One summer, we started canoeing on the Schroon River. I don't know why we hadn't done it more in summers past. Part of it may have been that the early Summit Staff was very small and focused almost entirely on climbing. I enjoy rock climbing, but there is a good bit of work associated with it. Particularly setting up the ropes and really only one person can climb at a time. Unless you have a number of competent people, who can set up multiple routes to climb, you really cannot go climbing as a big group.
The Schroon river was perfect for big groups. I was not on the inaugural trip, but my understanding was that it was a bunch of staff members and a bunch of canoes. The defacto leader was fresh out of voyageur school and wanted everyone to listen to him about the proper way to canoe. The problem was that he really did not know what he was doing and all of the training we get at camp school involved canoeing on flat water. As seen above, the Schroon has some pretty good currents and rapids. Not enough where you needed a raft, but pretty challenging to canoe in. My understanding was that it was an interesting start. The leader wanted to show off that canoes were actually more stable than you would believe, so he decided to stand up in his canoe to address the group. This was not a good idea. While some people can do it, and perhaps he had done it successfully before, he promptly fell in the drink. Amazingly he continued to instruct people on proper technique. I think at some point, everyone's canoe either capsized or filled with water, but it was no big deal and it sounded like a bit of fun.
Over that summer we went on the Schroon a lot. With each successive trip, we got our technique quite a bit better. The first time with the canoe went pretty well, but I am pretty sure I capsized at least once. Some of it is based on skill, but some of it is luck as well. Taking two nearly identical routes through a set of rapids could involve very different outcomes, just hitting one wave wrong could spell the end of dry canoeing. Of course, I guess if you had a lot of skill you could always pick the right line to take. The problem with capsizing is that you then had to find the canoe, make sure you had your paddle and any other gear, right the canoe and clamber back in. It was actually more fun to ride along in the rapids with your life jacket.
So, we eliminated the canoes and started going down the Schroon in large inner tubes. This was much better. First, you didn't have to schlep around the canoes at the beginning and the end. There was no risk of capsize, the worst that could happen is that you would fall out of your tube, but it was easy to get back in. We also started going in the evenings, which was even better. You just needed an inner tube and a headlamp. We typically went relatively early in the evening so it was only really getting dark as we finished. It is hard to explain exactly why, but I have always enjoyed being on the water at night, whether scuba diving, swimming etc. Perhaps it is because the water is not dazzling and bright, but rather inky and a bit scary that adds to the thrill.
The only issue was that there was a limited number of inner tubes and the activity got more and more popular. On one trip, we had more people than tubes, but I volunteered to go without anything except the life jacket. I probably would never have done this if there had been enough tubes, but it turned out to be a very happy accident. Now you were really in the action, with waves crashing over your head and just being a bit lower in the water significantly reduced your line of sight. From that point on, I was hooked and went with just the life jacket exclusively. Although I thought this was great fun, apparently the trend had not gone viral. Any time we went under a bridge or past any area that was populated people would assume you were in trouble. This was not surprising since typically you only see someone floating down the river in a life jacket if they have fallen out of a boat. But, since this was the Adirondacks with hearty people who did far crazier things, they did not overreact and call the fire department or the police. Once you indicated that you were ok, they would simply wave and wish you good luck.
Although it was usually flowing pretty well, it was extra exciting if there had been a bit of rain to make the river higher. One evening, M.L. and I were hanging out and it started to rain really hard. We instantly decided that we would hit the Schroon up that night immediately after the rain stopped so that the river would be at its highest. The problem was it kept raining and raining. M.L. and I did our best to stay up, we wandered all around camp trying to find people that were up, and in the beginning we were successful. However, eventually everyone who was in camp went to sleep and it was still raining. For whatever reason, we refused to go while it was still raining, we had become locked in on the idea of going at the first moment the rain stopped. The rain probably stopped around 3 A.M. I don't know this for sure, because at some point we had both decided to go to sleep. It was probably for the best, we had never gone in the dead of night before. Also, we had always had two vehicles in the past. We would leave one at the takeout point and then drive back to where we had put-in. If we had gone, we would have had to walk back to our only vehicle, at night, on a road with no shoulder.
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