Meet Our Instructors

George Gronseth -- Director and Head Instructor

I've always loved the water and boating. I grew up on the shores of the Great Lakes, but back then kayaking hadn't caught on there. So my first opportunity to try kayaking came after graduating from college. Bigger water and mountains with year around snow led me to move to the Northwest -- I didn't know it was a kayaking Mecca until after I moved here. I soon bought my first kayak and was immediately hooked.

Teaching is something I was either born with or learned early by osmosis. Both my parents were educators, as were two of my grand parents. In our family, discussions of teaching methods and learning styles were part of every day dinner conversation. From first grade on, other kids would ask me to explain what the teacher was saying. Somehow I had a knack for being able to explain complex things in a way that others could understand. Now I teach kayaking: sea, river, and surf.

There's a thread to my intuition about kayak safety that begins with some of my earliest learning and boating experiences. My family has a deep and personal respect for the dangers of boating. Our branch of the family tree nearly ended one night in a storm on the North Sea when a rouge wave swept my great grandfather Lars Gronseth off the deck of a merchant sailing ship into the cold sea. That night Lars was sailing the ship single handed because the captain and rest of the crew were all below deck due to sea sickness. A big wave knocked the ship on its side, and threw Lars into the water. In the darkness he felt a rope next to him and grabbed hold of it. The ship soon righted itself, and the rope which was part of the rigging acted like a pendulum swinging Lars back aboard. He got smashed against the side of the pilot house, but holding the rope saved his life. In addition to telling that story, my parents and grandparents always taught me to "stay with the boat", and that is a concept that applies to sea kayaking too. By the time I was four I learned to row a boat and was allowed to use my grandparent's wooden rowboat by myself on the bay in front of their summer cabin on L. Michigan. One time I lost an oar while taking a friend out for a spin -- I figured out that I could remove the other oar from the oarlock and use it as a paddle to retrieve the lost oar. That worked, we stayed with the boat, and we got home safely. The incident taught me how quickly things can go wrong, and the usefulness of problem solving in an emergency. When I was a teenager, we lived on the water on that same bay, and I rescued many sailboats and powerboats that got in trouble in front of my parent's house. Seeing all these examples of boating accidents and learning what went wrong was a perfect background for my career at Boeing analyzing the failure modes and safety of airplanes. Later my engineering experience at Boeing crossed over into studying kayak safety. I started researching sea kayak accidents and analyzing what went wrong and what kayakers could learn from them in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes. From that research came insight into what kayak students really needed to learn, and in what order to prioritize the skills during lessons. I evaluated the lessons the ACA, BCU, and other clubs and schools offered but couldn't find a program that emphasized what I saw as the practical skills and safety training that kayakers need, so I created my own curriculum and started the Kayak Academy.

After kayaking on my own for a couple years, I got serious about learning to kayak. I joined the Washington Kayak Club (WKC) and took both their whitewater and sea kayaking courses. The year after that I started to help teach the WKC's kayaking courses, and I lead trips for them and other kayak clubs. A few years later I accepted the position of Sea Kayak Safety Chairman for the WKC. Matt Broze (kayak designer and owner of Mariner Kayaks) read my safety articles in the club's newsletters and encouraged me to take over from him as the safety columnist at Sea Kayaker magazine. In 1997 the many year's of safety column articles Matt and I published in Sea Kayaker magazine were collected into the book, "Sea Kayaker Deep Trouble". Meanwhile I wrote a multi-year series of articles on modern paddling technique and rolling for Sea Kayaker. That project made me dig deep into analyzing every stroke in detail and finding effective ways to explain how to do them. I also began giving presentations on safety, paddling technique, and expeditions at clubs and kayak symposiums. Around 1988 the WKC asked me to be their Sea Kayak Training Chairman, and in that capacity I completely revised the club's sea kayaking instruction program. Their old program was comparable to the industry's status quo yet today, but I turned it into the most modern sea kayak lesson program available anywhere at that time. I would like to have pushed the club's training program further into the future, but there are limits to what one person can do within the structure of a club. So creating a truly modern sea kayak lesson program had to wait, but this experience of developing a whole new curriculum based on the student's safety needs formed a kernel for the beginning of the Kayak Academy's programs. The new training program was a success, and word of my teaching ability got around. It seemed everyone was asking me for private kayaking lessons, but I had a day job at Boeing. In 1990 I left the corporate world, studied traditional kayaking in Greenland, worked as a guide in the San Juan Islands for a summer, and finished some writing projects. In 1991 I founded The Kayak Academy to fill the demand for kayak lessons of a higher caliber than those available from clubs and other schools.

 

Barbara Gronseth -- Youth Programs Senior Instructor

Barbara has worked in the outdoor industry for thirty years both as an instructor/guide and in retail sales/management. Instruction and guiding began with mountaineering, skiing and now kayaking. Teaching began in 1990 with instructing telemark skiing to adults and cross country skiing to 5-12 year olds. She is an ACA Level 4, Open Water Coastal Kayaking Instructor. As a mother herself, she has worked to develop programs that provide activities to fit kids skill levels and stimulate learning with safety in mind. She has kayaked locally in the Puget Sound, the Washington coast, Vancouver Island and Alaska. Finding the right gear for Kayak Academy and Issaquah Paddle Sports programs has come from listening to customers. She has 8 years of work experience from REI in the original store managing their water sports, ski and rental department and 3 years from OR (Outdoor Research) as a Product Manager. Currently, she is Retail and Office Manager for Kayak Academy as well as a kayak instructor and youth programs coordinator.

Bob Burnett -- Senior Instructor

Paddling since 1996 and teaching since 1998, Bob, once certified as an open coast kayak instructor/coach by the ACA and BCU, brings the philosophy, training, and experience as a career bodyguard and brought it into his teachings as a sea kayak instructor for the Kayak Academy. Bob believes that teaching sea kayaking with a "combat mind set" prepares the paddler for the independence that all highly skilled paddlers seek. Bob is originally from Marblehead Mass. where he cut his teeth on the open sea growing up in a boat. Paddling many miles along New England, eastern Canadian, and the West Coast of the US, he brings his years of experience kayaking in conditions and zeal for paddling to the Kayak Academy.

Dubside -- Greenland Kayaking Skills Senior Instructor

Dubside is an internationally known authority on Greenland rolling techniques and Greenland rope gymnastics. His name and likeness have appeared in Justine Curgenven’s "This is the Sea Four", Bryan Smith’s "Pacific Horizons", and articles in Sea Kayaker, Canoe and Kayak, Paddler, and Adventure Kayak magazines, as well as his own instructional DVD’s "Qajaasaarneq – Greenland Rope Gymnastics", "Greenland Rolling with Dubside", and "Modern Greenland Kayaking". Dubside does presentations, demonstrations, and instructional classes for symposiums, clubs, and outfitters throughout North America and Europe. He is also an enthusiastic advocate of folding kayaks deployed by public transportation, alternatively known as “commando kayaking”. Watching, listening to, and learning from Dubside will get you excited about kayaking all over again.