Mission accomplished

REGION — It wasn’t as difficult as crossing Lake Michigan or Huron, but Saturday’s trip down the Chain of Lakes proved to be harder than Kwin Morris was expecting.

“We wrote it down as our third hardest paddle that we’ve done,” said Morris, one of the co-founders of Stand Up For Great Lakes, the group that completed the 50-mile paddle from Six Mile Lake into Elk Rapids. “We went into it thinking, ‘Oh, it’s the Chain of Lakes, we’ll have some current. It will be fun and people will join us.’ We got out there and Clam Lake was headwind and Torch was a lot of boat waves and then Skegemog and Elk kicked our butt.”

Morris, Joe Lorenz and Jeff Guy, who have taken their stand up paddleboards across four of the five Great Lakes, marked off another challenge when they finished their journey on the Chain of Lakes, helping to raise $12,000 for Paddle Antrim, while raising awareness for Great Lakes environmental issues and the Chain of Lakes Water Trail. The trip, which began at 5:30 a.m. on Six Mile Lake, lasted about 16 hours and included headwind, boat traffic and wavy conditions near the end to make for an interesting and exhausting trek.

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