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< July/Aug 2005
	Hotline
Moist Mojave Canoeing Death Valley

Columbus, Ohio’s Jim Camden, 41, recently hit a new low canoeing. Two hundred and eighty two feet below sea level, in fact.

"Actually, with the water being about two feet deep, it was probably only 280 feet below sea level," says Camden, of paddling Death Valley’s Badwater Basin in February. "It was a total surprise. It just happened to have water in it when I was passing through with two canoes on my car."

Death Valley has seen its wettest winter since record-keeping began in 1911. Average annual rainfall is around two inches but this season 6.19 inches of precipitation has saturated the usually dry valley. Many roads in Death Valley National Park have been closed, and rangers are calling it "a natural phenomenon."

Camden, a member of the Columbus Outdoor Pursuits Club, was just two months into a planned two-year paddling road trip with his dog, Bug, when he happened upon the drenched Death Valley. "The ranger said the last time anyone paddled in the basin was 40 years ago," says Camden, who also let bystanders use his Mad River Guide and Outrage canoes. "The water was hot as heck, and every time you got splashed you got salt all over you."

Tourists out for a scenic vacation were as surprised to see a canoe in the middle of the desert as Camden was to be paddling one. "Everyone who came by was taking pictures," he adds. "It was a totally unexpected experience."

The only thing more unexpected was his meeting a girl from Slovakia at the campground that night and putting his two-year paddling plans on hold. Six weeks later he was flying to London to meet her. "I certainly didn’t expect that, either," he says. —eugene buchanan