Champion lumberjack offers logrolling bootcamp

A six time world-champion log-rolling champion from Nova Scotia's South Shore is teaching others how to logroll like a pro on the Barrington River.

Darren Hudson opened Lumberjack AXEperience in Riverside Park. It has a logrolling pool for teaching newbies the art of the log-driver's waltz.

Campers spend an afternoon birling down the white water, learning to step lightly doing what Hudson calls the five essential lumberjack skills:

• Logrolling
• Tree climbing
• Axe throwing
• Bow sawing
• Cross cut sawing

​For Hudson, the project is rooted in family history. One of his uncles is a nine-time world logrolling champion.

The Hudson family continues to run a sawmill in Barrington. Scott still works six days a week.

"Darren is bringing back some history here," Scott says. "He’s keeping it going, which is a great thing. Other than that it would be a dying thing. It wouldn’t be thought of no more."

Hudson sees a bright future for lumberjack skills. He has his sights set on world competitions, travelling to perform in shows or perhaps doing movies and commercials.

He says some of his current students show promise.

"We've trained here on the Barrington River and those skills have been handed down to us," Hudson says. "But a lot of people don’t have the opportunity to hone those skills like we have. Now that we have this class-A training facility, people can come and learn and I can send them on their way."

Local interest has started to pick up.

"We had 21 kids here from Bridgewater on Friday," Hudson says. "They were doing the lumberjack camp here and they loved it. It was an awesome experience: logrolling, tree climbing, axe throwing."

Although the camp is meant to be fun, it is also a way for Hudson to draw people to a new outdoor experience and keep alive a piece of history that helped build Canada.

A two- to three-hour afternoon camp costs $52 for adults.