Recent content by Mason

Canada probably has/had its targets too! Abandoned/repurposed DEWLine station on the Arctic Ocean coast, near the mouth of the Horton River, NWT. It would suck being somewhere so remote and getting nuked.

Although it's been a looooong time, I've handled both copperheads and various water snakes. Water snakes have much more strongly keeled scales than copperheads (or most of the other snakes of the Southeast, most of which I handled in my youth, venomous and non-venomous). They have a decidedly...

Can you provide a pic of the gunwale? If you don't flip the canoe by pulling on the yoke, and you have a light and narrow boat to boot, most of the force from any clamping system is to keep it from sliding once it's on your shoulders if the yoke sits on the gunwales. On both my PakCanoe (37"...

My point about the (much heavier) PakCanoe is that it has no inwale/outwale (and no central thwart) and that a modified conventional yoke may work, mostly to give you an idea of what might work with a little ingenuity. Apparently my point was missed.

As promised:

It depends on how long you need to stay dry! For backpacking, etc., I'll take a lightweight 2 layer Goretex shell, planning to get out of the rain when I can. Even washing them in non-detergent tech washes and reapplying NikWax, they're pretty marginal unless new. When I'm doing my northern...

You might be able to use a fairly conventional yoke, especially if the boat is very light. PakCanoes have 3/4" or so aluminum tubing inside fabric as the gunwales, providing very little room for purchase. However their yoke works fine for carrying the 60 pound boat. The yoke is routed with a...

No triangular head that I can see. Definitely not a copperhead. Scales appear keeled, consistent with water snakes.

Looks like a northern water snake per Dr. Google.

Not the same Monarch. The Monarch Alan brought up is the expedition solo by Mad River, used/designed by Steve Landick. Verlen Kruger used the similar Sawyer Loon.

Can't wait to see what $10,000 can buy you!

Maybe things have changed, but we filtered our water for an 11 day trip in 2000 with no problem (though slower after I gummed up the filter prior to settling). We let it sit overnight in a 5 gallon pail. Others have used alum as a settling agent.

If only homophobia didn't have different connotations......

I've had a couple of 16 Penobscots, and it's a nice river tourer, probably the fastest (i.e. most efficient) Royalex canoe out there. I've also paddled some pretty big whitewater in it: solo it's a cork. I put in a solo seat just aft of the middle and removed the others--saves on weight, but...

And then there was the school teacher up there that was killed some years back.