I just experienced a new kind of hell today, but before i get into that, let me first describe the beauty of the day.
I was up early, and on the water by a little after 7:00 AM this morning. It was a beautiful morning. Most of my stuff dried over night. The Raquette River is spectacularly beautiful. It was a quit mostly bug free morning. The bug was more interested in mating than in eating me. I could see thousands if not millions of bugs hovering over the stream. A few had mates. Most were still looking for a mate I suppose.
The current was going in my direction, which made paddling a leisurely experience.
My concern was missing Stony Creek. Stony Creek enters Raquette River. The map says that it enters just after log cribbing. I could not keep track of my position along the stream. I had a sense of my speed and distance to Stony Creek so all I knew was an approximate time that I should be there. The map scale was too large to keep track of my position along the stream. I found Stony Creek just after the log cribbing were the map said it would be.
Stony Creek was amazing! It was a maze of stream channels. I watched for the stream flow to pick out the main channel from all of the dead ends. Following the strongest current was the only way to find the right channel. The dead ends mostly looked just like the main channel.
Stony Creek meandered wildly back and forth. With each bend, I had to completely stop and turn. I lost momentum and had to spend extra energy starting forward motion again. The beauty of this section was worth the effort.
I arrived at Indian Carry portage just before 10:00 AM. This is a 1.1 mile portage with 0.4 miles on a rough trail. The remainder follows a dirt road to the put-in. The map says this is doable with a cart, which is mostly correct. Except it was not what I was able to do. This is where the hell really began.
The wheels on my cart are loose and floppy. I have no tools. The cart frame is bent and maybe something with the wheel axis also bent. The wheels either point down and in toward the center of the kayak effectively reducing the distance between the wheels or they point up and inward causing the wheels to rub on the kayak sides. They also seem to become skewed in another way causing them to drag.
I met a woman on the portage with an extremely light canoe and gear. She said that the outfitter by the tennis courts in Saranac Lake are very experienced, and should be familiar with the problems people are having by this time on the NFCT.
It took nearly two hours to do this relatively easy portage. I was so exhausted when I finally reached the end that I had to rest at lease another 30 minutes before moving. What happened is that when the wheels turned inward, any bump on the trail caused my kayak to flip over. I was having this problem on the Raquette River portage too. My kayak might turn over every 5 feet or it might take 50 feet. It never took more than 50 feet even when taking it very very slow unless I put the bow under my arm and physically wrestled the kayak upright when it wanted to flop over. This was exhausting! `
I had taken my pack and all of my gear to the gravel road on the second half of the portage. I expected most of the hard part to be over once I reached this point. Instead, it became even harder. Now the wheels flopped inward rubbing against the kayak. I tried several times to get them straight, but to no avail. I ended up mostly dragging the kayak to the put-in having to take several breaks during the portage.
I don't know which direction the wheels flopped was more difficult. I also did seem to be able to control their direction of flopping..
I made it to the put-in utterly and completely exhausted. I could barely move at this point. I filtered some water, hydrated, ate some lunch, and rested for the paddle ahead. I finally moved on when some teenagers came by with big dry packs. It looked like they were out on an over night canoe trip, but I did not see their canoes. I wanted to get out of their way. I supposed that others were portaging them or they intended to go back for their canoes..
It was a fairly short paddle to the Bartlett Carry portage. A map with more detail would have helped with navigating this section, but it wasn't that hard to find either. With larger scale maps, many more than 14 maps would be needed to navigate the NFCT.
The Bartlett Carry portage should have been super easy. It was not. I had to drag my kayak uphill about 0.2 of a mile, and then down a portage path with it constantly wanting to either tip or lock up. Once again, I was exhausted by this portage.
The paddle after this portage was again spectacularly beautiful. It was also very fun kayaking through the locks. I arrived in the Town of Saranac Lake around 7:00 PM. The outfitter is closed so I got a motel room a short distance away. The lady who ran the motel was nice enough to let me park my kayak on her lawn. I will talk to the outfitter in the morning.
I think I paddled about 26 miles today in spite of the difficult portages.
http://www.findmespot.com/mylocation/?id=8459M/44.31553N/74.12051W
Saranac Lake
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