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MountainMan Times
Adirondack Envy
by Jim
Leinfelder
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We Minnesotans are a
self-satisfied bunch. It's not that we brag on the things we like about
ourselves in the manner of, say, Texans or the French. We quietly take
great satisfaction in our preference for hot dish, losing football
teams, and sentences that begin with "so" and end with "then," as in,
"So, yer' gonna' goh over tuh' Gramma's cabin on Sundee fer some hotdish
while yuh watch duh Vikes lose, then?" |
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We are also an
unabashedly canoe-centric people. |
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But gradually I've been
coming to this vague awareness of the Adirondack guideboat. When and how
this awareness began I can’t say exactly. But, the spark was recently
fanned into flaming lust by a chance conversation at our local Orvis
shop in which I learned that they were bringing the Adirondack guideboat
to Minnesota. The Adirondack Guideboat Company (of Vermont) is growing
and expanding their dealerships out west, locating them strategically in
Michigan, Wisconsin and now Minnesota. |
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One look at the boat
and I was a convert. We’ve had so many unwelcome arrivals in our waters
….. milfoil, zebra mussels, and, if you can believe the local FOX
affiliate, a piranha…but this exotic, the Adirondack guideboat, well, it makes
just so much sense out here.
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The guideboat's shape is
superficially much like the canoe. But, despite first-glance
similarities (born of the universal fluid principles that govern moving
over water), canoes and guideboats aren't even kissin' cousins. As canoe
folks know, today's kevlar and aluminum canoes owe their origins to the
Indian tribes of northern Minnesota and Canada. |
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The Adirondack
guideboat, as its name implies, traces its roots back 170 years to the
roadless, lake-spattered stretches of the Adirondack region of Upstate
New York. Early settlers adapted what they remembered of the 18th
Century saltwater wherries, European dories and the lumberman's bateaux
to their new rustic lives in the Adirondacks. For most of the nearly two
centuries since then, the Adirondack guideboat has remained relatively
unknown outside of upstate New York. |
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Dealers out here are betting that the guideboat will win a place in the
hearts of canoe-fixated Minnesotans. Instead of high tech poly pro
fleece and Gore Tex shells, think Abercrombie & Finch split bamboo fly
rods and oil cloth hunting coats from the era of Hemingway and the
Roosevelt up on Mount Rushmore. |
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Adirondack Guideboat Inc.,
founded by Steve Kaulback in 1979 and now co-owned by David Rosen, ship
boats all over the country and even have a few customers in boat-savvy
Sweden, England and Holland. Their boats range from a 12-foot and
15-foot kevlar version to a cedar guideboat ...which is so beautiful
that I am at a loss for words. (Not an easy accomplishment.) At the
Orvis opening in Minneapolis, I saw a violin tucked into the curve of
one of the cedar boats and I thought, "How appropriate." |
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I’ve spent an
embarrassing amount of time studying the company’s website. I fantasize
the waters I will row when I get one of their boats. I even sent a link
to a friend who writes about nature for a variety of national magazines.
And, as it happens, the bug has bitten him as hard as it did me. In
September of 2003 Vogue published his article on the Adirondack
guideboat. (Yes, you read that correctly, Vogue.) |
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The price for these boats range from $2,000 to
$4,400 for the kevlar and glass boats up into the low-five digits (as in
$13k) for their wooden boat. For the woodworkers amongst us, there is a kit
whereby we can build one of the wooden guideboats for ourselves. (And, I
confess, I recently placed my order for a 16’ cedar kit…hoping that the gods
who watch over overly-ambitious craftsmen will be watching over me.)
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Happily the company
gives tech support over the phone or by e-mail. At the moment they have
20 guideboats under construction in places as diverse Alaska, Oregon,
New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, England and Scotland.
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In 1895, Henry Van
Dyke wrote about the guideboat: "They are one of the finest things that
the skill of man has ever produced under the inspiration of the
wilderness. It is a frail shell, so light that a guide can carry it with
ease, but so dexterously fashioned that it rides the heaviest waves like
a duck and slips through the water as if by magic." |
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We love the small rivers and lakes of
Minnesota. In those contexts, the canoe's agility trumps the speed of the
guideboat. However, when the water opens wide, and the winds begin to blow,
when you’ve got a ton of gear to carry, I’ll take a guideboat every time. I
wonder if you folks back in the Adirondacks know how lucky you are to have
so sweet a boat so close to home? |
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Meet
Jim Leinfelder |
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