It was a "first" for a motley crew of open canoeists from Florida (Marc, Molly and Rascal), Pennsylvania (Bruce, Tim and Maureen), Michigan (Lynn, Raphael and Cooper), Maryland (Russ), and Connecticut (me). We ascended the East Branch of the St. Regis River in the Adirondacks, NY, from a parking lot just above Everton Falls and paddled upstream until checkmated and then back down.
After a vertiginous downslope carry from the road, my for-sale Bell black-gold Wildfire awaits in the foreground as Bruce fiddles with his Colden Wildfire and Russ sits in his Swift Wildfire.
Bruce, Russ and Maureen (Swift Keewaydin 14 pack) begin the ascent.
A small riffle almost immediately tries to block my highly maneuverable, for-sale Bell Wildfire . . . of course, unsuccessfully.
The group progresses upstream. Molly and Russ are particularly expert in spotting and identifying small birds hiding in the vegetation. Russ can even identify invisible birds by their calls and songs. He doesn't use a bird call phone app. He uses something more ancient . . . the human ear.
After a few miles, we come to a class 2 rapid, in which the water is too low and boney for everyone to make clean upstream runs. Bruce gets about 2/3 up the rapid while Russ and everyone else watches.
Lynn, Cooper and Raphael, in their Mad River Malecite, decide a scraping ascent isn't worth it and begin to go back downstream. Not knowing if more scratchy rapids are around the corner, the entire group admits to being checkmated and turns around.
On the way back downstream, Marc and Rascal decide to climb a big boulder that is reminiscent of High Rock on the Oswegatchie River in the western Adirondacks.
Which is now dubbed Rascal Rock.
That's all, folks. I said it would be brief.
After a vertiginous downslope carry from the road, my for-sale Bell black-gold Wildfire awaits in the foreground as Bruce fiddles with his Colden Wildfire and Russ sits in his Swift Wildfire.
Bruce, Russ and Maureen (Swift Keewaydin 14 pack) begin the ascent.
A small riffle almost immediately tries to block my highly maneuverable, for-sale Bell Wildfire . . . of course, unsuccessfully.
The group progresses upstream. Molly and Russ are particularly expert in spotting and identifying small birds hiding in the vegetation. Russ can even identify invisible birds by their calls and songs. He doesn't use a bird call phone app. He uses something more ancient . . . the human ear.
After a few miles, we come to a class 2 rapid, in which the water is too low and boney for everyone to make clean upstream runs. Bruce gets about 2/3 up the rapid while Russ and everyone else watches.
Lynn, Cooper and Raphael, in their Mad River Malecite, decide a scraping ascent isn't worth it and begin to go back downstream. Not knowing if more scratchy rapids are around the corner, the entire group admits to being checkmated and turns around.
On the way back downstream, Marc and Rascal decide to climb a big boulder that is reminiscent of High Rock on the Oswegatchie River in the western Adirondacks.
Which is now dubbed Rascal Rock.
That's all, folks. I said it would be brief.
