Billy Davidson Book (Kayak Bill)

nootka said:
size 12 shot in a .22 shotshell will discourage snakes at close range (10 feet ?)
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That has been my life experience, as well. I have to say, though, that as a college student drinking beer and shooting rats at the Everett dump I would sometimes switch to birdshot because I was more apt to actually hit the damn rodent. Not necessarily kill them but clearly hit and hurt them. Strangely satisfying back then when under the influence 3.2 beer.................did I just say that out loud?
 
chodups said:
His lifestyle, admired by many, had made him susceptible to many forms of early death...
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A point often missed by the "survivalists" of the world.

Personally, I like being able to talk to my doctor when I'm unwell. Modern medicine is the way to go.

I recall a TV doco on a forensic archaeologist who was sorting through ancient bones and explaining their injuries. Among the healed, misaligned fractures that would have caused misery for the owners he held up a human jawbone. Missing a couple of teeth it also had a chunk of bone missing and he said that would have been caused by an abscess, which probably killed the person.

I suspect the person actually died after jumping off a cliff in their deranged agony!
 
page 45:
"The first climbers up Alberta were a group of Japanese Alpine Club members, in 1925. They left a silver ice axe on the summit, which was later brought down to a museum."

The silver ice axe was not:
blog.alpineclubofcanada.ca

Rockies History: Mount Alberta's Silver Ice Axe — ACC Archived Blog

An ice axe, left by a Japanese climbing party on the summit of Mount Alberta, in 1925, would be a source of local mountaineering “myths” and mysteries for many years… Culture
blog.alpineclubofcanada.ca blog.alpineclubofcanada.ca

page 81:
"In July 1957, Warren started up the Nose
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To protect the cracks, they used wooden legs from a stove
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The cracks became known as the Stove Legs Cracks."

How can you be a climber and not know about the stove legs ??

StovelegPiton.jpg

This piton, made by Frank Tarver, was made by sawing off the legs of an old wood stove. These pitons proved to be the key to getting past the wide cracks on the lower third of the Nose of El Capitan during the first ascent. These cracks are called the Stovelegs to this day.
 
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alexsidles said:
Brandon transcribes an interview with Bill in which Bill claims his longest day was 70 miles. "That was Sooke to Port Renfrew. I was practicing to see if I could cross Hecate Strait." Bill claims he "left at sunrise on June 21 and I set at sunset."
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Something that came to mind just now..........We are questioning the veracity of Bill's statement of distance paddled and rightly so, but did he exaggerate or simply misspeak? In the video Bill had just returned from several months away. He is drinking alcohol for the first time since leaving Shearwater and smoking marijuana. I don't know about you but in those same circumstances I would definitley be buzzed. I could see him saying 70 miles without critically thinking about it.
 
The actual distance is 70km. I can fumble units while sober!

I've done 70 mile says before, and at my pace it's a leave and sunrise and arrive at sunrise kind of thing...
 
I just discovered this thread, LOL. Fascinating read!

I've got to admit: I'm not wealthy. I do own a home (for now), but I have very little in the form of retirement savings. But if I can hold out to 70 (which I plan to do) I'll get a nice monthly amount in social security (mostly enough to live on) since I've worked my whole life. I may inherit a bit of generational wealth from my parents but it won't be much.

While I'm not comparing myself to Kayak Bill (I'm way ahead of him financially at this point)...I've long thought that if the sh*t hits the fan (like it seems to be heading for now and appears to be getting worse in the coming years) and I find myself unable to pay my bills and losing everything, there is NO WAY I'd become a typical PNW homeless person living on the streets of some city.

No, if I'm ever that unfortunate, I would absolutely not hesitate to do what Bill did: pack up what few belongings I have in a kayak (along with survival gear) and head for some remote island off the B.C. Coast and try to survive as long as possible. That might seem stupid, but I'd far rather die in a beautiful, wild natural setting than laying on the concrete in some city, or (worse) laying in some nondescript room with a fluorescent light overhead. That sounds like a nightmare.
 
chodups said:
I could see him saying 70 miles without critically thinking about it.
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He didn't only say 70 miles, though. He also said it was his "longest day." Yet it's actually only like 35–45 miles, depending where you start and stop. 35–45 miles shouldn't have been a huge day for Kayak Bill. He had "intermediate camps" spaced at distances of 25 miles, so he "didn't have to do those long ones." If 25 miles is an "intermediate" day for Kayak Bill, it's hard to imagine that 35 miles or even 45 miles is his longest-ever day. 35 or even 45 miles wouldn't be my longest-ever day by a long shot, and I'm a middle-aged desk jockey!

In addition, Bill said it took him sunrise to sunset on June 21 to paddle the distance. June 21 is a day with more than 16 hours of daylight. Even I can paddle farther than 35 or 45 miles in 16 hours! Renfrew to Sooke just doesn't make sense as a longest-ever day, even if you grant that he misspoke about the distance.

Now, 70 miles in 16 hours would be a much more noteworthy day—a sustained 3.7 knots, which would be most anyone's contender for a "longest ever day." But then it's hard to reconcile that with the starting and stopping points, which are much less than 70 miles apart. Did he go out and back in the same day? But that's not what he said. It would also be hard to do an out-and-back in the strait, because the tides would jam you up.

No matter how you slice it, it's hard to reconcile the stated distance, the stated time, the stated starting and stopping points, and the "longest-ever day." It just doesn't add up.

Still, you may be onto something with your theory of the misspoken word during the video. What if, instead of misspeaking the distance, Bill misspoke the starting or stopping points? Pachena Bay to Sooke is more like 70 miles—a little more than 70, actually, depending on exactly where you start and stop. Pachena Bay to Sooke would be a much more noteworthy "longest ever day," from "sunrise to sunset," than Port Renfrew to Sooke. I also note that Pachena Bay has a very similar geography to Port Renfrew, making it easy to confuse the two. As a matter of fact, the indigenous name for Port Renfrew is "Pachena"—the cartographers screwed up when they were drawing the maps! Maybe Kayak Bill made a similar mistake and misremembered or misspoke the name of his starting point?

Alex
 
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If we know how long Bill's kayak was—and what it weighed—that might give us a pretty good idea of its maximum sustainable cruising speed (assuming Bill was strong enough to sustain that max cruising speed all day long)?
 
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