I stayed home on Monday, partly to try and catch up on sleep, partly to take care of Gail (who's been sick for a while), and partly to get out in my canoe to explore a part of the route some friends of mine and I will be taking in an upcoming paddle/camping trip back into the St. Regis Canoe Area.
I got to the Long Pond carry at about 10:30, and some of the snow had melted away, but as you can see, there was still plenty left in the woods...I brought along my Hornbeck solo canoe (a gift from my parents for my 40th birthday), a loaded portage pack, my PFD, and my paddle, to try and approximate the feeling of the trip to come...
The portage pack is a wide and low pack, which sits at/below my shoulders, and so does not get in the way of my portaging a canoe...the Hornbeck only weighs 25 pounds, and I've found is most comfortable carried over on shoulder, with the paddle trapped in the boat by the thwarts...my PFD rides in the portage pack...
The carry in from the parking lot to Long Pond is about 1/4 mile, which was long enough to give me an idea about the comfort of my pack and boat setup...it should be fine, although on the 1.5 miles portages, I'll be huffing by the end...
I paddled the length of Long Pond (about 2.5 miles) to the portage for Nellie and Bessie Ponds, and got out there to walk the portage, to see how well a portage-cart would do...
In general, the trail should be fine with a portage cart, assuming that the wheels are big enough to get over the roots and rough spots along the way...
I was also trying out a new pair of shoes for the trip, Vibram 5-fingers, a "shoe" with individuated toes for comfort and grip and such...they left funny Yeti prints in the snow!
The portage from Long Pond up to Nellie and Bessie ponds is bisected by a beaver dam and the resulting pond...we'll have to climb back in and paddle over the no-name pond to the rest of the portage (which will increase the pond/portage count of the trip to 19/16)...
I headed back to the Long Pond end of the portage and was happy to get back into the sun to warm up and snack a bit before getting back in the boat for the windy/chilly ride back to the other end of the pond...
I had a tiny hammock-chair with me, which takes about a minute to set up and hangs from a couple trees...it was nice to lay back a bit in the mostly-upright hammock, off of the cold/wet ground, but still in full sunlight, and enjoy my lunch of beef jerky and GORP...
The hammock-chair only goes from my butt to my head, but it's easy to balance my feet on the line supporting it, and I was able to shut my eyes for a few minutes, enjoying the sun on my face, the sounds of the woods, and the gentle swaying of my lunch-spot...
I headed back across the pond, into a headwind that grew into whitecaps and flying spray by the time I got back to the far end of Long Pond...excited by my first paddle of the year, and eagerly anticipating the paddle trip my friends and I are calling PortageFest!
