Ok, so I doubt anyone remembers the band Kingdom Come. They were like a Led Zeppelin replicant band. The running joke was listening to Led Zeppelin singing “We come from the land of the ice and snow. . ” and flipping over to the lead singer of Kingdom Come saying, “Yeah, me too”. Well, maybe you had to be there!

Remember the South Georgia expedition? The guys from the UK were preparing for that trip for quite some time. Then the guys from down south had a chance to move up their trip and beat ‘em to the punch. Well, at some level sea kayaking is, yes, a sport. . and in sports someone wants to be first. In the end, you had to give them their due. Team Adventure Philosophy got the “First” and the British team did it in record time of course. So everyone got something from a competitive sort of view.

Then of course there is Iceland that stood out for so long as sort of a “K2″ of paddling. But before you knew it, it had been done multiple times. Shawna, Leon, & Chris Duff, then the amazing solo trip by Rotem Ron, then the lightning version by Greg Stamer and Freya Hoffmeister. In fact I may have left someone out there too but I was never quite able to nail that down.

Recently there have been a few of these top destinations that have seen multiple expeditions in fairly short periods of time. You can certainly imagine how one well presented expedition can inspire the other or how a bit of chit-chat from one person can inspire the other to do it bigger, better and faster. Heck sometimes multiple paddlers may have the same thought about the same time. Sometimes they team up. Sometimes not.

Funny thing about expedition kayaking. I don’t think it was ever thought of as “competitive” sport on the same level as many other sports. I mean back with Paul Caffyn was tearing it up around the world, few others were even really on the map. The idea of multiple magazines writing about it and commercial sponsorships was still years off. Nigel Dennis, Derrick Hutchinson and all the rest were blazing trails. Not many paddlers out there were even thinking of putting on the big woolly green sweater and paddling out into the wild sea. In many ways expedition kayaking was in a vacuum. Of course today that’s changed.

The sport of expedition sea kayaking grew more organically than others. It’s not racing after all. You could not gather people in grandstands to watch paddles fly and sweat dripping from every pore. Yet through the media those “grandstands” for expedition paddlers were eventually filled with interested eyes around coffee tables and curled up by warm fires. It’s exciting, interesting, awakening, exhilarating & inspiring. Of course we want to be in the audience. Of course! I still love reading about great trips in far off places and I’m far from alone.

These days like all other sports, there is a commercial level. Magazines are bought each month by the thousands, gear is advertised in big glossy images all over the place. There are faces and names we all recognize. Kayaks are major props in all sorts of advertising from SUVs to insurance. The sport has grown up. (For the rebel, libertarian types out there you just have to cope. )

Which got me thinking again. . . . (I know, I know) These days there are constant attempts at Everest. One in 10 of those people die trying. Unless we watch closely we don’t know who, what and when of the attempts. Now we’re keeping averages. What a change from the days of Edmund Hillary! Of course the challenge has not changed, and for those people doing it, the challenge and risk is not all that different. It’s just not the news it used to be. Funding is harder to come by and write ups are few and far between. Moving Everest attempts off the radar does have it’s good side in that no one questions the motivation of the climbers, and yet there are amazing people out there that the rest of us will never hear about.

I think we are in an interesting time in sea kayaking as well. More and more people are striking out on expeditions. The big wild challenges are being taken on from every angle. These paddlers are amazingly skilled, brave, tough people and yet, “Everest” is not the mountain it used to be. In time it will become much harder to get “support” for a big expedition. Writers won’t be quite so inspired to follow up on the 25th person to paddle round Easter Island. The photos will start looking like all the others. It’s the evolution of the sport. I’m glad there are still new horizons left out there. Stories still to be told. I’m glad I’ll have the chance to follow along. Even if it is curled up on the couch through a cold winter night.

Still, there are places I want to paddle that have been done many times before. Thing is, those adventures will be just between me and the sea. And that’s OK too.