Loonshit is the worst in the Adirondacks and boreal. I always test the bottom before getting out. The WORST in the West. It happens to me now and then. Just "swim" out of the predicament. This is one of the situations in which I find wearing a PFD very useful.
I’d put what the watermen of the Eastern Shore call “Pluff Mud” up against anything. It has the consistency of undercooked chocolate mousse. But, regrettably, not the smell or taste. You can easily sink chest deep and immobilized if you try to stand up in it.
To wit – for years we conducted Canoe Orienteering Challenges in the marshes of Dorchester County. On one occasion I thought we were going to need a crane to extract a rather large challenger who had made the mistake of going over the side and trying to stand up.
Even in pluff mud all is not lost. One participant, paddling a sea kayak (a very poor boat choice in that environment) was so determined to secure a marker that he exited his boat 50 feet from shore on a pluff mud flat.
(I should add that setting up the orienteering course was far more fun than competing in it. Over the years laying out the course we became increasingly devilish in deliberately leading people astray. Often heading directly towards the surveyor’s ribbon at the marsh edge was a trap, and it was best to come ashore distant and proceed overland).
Said sea kayaker was wearing a wet suit. He exited his boat, got face-down prone on the 1 inch of water/3 feet of pluff mud and, with paddle in hand, and “swam” across the surface to the spartina grass at the marsh edge.
This would have been a rewarding effort, but on looking back towards his kayak he discovered that his copy of the orienteering map and guide had fallen out near the kayak.
He turtled over the mud back to his boat, got the map, back to shore, got his marker, back to his boat and performed a seriously mud-covered reentry for his only points of the day.
He finished first in the Masters Sea Kayak class. As the only entrant.
