Paddling Magazine

1 week ago | paddlingmag.com | Joe Potoczak

When it comes to a pair of kayaking shoes, there seems to be two extremes to choose from: pricey high-performance ones ready for anything, and cheap box-store pairs with thin mesh uppers and a clunky sole that are lucky to make it a week at summer camp let alone a season of a paddler’s use. Level Six’s new Tidal Shoe sets out to provide paddlers with another option—a pair of shoes that will protect your feet and hold up to use, yet be a relatively low-cost.

1 week ago | paddlingmag.com | Nadine Robinson

Santa Cruz, California, is known for its legendary surf breaks—and these days, for a four-legged social media sensation in the lineup. Rosie Drottar, or @RippinRosieDog to her 284,000 Instagram followers, is a two-year-old Labrador retriever. Her dad, Steve Drottar, a prosecuting attorney and a surfer for over 40 years, couldn’t be prouder: “I always wanted one of my kids or dogs to surf with me.

2 weeks ago | paddlingmag.com | Joe Potoczak

When late-spring days with clear skies and rising temps start to take over the weekly weather forecast, I peer out my office window, and the thought creeps in: I’d rather be paddleboarding. Just a few blocks from home I can drift miles on the Willamette River, and within a 60-mile drive, there are half a dozen lakes backdropped with forest climbing up mountainsides. All perfect places to spend an afternoon floating or cruising around.

2 weeks ago | paddlingmag.com | Kaydi Pyette

This sunrise session very nearly didn’t happen. Boise, Idaho-based photographer John Webster had been invited before. His friend and former freestyle world champion, Nick Troutman, told him for years to make the early morning pilgrimage to Kelly’s Whitewater Park in Cascade, Idaho. “He was like, dude, you need to come up here. There’s all-time light at the beginning of the day,” Webster recalls. But it was just far enough to worry about striking out. Last summer, on the Fourth of July, he listened.

3 weeks ago | paddlingmag.com | Maddy Marquardt

Big paddling expeditions have a reputation of being for the rich or retired, for the career adventurers and legacy paddlers, but a handful of young paddlers are charting their own course. In a world long past the paddling heyday of the nineties, where Gen Z has a reputation for being glued to an iPhone, meet the Gen Z adventurers who have bucked the stereotype to live out their own dream paddling trips.