Horrible days are the best

[Paddlinhal]

Ancient Portage Trails of New Brunswick: OK, stand in an old child's wagon. Grab a pole and push yourself down the sidewalk. Now go into the grass. Then push yourself through a hedge - not sideways, but end-to-end. That is what the alder-choked 23km Gordon Meadow Brook is like. The 2-mile, 2-trip portage in the middle was actually like taking a break. Then more of the same down McKay Brook. I grin every time I think about it.

 

[Alan Gage]

I can remember consciously telling myself at the time to remember how much this sucks and how miserable I am and that all I want is to be done with the trip and off the water because I knew that as time went by I'd probably look back fondly on my misery. And that's what happened. Now they're perhaps my fondest memories. I tell myself maybe I'd like to do that trip again. Surely it wasn't really as bad as my journal says....

I don't think I'd like living in Utopia. It feels good to overcome adversity. Maybe not at the time but later.

Alan

 

[recped]

A memorable ugly day involving alders.....and stupidity!

http://www.recped.com/seal/day006.htm

 

[Guest]

That is what the alder-choked 23km Gordon Meadow Brook is like. The 2-mile, 2-trip portage in the middle was actually like taking a break. Then more of the same down McKay Brook. I grin every time I think about it.

I can recall every trip I have been on. Or at least I can look at any photo from the 70s on and tell you where it was, who was there and how it went.

But I do not need photos to remember the stuff that got stupid challenging and, yeah, those trips make me grin.

Insane winds. Dust storms best endured with eyes closed. Black storm clouds that caught us oh-crap in the middle of a wide lake. WTF 3 feet of snow in September (biggest summer snowstorm in Wyoming history at the time). It is often weather that makes the memories.

But not always, sometimes it is questionable decision making. Taking a large group down an upper stretch of the Pocomoke River. Cypress swamp, I knew there would be strainers, but it is slow moving blackwater, so little hazard beyond some effort and balancing acts.

I did not expect there would be, I dunno, hundreds of strainers; I stopped counting early on at fortysome. A tropical storm had passed through the area a few weeks before and there was wood. Lots and lots of wood.

Giant river-spanning fallen cypress trees, some too high to climb atop unassisted, but the alternative of dragging the canoes around them in knee deep mud, thorns and cypress knees (never try to drag a canoe through closely spaced cypress knees, it just does not work) was an even less attractive solution.

Piles of jumbled logs 10 feet tall and 20 feet across. Dense brushy tree canopies with the leaves still on. Every possible kind of strainer challenge.

Everyone was soon wet and muddy, and some strainers were so closely spaced that we began swimming the canoes the 50 feet to the next strainer rather than get back in the boat.

Whiton Crossing to Porters Crossing, 5 river miles. We put on before 11am. Mid-August sunset was 8pm.

About half seven I realized we were not getting out of there before dark and abandoned the group, beat feet as fast as I could for my truck at the take out, strapped a 4 D cell Maglite to the bow of my boat and paddled back upstream for them.

Well, I had a beer at the truck while I bandaged up some scrapes and cuts, but I did go back for them.

Awesome swamp trip. Half the invitees never came on another trip. The other half were proven keepers.

 

[dougd]

Following a thin blue line on a map to make the trip shorter only to have it be the worst time on a river I've ever spent. Let's see, who's idea would that have been Hal?

 

[Pringles]

I've heard fun is classed three ways. Type 1 fun is ride in amusement park, splash in the water fun. Type 2 fun is too long a portage, too high a climgclimgb too many bugs, too something , and Type 3 fun is what you lived through and don't want to do again. Type 2 is best. ☺