.
Many racers dropped out because they were unprepared, couldn’t navigate at night, were too cold and failed to estimate how much paddling the trip entailed in such a short amount of time, he said. Most of the teams dropped out Friday night.
Expedition paddler Mike Smith, a 62-year-old man from Portage, Mich., was one of the racers who finished. He reached Lake Michigan early Sunday morning, Adams said.
Before hopping in his canoe on Friday morning, Smith said he was looking forward to the experience.
“I’ve been doing this for pretty much all my life,” he said. “I’ve got about 20,000 miles of paddling behind me.”
Smith said he was excited to see so many young people involved in the race and was ready to get the competition started.
Four expedition teams and at least two, as of press time, college teams ended up finishing the course, Adams said. Despite the short-finishers, he said he still was happy with the race’s outcome and participation.
“It’s very successful, even with this many people dropping out,” Adams said. “The majority (of paddlers) want to come back next year and try it (again).”
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