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Subject:  The Death Paddle |
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Author: Government |
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Date Posted: 16:02:02 03/29/05 Tue In reply to: Grapenuts 's message, "Re: A-Basin" on 11:15:36 03/29/05 Tue It was a pretty typical FBET outing… Pathfinder was expedition leader. A 20 mile mountain bike ride, climb & descend a train trestle over the Little Manistiee, a 26 mile paddle down the river to Croton Dam, then a 10 mile hike to the campsite. What could POSSIBLY go wrong? The ride went off w/o a hitch. Well maybe not... Kemosabe found an abandoned kitten on the trail, and to his credit he compassionately picked it up and brought with us. Papa’s daughter gave the old “Awww, gee Dad, can we keep it?”, and now to the best of my knowledge Papa now owns a cat. So then we climbed & descended a train trestle. It was way cool, I wish we had taller trestles. I keep hoping for a tyrolean traverse though. Then we tossed the boats in the water. Unfortunately I traded my canoe for a kayak, so I got to borrow a boat. And I also brought a friend – Hahnfeld (you may have heard of the up and coming sport of “Hahnfelding”, this guy is the ‘godfather’). This guy is heavy, 6’5”, 210 easy. That puts our canoe at around 400 lbs net. Now, you have to visualize the canoe. It was one of those old school metal canoes with the metal keel to hang down a good inch or so. Also, the boat leaked terribly. The entire 26 miles we had to stop every 10-15 minutes to either portage over something the keel was dragging on or to dump water out of the boat. And while Hahnfeld could paddle hard, he really didn't know how to turn that beast of a canoe w/ strokes like a pry, draw, cross bow rudder, etc. We made it almost 3 miles before we both wanted to kill one another. Thankfully we always have a sweeper on FBET trips to look after us slow pokes. But somehow we got designated the sweeper & everyone took off. It took us over 10 hours to get to Croton. It was ~10 pm & pitch black on the lake. It turned out everybody else beat us by well over 2 hours. Fortunately, I had the foresight to print out some maps from topozone & knew roughly where the group would be (ever try to navigate a DARK big lake you've never been to w/o a compass?). Thank goodness they were still loading the boats onto the trucks when we finally made shore. Oh, remember that part about the 10 mile hike? Yea, right. Well we debated and decided it was smarter to send a few people to retrieve our vehicles & find a close-by campsite instead of hiking 10 more miles to a dark campground infested w/ poison ivy. And we could just walk to the local bar and meet up there later. A short 3 mile hike later we were enjoying cold but delicious cheap beer. All except Hahnfeld, who didn’t bring his wallet (ID) to cut down on weight. I think we ended up crashing about 2 am. Don't get me wrong, it was a real adventure and even when I was paddling mile 10 with no end in sight I loved it. I actually think it was the most memorable FBET trip I've been on. Let the revisionist history begin! [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| Subject | Author | Date |
 Re: The Death Paddle | Pathfinder | 20:33:41 03/29/05 Tue |
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| Re: The Death Paddle | Lynne | 16:29:01 03/31/05 Thu |
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| Oh Lightweight - how soon you forget the St Marys Trip | Government | 22:55:46 03/31/05 Thu |
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