Kayak tours taking off

Minnesota firm features trips as far as Mongolia

? One moment, Steve Piragis and his paddling partner were sitting calmly in a kayak just off Ellesmere Island in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The next, they were lifted two feet off the water atop a surfacing walrus.

That experience remains one of the most memorable Piragis has had since he began guiding international kayaking trips in 1994. His firm, Piragis Northwoods Co. in Ely, guides small groups by kayak in some of the most remote waters on the planet.

The walrus incident ended harmlessly enough. A timely bracing of paddles on the water when the walrus submerged allowed Steve and his client, a man named Larry, to steady the kayak. But Piragis noticed he was sitting in a puddle of cold water.

The walrus had opened a slit in the fabric-covered craft, and the men had to hastily paddle to shore in the frigid water.

“The walrus sat out there and looked at us for about an hour,” Piragis said.

This year, Piragis and his fellow guides will lead kayaking trips to Mongolia, Vietnam, Iceland, Greenland, Greece and Patagonia, in addition to trips on Lake Superior.

While other adventure travel companies offer a mix of raft trips, hiking treks, bike trips, safaris and camel trips, Piragis sticks to kayaking.

The kayak trips were a logical spin-off from the firm’s canoe outfitting service and retail business catering to travelers of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

“It’s a short season in Ely,” said Piragis, 51. “We have all this off-time in the winter. And we wanted to be able to reward our staff with these special trips.”

Piragis led the first trip, to the British Virgin Islands, in 1994.

“We realized we could just move the Boundary Waters trips down to the tropics for the winter and we’d have a lot of fun,” he said.

Now groups travel to Mongolia’s hinterlands, paddle among native fishing families off the coast of Vietnam and camp near ice fields on Greenland.

Group size is kept small — from seven to 10. Many clients are repeat customers or paddlers who have made Boundary Waters trips through Piragis Northwoods Co.

Trips usually cost from $1,500 to $3,000, plus airfare from the United States to the trip’s departure point. Participants don’t have to be highly trained athletes.

Paddling is limited to a few miles per day on protected waters or in good weather.