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I tarp or hammock; haven't tented in ages. I always carry an old piece of army green CCF sleeping pad, about 9x15, as a sit pad, kneeling pad, fire blower, placemat, helinox chair insulator, day-pack stiffener, rain-cover when bent over the top of my pack, and carpet/doormat. It's almost...

OK guys... thanks for the input. As I suspected, and as confirmed by a few of you, the four corners technique apparently works... I came home from work today, Tuesday, and my straps were already here. I got them off Amazon for about $2.25 each. I found some old webbing I had once used as a...

Another boot drying trick involves harnessing campfire heat/convection, but it's more for old-style high leather riding boots... unless you're exceptionally attentive, campfire heat would melt the neoprene. You use a flat sheet of 1/4" plywood cut out in the shape of your boot's cross-section...

Folks, can't thank all of you enough for the prompt responses. I'm only currently using 2 straps, one front/one back. But I have wrapped them through the gunwale slots and the thwarts in an attempt to 'brace' them diagonally from cart to canoe. I have tried center and off-center placement...

Overall, a good trip... highs in the 60s, lows in the 30s, 3 of 4 days sunny and clear, didn't get rained on, learned a lot, found some peace, and am ready to go back this summer and fall. I'm blessed to have moved closer to the Dacks again in 2018... I used to get maybe 1 trip a year, at the...

I don't know who needs to see it, but this is how I dry out my Boundary Boots. A strip of birchbark roughly 3x15 or so, gently flexed, inserted to leave an inch or so of space at the bottom, and then released to hold in place. Set at the edge of the leanto... this is a natural wind block, and...

Another fixture is this sign... always worn, always crooked. And the Lydia Pond campsite outhouse... been photographing it every time I go by for about 15 years. Beaver damage is everywhere... The fire pit at Lydia. Someone made a nice bench. There's a point on Little Long (west)...

View from the hammock nest early... I got up a little later, when it wasn't so cold. First trout on the wabbler/worm combo. Merganser. Loon, one of two who kept me company. Sunset on Fish Pond, looking east. Sunset again, looking due south. There was a roughly 3/4 moon. I usually...

Been a weird year, but I finally got to take a trip to the St Regis Canoe Wilderness. As described elsewhere, I chose to use a portage cart instead of my normal "Hoel to Turtle to Clamshell to Fish" route, and go from Little Clear to St Regis and then along the ski trail to Fish. This is the...

The cam buckles look like this.

As I age, I'm trying to figure out how to use a canoe cart to maximum benefit. After renting one and finding it somewhat useful, I bought a nice 15'-no-air-all-terrain Suspenz cart. It handles flat terrain like a champ, and I've done several 1-1.5 mile long portages with it. It handles a...

I was up there literally this week... Sunday 26th-Wednesday 29th. I stayed on Fish Pond the whole time and had it all to myself... I used to go in from Hoel Pond to Turtle, then portage over to Clamshell and then into Fish... it's the simplest route, but there's a REALLY steep section of...

I use a Lexan tablespoon for 99% of my eating. I used one of those long narrow brown spoons (along with the shorter white ones) to eat MREs with, but they're too small; like a baby spoon. I've tried a couple models of spork, but they fail in that the tines are usually too dull to stab anything...

Just got back from 4 days on Fish Pond in the St Regis... I had the place to myself (no one on Fish, Little Fish, Little Long, Lydia, or Kit Fox). Stayed in the North Lean-to. On trips the last 3-4 years up there, I had discovered that around 6-8pm each evening, I was getting a single bar of...

Yeah, mine's going to be a long brain dump too. I'm of a mixed mind here... I NEED solitude in frequent small quantities, though I'm very sociable and can't take being alone for days on end. I've done 5 or 6 days alone, and it's hard. I prefer 4 days, 3 overnights; that's just about right for...

Boy Scouts, mostly... spent 3x summers, 76-78, at Camp Sabattis on Low's Lake. We also canoed the Delaware River every year, though I only went once. After that, I left it alone for 30 years, returning to the Adirondacks with my daughter around 2008... have been back every year since then...

Here in MD, I have a pair of Kamiks (Greenbay?), which are rubber bottom, nylon upper, felt liner boots that come to my knees. A full size too large, they allow my feet plenty of room for thicker socks and ventilation. I have used them for winter backpacking trips, though they are heavy. I...

That looks like a still from the "Canoe the North" YouTube channel. Regardless, it's similar to the tarp and mosquito netting they used in a video on a trip in the Yukon. Their weather was good with no rain the whole time, and they set up like this every day. I use a tarp almost exclusively...

I have no advice except that my wife didn't find a paddle that fit using the normal method(s)... Someone just gave her a too-short paddle one day, and she loved it... I realized that the issue is she isn't very strong, and doesn't dip as deeply when paddling as I do; so the smaller, shorter (and...

I normally use a stick, but rarely carry a Coughlin's trowel like the one illustrated above... I cut about an inch off it though, to make it smaller and lighter, but rediscovered that a stick was lighter still.