Chapter 4

The next day dawned foggy and cool. We made a quick breakfast on the rekindled fire from the previous night, and packed up our stuff. Once we reloaded the boat, we set off on what may have been the most annoying trek I've ever done.

The weedy little stream wasn't really big enough to float the canoe, and wasn't all that straight. The trees grew in pretty close, so it wasn't really suitable for a portage. As a bad compromise, we rigged up the bow rope and another one as a harness, and began dragging the canoe down the watercourse.

We were almost immediately soaked from moisture from the overhanging trees and brush. The bottom of the stream was a mix of soft sand and muck, with the occasional deep, bootgrabbing hole, and further enlivened by rocks and submerged roots and wood to trip us up. The mosquitoes and gnats had a field day with us, and we stopped occasionally to daub on more repellant.

After about a half-mile, the stream began getting wider and deeper, as it gathered in some other tributaries. Our spirits began to lift, as we finally got enough water to actually float the canoe. Even with us in it.

Our joy was short-lived, as after only a couple hundred yards, we came upon a beaver dam. Fortunately, it wasn't too high, and we wear able to actually run the canoe up on it, and then get out and shove it over.

It was back to dragging, although in a somewhat bigger stream.

As we struggled down stream, we occasionally came across signs of the ladies in front of us. A bootprint, weeds and brush mashed down and drag marks, showed that we were still on their trail.

The volume of the stream slowly became wider as more water was gathered in. The course became more direct and less meandering. The fog finally burned off, and the woods became steamy as the sun beat down on the treetops, occasionally filtering down to us. The bugs didn't abate one whit. We encountered several more beaver dams, and eventually refined our technique to the point we could pretty well shoot the biggest breach without getting out.

At noon, we called a halt and dragged our food pack and water up slope to a convenient rock, half buried and mostly covered with moss and lichen.

"Well buddy", I said with a grin, "How's this whitewater river working out for you?"

Jeff grinned back. "Not exactly action-packed so far, is it?"

I was rooting around in the food sack. After pulling out some hard cheese and sausage sticks for lunch. I replied. "Not exactly ... but it still beats Hell out of work!" Jeff laughed and gave me a "high-five".

We ate mostly in silence, occasionally swatting a particularly annoying gnat or mosquito.

"How much more of this do you think we have until we get some reliable water under the keel?" Jeff finally asked.

"No idea- let me get the map and GPS and maybe we can get an idea ... hope it's not too discouraging."

I swallowed the last of my cheese and set the last couple bites of sausage down on the wrapper.

It was only the work of a couple minutes to dig stuff out. After initializing the GPS, and plotting coordinates on the map as best as I could, I looked up and told Jeff "Looks like at least another mile or mile and a half until we hit the confluence of a pretty decent sized stream coming in from the right. The river valley is starting to get narrower there, too. If that's not enough water, we will be gather more side streams pretty regularly for the next ten or twelve miles, or until we get to this first "falls" marked on the map."

"OK, that's not too bad. Even as slow as we are going, we ought to be off this in another two or three hours."

"Yeah- I think we've seen the worst."

As we'd been talking, Jeff had been packing the food back up. We walked back down to the boat, and stowed everything back in its waterproofed place.

The "river" did seem to be getting a bit deeper and easier to drag the boat along, as we slogged off another few hundred yards. Unfortunately, our progress came to a screeching halt when we encountered a big blowdown, right across our path. Trees were mashed flat as far as we could see to both sides and in front.

"Holy Crap, Matt- that's one helluva mess! Those trees are right down across the river. There's not even enough room to crawl through there!"

"No kidding! How the hell are we going to get this boat around this?" I moaned.

Jeff looked thoughtful for a few seconds and said "you know, the girls in front of us had to get around this somehow- they must have because they aren't sitting here trying to figure out what to do. All we have to do is scout around until we find the path they took."

"Hmm- I should have thought of that. We'll have to scout around the edges of this in any event. If we can't find their path, we'll just have to suck it up and horse the boat and gear through the woods. Hopefully this won't be too big."

"Well, the woods are thick enough here that we can't see very far. For a first cut at it, I'd say start right at the edge of the blowdown and work backwards along the banks until we can see where they left the stream. If we can't find it within, say one hundred yards or so, then I'd say start scouting on whichever back looks like it has the easiest slope, which I'd say would be the inside of this bend, or river right. Let's get the map out and locate ourselves and see how the land lies."

"Sounds like a plan to me" I said as I started undoing the straps that held the navigation gear bag down.

After reorienting ourselves with the help of the GPS, we started tracing out the course of the river.

"Well Jeff, looks like you were right. The river right side looks like there is something of a flat on that side for a couple hundred yards, anyhow. Then the river makes a meander off in the other direction, but if the blowdown is that big we're pretty seriously going to have our work cut out."

"Yeah, but don't forget. These ladies somehow got past this, unless they're stuck in the middle of that haystack. If they can do it, then we can."

"Yep. Well, the job won't get any smaller by looking at it. Lets grab the emergency bags and hit the road!"

Jeff got the emergency bags out. I stuffed the map and GPS back into the dry bag and shouldered the emergency gear.

We started slowly back upstream, looking for any trail our lady predecessors might have left.