. . . and found again or never found.
In the early 1980s, I lost my big Bill's Bag full of all my gear when rescuing my Mad River Explorer from being pinned at the head of class 5 Coal Mine Falls on the Eel River in California. I had dumped in the previous class 3 rapid and was rescued by a tandem team recently in Japan who instructed me to let go of my canoe, which ended up being pinned on the central small rock in this picture.
We tied two rope bags together and managed to pull the canoe almost vertically off the rock, while standing on top of the big boulders on river left. At that point, my Bill's Bag fell out of the canoe cover cockpit. I was the only time—really!—that I ever neglected to carabiner that bag to my floor d-ring. It disappeared down Coal Mine Falls, which took us at least an hour to portage. Fortunately, we found the bag in an eddy about half a mile from the take-out of that three-day trip. Everything in the bag was wet, and about $700 of camera equipment was destroyed. Paddle and learn!
I lost a Mitchell Premier paddle in Triple Drop Rapid in the Rock river in Vermont, a tributary of the West River. 66-year-old Joe Lavender, the only paddler with experience on this mysterious river, ran all three drops wobbly but clean. Dr. Phyllis dumped in the first drop, Ed dumped in the second drop, and I dumped in the third drop. Steve Tuckerman ran the rapid and rescued my canoe, but didn't see my paddle. I also lost a nice Harmony paddle with a pole vault shaft that I had loaned to another paddler who dumped on the Upper Ashuelot River in New Hampshire, just above class 4+ Gilsum George, on Easter weekend. Both of those trips were in the mid-1980s.
The first and only time I ran the Lehigh River was also in the mid-80s, a two-day tandem trip with @TomP in my Millbrook ME. We met a number of paddlers on that trip who later became good friends. Eating lunch one day, Tom used my TEKNA dive knife to cut some cheese. That's the only time that PFD knife was used for anything, and it didn't cut the cheese all that well because it has a thick blade spine is and mainly good for stabbing zombies.
After the Herculean cheese cutting job, Tom put the knife down on the shore rocks where we forgot it. Tom felt guilty and eventually bought me another, which Maggie just found after a 30-year absence in my basement.
My biggest blunder was in 2013 when I went to Alaska to visit my grade school and high school buddy, Jim, whom I had only seen once since the 1960s. We paddled some lakes and rivers tandem and I soloed a few days. The Eagle River was very zippy and nice. Here I am on Lake Eklutna.
I took hundreds of pictures on that trip with my trusty Pentax waterproof P&S camera, which I had bought in 2004 in Sacramento, California, when I was picking up my Huki V1-B outrigger canoe.
On my last day of the trip, before my midnight flight, I apparently left the camera on top of of Jim's car when I was looking at the Portage River after I had solo paddled among the eternal icebergs on Portage Lake, which cleave off Portage Glacier, which feeds the lake, outside of Anchorage.
I didn't realize the camera was missing until I stopped to take a picture of a moose on the road. I backtracked to the river site but never found the camera.
On the drive back to Anchorage to return the OT Penobscot to REI, one of the four foam blocks blew off the roof of the SUV. I scurried around the highway and finally retrieved it. I flew home a few hours later with all my pictures of my one-and-only Alaska trip lost forever. But, for internet posterity, here's a photo of Jim and me with Denali in the background.
In the early 1980s, I lost my big Bill's Bag full of all my gear when rescuing my Mad River Explorer from being pinned at the head of class 5 Coal Mine Falls on the Eel River in California. I had dumped in the previous class 3 rapid and was rescued by a tandem team recently in Japan who instructed me to let go of my canoe, which ended up being pinned on the central small rock in this picture.
We tied two rope bags together and managed to pull the canoe almost vertically off the rock, while standing on top of the big boulders on river left. At that point, my Bill's Bag fell out of the canoe cover cockpit. I was the only time—really!—that I ever neglected to carabiner that bag to my floor d-ring. It disappeared down Coal Mine Falls, which took us at least an hour to portage. Fortunately, we found the bag in an eddy about half a mile from the take-out of that three-day trip. Everything in the bag was wet, and about $700 of camera equipment was destroyed. Paddle and learn!
I lost a Mitchell Premier paddle in Triple Drop Rapid in the Rock river in Vermont, a tributary of the West River. 66-year-old Joe Lavender, the only paddler with experience on this mysterious river, ran all three drops wobbly but clean. Dr. Phyllis dumped in the first drop, Ed dumped in the second drop, and I dumped in the third drop. Steve Tuckerman ran the rapid and rescued my canoe, but didn't see my paddle. I also lost a nice Harmony paddle with a pole vault shaft that I had loaned to another paddler who dumped on the Upper Ashuelot River in New Hampshire, just above class 4+ Gilsum George, on Easter weekend. Both of those trips were in the mid-1980s.
The first and only time I ran the Lehigh River was also in the mid-80s, a two-day tandem trip with @TomP in my Millbrook ME. We met a number of paddlers on that trip who later became good friends. Eating lunch one day, Tom used my TEKNA dive knife to cut some cheese. That's the only time that PFD knife was used for anything, and it didn't cut the cheese all that well because it has a thick blade spine is and mainly good for stabbing zombies.
After the Herculean cheese cutting job, Tom put the knife down on the shore rocks where we forgot it. Tom felt guilty and eventually bought me another, which Maggie just found after a 30-year absence in my basement.
My biggest blunder was in 2013 when I went to Alaska to visit my grade school and high school buddy, Jim, whom I had only seen once since the 1960s. We paddled some lakes and rivers tandem and I soloed a few days. The Eagle River was very zippy and nice. Here I am on Lake Eklutna.
I took hundreds of pictures on that trip with my trusty Pentax waterproof P&S camera, which I had bought in 2004 in Sacramento, California, when I was picking up my Huki V1-B outrigger canoe.
On my last day of the trip, before my midnight flight, I apparently left the camera on top of of Jim's car when I was looking at the Portage River after I had solo paddled among the eternal icebergs on Portage Lake, which cleave off Portage Glacier, which feeds the lake, outside of Anchorage.
I didn't realize the camera was missing until I stopped to take a picture of a moose on the road. I backtracked to the river site but never found the camera.
On the drive back to Anchorage to return the OT Penobscot to REI, one of the four foam blocks blew off the roof of the SUV. I scurried around the highway and finally retrieved it. I flew home a few hours later with all my pictures of my one-and-only Alaska trip lost forever. But, for internet posterity, here's a photo of Jim and me with Denali in the background.
