10 Best Adventure Paddling Books

8. Paddle to the Arctic, by Don Starkell

Don Starkell's window of opportunity was small - he had only the months between June and September to cover the 3,000 miles from Churchill, Manitoba, to Tuktoyaktuk, in Canada's Northwest Territories, before the winter freeze set in. The challenges were extreme: ice storms, capsizes, even polar bears. He was forced to drag his kayak over impassable ice floes and nearly died of starvation. This is a harrowing account by a truly driven individual.

I was so tired, and so unsure of my actual location, and in such fear of making another error by paddling to the west and getting trapped somewhere out in the freezing waters, that I believed it would be suicidal to carry on blindly. The temperature was dropping fast, the shores were freezing and "slushing" up, and I was afraid of camping on the nearby mainland shore facing north or northwest, because I could be trapped there by freezing shore slush and not be able to get back to the sea. So against my knowledge and intuition, I decided to camp out at sea on the bar's southwest end. I really didn't have any choice, and I hoped I wouldn't regret it.

9. Alone at Sea, by Hannes Lindemann

In 1957, Dr. Hannes Lindemann took 72 days to paddle across the 3,000 miles of the Atlantic Ocean in a 17-foot Klepper folding kayak. If it looked familiar, it was because the previous summer he had done the same thing in a dugout canoe. This detailed diary of the arduous crossing and its obvious perils is a tribute, at times frightening, to the perseverance of the human spirit.

This was my thirty-second day at sea. The night was restless, but the wind had weakened. I decided to replace the rudder. With the wick of the rudder between my teeth and the blade tied to my right wrist, I slipped, fully dressed, into the water. The waves were 15 to 20 feet high, the temperature of the water lukewarm. With difficulty I swam to the stern. One moment I was under the stern, then the boat hit my head, and the next instant the stern was before me. So I took the stern firmly under my left arm, changed the rudder blade into my left hand, when suddenly a big wave tore it away. I cannot describe the shock. I reached quickly, grabbed for the blade and luckily caught hold of the string attached to it. I could feel the sweat of delayed fright coming up inside me.

10. Canoeing with the Cree, by Eric Sevareid

In 1930 two teenagers - Walter Port and Eric Sevareid, who would later go on to become a famous journalist - shoved their canvas canoe into the Minnesota River to begin the long journey to Hudson Bay. With crude maps in hand, they spent the next 14 weeks paddling and portaging 2,250 miles of rivers and lakes before winter freeze-up. Their simple, unpretentious passage is a classic account of a way of life long lost to the annals of time.

As we entered the harbor, filled with islands and rocks, we drew up alongside a big boat in which an Indian was fishing. He was short and stocky, dressed in black trousers and moccasins, covered with rubbers, as was the summer custom. He looked astonishingly like a white man and spoke almost perfect English. His name was Willie Everett and, we later learned, he was pure Cree. He knew English because his father as well as himself had been a "Hudson Bay Indian" or a "tripper," an Indian who works solely for the company, on the trail most of the time.