W-2016-9-7
Start:
Brighton State Park, VT
End:
Stealth Camp on sandbar just below Upper Gorge carry.
On the
Way:
Spectacle Pond, Nulhegan Pond, Nulhegan River
Miles:
12. 12 measly miles. (Milepost 311)
Weather:
Clear with some clouds.
Map: 6
 |
| My boat and hammock resting place for the past two days. Note how I secure all my fancy paddling gear (AKA, the most expensive things I have with me) to a tree with a cable and padlock. |
 |
| Campsite right on Spectacle Pond--perfect for shoving off in the morning! |
Ung. What a tiresome, achey, scratchy day, and only 12 miles to show for it. The Book [AKA, the Through-Paddler’s Companion, an indispensable guidebook] warned that this would be a low section of the Trail that would be almost impossible to paddle in low water. The Book does not lie. The super-fun part is, even if I brute-force this next section and take a portage past these ultra-scratchy sections, I’ll have one section of glorious wide and downstream section coming up (the Connecticut, through New Hampshire), then I’m back to up-current paddling in the low and rapid Ammo and Androscoggin Rivers. Basically, screw New Hampshire; can I skip straight to Maine, already? If all goes well, I should be there by the weekend. I’m so ready to escape Vermont.
Speaking of escape, after four days of not hearing from me,
people back home began to panic.
Apparently, I learned from a phone call yesterday, the US Border Patrol
was called. How’s that for a story?
My stealth site for the evening is pretty nice: after a
pretty rough downhill portage on a trail that’s been chewed up by logging
trucks, I was ready to take a rest and listen to the pounding of the Class IV
rapids I walked around. My site is on a
little sandbar island in the Wildlife Preserve, which is technically not
allowed, but I figured a sandbar is the lowest-impact camping spot one can
choose practically anywhere. I’m treating
it like a beach holiday.
Got my boat
pulled up on the sand, my tarp pitched with some driftwood branches, and the
soft sand underfoot has convinced me to go without camp shoes for the
night. It’s adjacent to yet another
beaver pond, and one bold fellow has been out splashing and having a sunset
pleasure cruise of the premises and giving me lots of side-eye. He’s not toting sticks or doing much diving:
he’s just out for an evening swim. What
a life. As long as he doesn’t come to
cuddle in the night. I stopped kind of
early this evening, but I was getting stumble-punchy while lining and it was
getting dark. It was Time To Stop.
There’s a nice quarter moon out tonight. Perhaps it’ll be full by the time I’m near
the end of the trail.
Things
Learned:
+ Over-eating snack food because you’re bored and
procrastinating hauling over the next set of beaver dams and windy
trickle-rivers never sits well later.
This gallon-bag of GORP makes guzzling just too easy…and inviting.
+ In Maine, I ought to send home a fresh set of
postcards. And maybe the MIT Libraries,
too.
Trail
Magic:
+ I saw Teton again today!
He was rolling his boat along the Nulhegan Carry. We rolled and caught up together a little bit;
he’s a much faster portager than me, but he was kind enough to slow down and
hang out. When it came time to shove off
in the Nulhegan wetlands, though, he seemed fine with me pressing ahead. He knows about pace like that, like the
expert hiker/trekker that he is. A pace
is a pace is a pace, and it’s folly to ask anyone to change it.
+ I saw two river otters, and heard a third! They swam alongside my boat in the twisty
part of the Nulhegan, until Mom snarled at me from the bank to tell me to leave
them alone.
[NOTE- This sadly
marked the last day of functionality for my intrepid little camera. My double-ziploc-bagging method was
apparently no match for the last set of rapid-lining, as I discovered with
dismay as I tried to capture my idyllic beach camp. I’ll do my best to dig up representative
pictures from elsewhere (with due photo credit, of course), but be warned that your
blog experience will be significantly more text-based from here on in. Sorry ‘bout that.]
 |
| The last photo my poor camera took. Goodnight, sweet prince. The world was too wet and cruel for one so fair. |
No comments:
Post a Comment