Forks in the Road

The very first merit badge I ever did, was horsemanship. Growing up, I was very interested in animals in general, but particularly horses. In fact, I used to tell people that I planned to be a veterinarian. Turns out I am a veteran, but not a veterinarian.

About a 1/4 down the road from where I grew up was a good sized stable. They probably had 30 or 40 horses there. I am not sure exactly how I ended up "working" there, but I just started showing up and helping out with things. I was never on the payroll, I was probably too young for that. But, I assisted the regular workers with mucking out the stalls, replacing the bedding, feeding the horses, taking them out to pasture etc. In return, I would get some free riding lessons here and there. I would have done it without the lessons though. Barns are fun places to visit. The combination of the animal smells, the straw and the hay, is very comforting. There is usually a lot going on too, tractors moving big loads, horses being either tacked up or finishing up a ride, definitely better than TV. So I would go to this barn almost every weekend and do whatever was needed.

One particular event still stands out in my mind. I was bringing a brown mare, named Lucy, into the barn from the paddocks. This was pretty easy stuff, you went out with the halter and a lead line (a long piece of rope or webbing), put the halter on the horse, and led it to the barn. It was kind of like walking an exceptionally large dog. The thing about horses is that they spook very easily. It is as if they have no idea that they are as big and as strong as they are, and will easily scare. To me, that is one thing that has always impressed me with the horses used for police work, because they have been so well trained that they have gotten over their usual instinct to bolt at any loud noise or strange movement. Because it was winter, there were patches of ice and snow on the ground on the way from the paddock to the barn.

All of a sudden, I slipped on a piece of ice and went down. As I was laying on the ground, probably about 4-5 feet from Lucy's hooves, she reared up and turned to run. For whatever reason, I did not let go of the lead line. It wasn't my horse and I figured if it escaped I would have some answering to do. So Lucy dragged me along behind her. I can still see and feel the bits of snow and ice that she kicked up hit me in the face. After about 50 feet or so, I couldn't hold on anymore, and I let go of the rope. Almost immediately, Lucy slowed down from a gallop to a fast trot and then a walk. She probably only went a few hundred feet more, before she turned around and looked at me. I got up, noticed that my knuckles were bleeding because they had bore the brunt of being dragged, but otherwise I was in pretty good shape. I slowly walked up to Lucy, grabbed the line, and we walked without incident back to the barn.

So the first year I worked at camp, I wanted to work at our stables. Camp would have 10 or so horses for the season and the staff members were responsible for the care and upkeep and leading trail rides. Even though I requested it for the first and second summer, I never got the gig. Probably turned out for the best. I still helped out there on many occasions. There was a true cowboy who started working there part time. He did not have time to work there the entire summer, and had a family to support so he couldn't quit his main job. But, he had actually grown up around horses, worked ranches, the whole deal.

When I first met Jason, I thought he was in his mid 30s. He just seemed way too serious and mature to not be. Turns out he was only 24. He probably hadn't gotten carded since he was 13! He was all business at first, but it was fun to work with him because he knew exactly what he was doing at all times. He had this great rig set up for pulling fences tight, he built it himself in a couple of hours, it would have taken me half a lifetime to build it. He was also a very patient teacher, it turns out there is a very specific way to attach the fence to the fence posts. It is not the easiest way, but it lasts much longer. He also helped me out of a pretty good jam.

I was driving one of the nicer trucks at camp, in fact it was the Camp Ranger's truck. It was a nice Ford F-250, full 4 wheel drive, snowplow attachment, the works. However, being relatively unskilled in 4 wheel drive, I did not know that you had to lock the hubs to to engage the 4 wheel drive. So, of course, I got the truck stuck. I was technically doing work, not goofing around, but I was a dumbass to not properly engage the 4 wheel drive. I attempted to get it unstuck, but just succeeded in digging it deeper and deeper into the mud, until it was buried up to the Axels.

Jason, knew what to do, he got this John Deere tractor and we hooked up a chain, but the tractor did not have enough juice, even with me giving it full power in reverse, so it looked like we were out of luck. But, Jason knew something I did not know. Apparently, a single John Deere key will start all manner of equipment. Ranger Bob's son was in the logging trade, and every so often would park some mammoth piece of equipment at the camp. No-one messed with this stuff because it was pretty imposing. The wheels alone on these machines were more than 6 foot in diameter. Jason explained to me that he had seen one of these machines just up the road and thought that the John Deere key would work. I was skeptical, but I also really wanted the truck to be unstuck. So he ambled up the road to check it out. Sure enough, I heard this enormous diesel engine start and Jason comes trucking down in this huge wood skidder.

It looked something like this.
He was driving it super calm, cigarrete dangling out of the corner of his mouth - true Marlboro Man style. He hooked that beast up to the truck and told me not to worry, I could just put it in neutral. Just as he began to tug, he snapped the two chain. That is a ton of power, this was a thick chain and he just snapped it. Fortunately, he had a fix for this too, and we simply doubled the amount of chain between the skidder and the truck. And just like that, it was unstuck. I don't think he even needed to give it any gas. Since this machine could pull enormous trees, pulling a rather small truck was no big deal. Ever the teacher, Jason then instructed me on how to properly lock the hubs of a 4wd vehicle.

When we first started working together, I learned that if he disapproved of something, his go to phrase was "Not in my barn." This could range from the literal like not tying up a horse correctly "Not in my Barn" to the far more esoteric or political. For instance if you asked him if he supported the current policies of the white house, he was very likely to respond "Not in my barn." Naturally, I liked this phrase and took up using it all the time. At first, I think it annoyed him, like if someone asked me if I wanted a drink of milk and I would respond "Not in my barn." But, eventually, he came around and even started to overuse his own phrase. Plus, we really enjoyed shouting it. Nothing confuses a person more than asking a simple innocent question and you shout back, perhaps in unison, "NOT IN MY BARN!" It was a shame he could only come up on a few weekends, but I always enjoyed working with him because of his work ethic, sense of humor and skills.

Talking Treks - Part 1 - Long Lake to Tupper

Loader and I decided that we would do a series of joint posts about the various treks that we took. While there are no end to the trip combinations in the Daks, there was only a finite number of trips that scouts could choose to do from our camp. Most had been pioneered by the great Ken Smith. He had them pretty well planned out with sample itineraries and daily mileages. I picked Long Lake to Tupper to write up first because it was the very first trek I ever did as a camper.

Very Poorly drawn route.  This was actually the best attempt out of 3 or 4!  Contrary to the red line, your would actually canoe up Long Lake, and not carry the canoes along the shore line for 10+ miles.

The most memorable trip I had on Long Lake was covered here.  Overall, this is a solid trek.  Many groups opt to shorten it and get picked up on the Raquette river, but if you do the whole thing, it is a decent 45 miles or so, on some pretty good sized bodies of water.  

Long Lake is a pretty popular place in the Daks.  There is usually quite a bit of other traffic on the lake, to include float planes.  Even though this next story probably should have been in the previous post, I just remembered it as I was typing, so it goes here.

After the Weebs and I had left the woods during our little trip to the high peaks, we ended up going into Long Lake and taking a ride on a float plane.  Instead of going on the usual brief hop, we elected to go on a longer flight and just pay by the hour.  It turned out to be a great decision.  First, our pilot was quite a character.  At this point I had my pilot's license, but I had only flown a little over a hundred hours.  This guy had likely flown thousands of hours.  He also had this super dry sense of humor.  Before we got on the plane he asked us if we were feeling OK and then he responded that he felt pretty dizzy.  I wish I could remember some of the other great one-liners he had, they were all great and flawlessly delivered.  He flew us over Long Lake and then over into Old Forge, where he was negotiating some deal with another float plane operator.  Weebs and I had a great time hanging out at this other float plane base, there is always lots of fun stuff that accompanies big toys.  Plus, there was a very friendly Golden Retriever that was doing its best to demolish a piece of wood panelling.  He was really into it, just tearing into it, but taking frequent breaks to play with us.  

After the little trip to the other float plane base he showed us some of the fun stuff you can do with a float plane.  First, we landed in a small pond, way too small to take off going straight.  So, he showed us that you could crank around the lake in a big fast turn and get airborne that way.  It really was awesome, sort of like doing doughnuts, but in an airplane rather than a car.  We were both pinned to the outside of the curve and one float came out of the water before the other one did.  He showed us other different sorts of takeoffs and landings, each one quite exciting and just a bit scary.  Through it all, he was the picture of calm.  Even as we were doing 60+ mph in a tight curve around this small pond with trees flashing by in the windows, he was sitting back calmly in his seat, one hand on the yoke.  If I had to guess, his pulse was probably a solid 50-60 beats per minute while Weebs and I were probably both in triple digits!  

All good things have to come to an end though, when we landed it was to settle up.  This is when he delivered perhaps his best line, "It's only free, if we don't make it back!"  

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Anyway, back to the main point.  Long Lake is extremely beautiful.  I think much of the shoreline is owned by the State, so there are not a lot of houses on the Lake, just lots of wild land.  Even though it is a big lake, it is quite sheltered, so there is not a lot of wind.  Perhaps the roughest part of a canoe trek is paddling into a big wind.  It is exciting at first, because there are usually some good sized waves, but it is just really tiring.  You try not to take breaks either, because you will lose the little progress you had made. 

If it's windy, Long Lake is a cruel introduction to canoeing.  There are really no places to take a break and you are canoeing the whole length of the lake.  Any breaks you take you tend to drift southward back the way you came.  It's baptism by fire, but that's not always a bad thing.  I recall less state land (or more private housing) than the Voyageur, but perhaps that's just because I used to dream about owning one of the sprawling estates that dotted the shore here and there.  And there was time to dream.  Most beginner canoeists will zig-zag.  Until you learn to steer by using the J-stroke and not using the paddle in the stern as a rudder this is par for the course.  Some scouts and adults never learn on a whole trek even though we demonstrate and stress it often.

On a nice sunny day, with little wind, taking breaks is one of the highlights of the trek!  It is inevitable that any group of paddlers will go at slightly different speeds, so we would get pretty spread out on the big lakes.  Particularly in the beginning, when most people are getting used to paddling.  There is a great deal of zig zagging and yelling going on.  Most of the yelling involves the paddler in the front yelling at the paddler in the back to steer properly.  Similarly, the paddler in the back always retorts back that the person in the front is not paddling hard enough.  Naturally, I preferred to paddle my canoe solo.  My general plan of attack involved paddling for 50 minutes and resting for 10.  This made for a good pace.  

The pull out for the first day is at the end of Long Lake, just before you enter the Raquette river.  The first night is usually the toughest because scouts have to figure out how to set up tents, how the stoves work, purifying water etc.  It only gets easier after that though.  The first night is tough too, because you are operating on a bit of a sleep deficit.

I recall one year finding a few fresh water mussels at the campground the first night.  So the next year we went looking for them.  My trek group must have spent a good two hours searching the shallow water for a mussel bed and must have thought I was having them on after a while.  We pretty much gave up.  Later that evening I was demonstrating how to gunwale jump and I fell in - and landed in a bed of hundreds of mussels.  We gathered as much as we could, put a pot on the stove, filled it with water, covered it with foil which we poked holes into.  An makeshift steamer!  Once the water boiled we would steam about ten mussels at a time and on another stove we were melting butter and of course we had hot sauce because I always brought hot sauce to cover up the taste of most evening meals.  We ate like Kings that night on fresh seafood with melted butter and hot sauce.  Quite good.  Stupidly we threw our empty and unopened shells into the water leaving an olfactory beacon for bears.  Another trek that summer had had their food supply attacked by bears at the same campsite.  Though the Quackers had floated his food out from shore in canoes, the lake will always bring it back in.  So his group woke up to the sound of bears pulling canoes out of the water and having a feast.  I understand the temptation as there is precious little in the way of a good tree for bear bag hanging, but hang one we def. did, with no problems.  

The second and third day are both on the Raquette River.  This is some very pleasant paddling.  The river is typically 20 to 40 feet across at any given location, and there is a gentle current that you are paddling with, not against.  Here, when you take a break you still gently glide along closer to your destination.  

Midway through the second day, you reach the falls and a mandatory carry.  This is a pretty tough carry, it is a mile and half long over some pretty tough terrain with some hills tossed in for good measure. My preferred method was to carry my pack and the canoe.  Although it added to the overall weight, you could balance the canoe on the top of your pack and it was far more pleasant than carrying the canoe without the pack.  Without the pack, you rested the thwart, a metal cross piece on the top of your shoulders.  To make it a bit more pleasant, you would try to lash a life jacket in place to add a bit of padding.  After about 5 or 6 steps, the life jacket would often come loose or shift position and the thwart would bite into your shoulders.  When carrying a canoe with two people, you have very little visibility.  You get to see what the inside of a canoe looks like, and the ground beneath your feet, but that is it.  At first, the person in front will try to helpfully call out when an obstacle is coming, but after the first 5 minutes, both participants are pretty pissed off and it becomes a stumbling march in silence.  Every so often the silence is pierced by one scout telling the other scout that he needs to take a rest.  This is accompanied by both scouts doing their best to throw the canoe to the ground without injuring themselves, but almost no concern to the other scout.  Taking breaks just makes the whole thing take longer though.  

Finally, you reach the other end.  It is very pleasant with a sandy beach and the last of the rapids makes a good swimming hole.  However, before the scouts can swim, they have to walk the mile and half back to pick up their paddles and backpacks.  So, it ends up being a 4.5 mile trip altogether.  Not surprisingly, this kills a good part of the day.  Our groups would usually eat lunch and goof off for a bit at the end of the carry.  The rest of the day consisted of a bit more paddling and then making camp.

The Ranger house at the end of this carry is amazing.  Another place I dreamed about someday living.  

The third day involves paddling the rest of the river and then entering into Tupper Lake.  Tupper Lake is much wider than Long Lake and usually has some pretty good wind and waves.  It is a bit of a shock after the easy pleasant paddling on the river, but still quite nice.  At this point, the group is generally performing pretty well and understands what needs to be done each night.  On the first two nights, particularly the first, it is mainly me performing all the tasks.  As the trek goes on, the scouts learn to do everything and just need a bit of supervision.  

I can't believe you forgot to mention the Oxbow.  Many a beer have been consumed by us while making stupid oxbow jokes.  The Wxbow is a place where the Racquette river turns into Simon Pond.  If you don't make the turn you end up in the Oxbow - a series of twists and turns and intersecting channels that reached mythical proportions.  Of course nobody got stuck in it because there's a huge floating buoy with a sign which reads, "Don't enter the Oxbow" or something to that effect.

Nobody I know ever went the wrong way.

As you exit the Racquette you have to cross Simon Pond on your way to Tupper Lake.  The wind could be mega fierce here.  I always hated this part.  (Most Voyageurs hated most canoe trips and would rather have done a 90/10 ratio of backpacking to canoeing, though most Summers the reverse ended up being true.)  Really, the trek should have ended that night as the next day was all too quick to get to the pick up point at the South end of Tupper.   

The fourth day is spent paddling down to the end of the lake, near the pick-up.  Ken Smith designed every single one of the treks to have a very short last day.  So short, that you could easily finish the trek on the fourth day just by paddling or hiking an extra hour or two.  One of my favorite drivers was a guy we called Sarge.  He was in his 60s or 70s, but still quite spry and still had a very keen mind.  We called him Sarge, because he would often hang out with us younger guys, and make sure we didn't get into too much trouble, like a good sergeant! Plus, it was a cool nickname.  

Most of the time, the same driver that dropped you off on the first day would pick you up on the last day.  If Sarge was my driver, I would always tell him to pick me up at around 10.  This was a lie.  We both knew it.  It didn't matter what time I told Sarge, we both knew the real deal.  It was a race to see who could get to the pickup first.  So even if I told Sarge to pick me up at 10 and reached the takeout at 7:30, Sarge would be there, and would have been there for awhile.  Sarge probably picked me up more often than any other driver, and I never once beat him to the pickup spot.  What was great is that it was never discussed.  Even after the 20th time of telling Sarge to pick me up a 10, he would nod and say "see you then" with total sincerity.  

One of the great things about being picked up early is at the very bottom of Tupper Lake, there is a small road (421) that veers west away from Route 30.  If you take this road a couple hundred feet, there is a great little swimming hole with a rock slide where a river feeds into Tupper.  A great way to end the trip!

The ride back to camp is usually a couple of hours and everyone is very quiet.  Most of the group either naps or watches the scenery go by.

I'll try to mix it up and talk about a backpacking trip next.  However, we did far more canoeing treks than backpacking treks, so there will be more posts about canoeing than backpacking.  

A Bunch of Fragments

Most summers that I worked at camp I grew a beard. One, I was just getting to the age where I could grow a beard; Two, it sort of fitted the job description; and Three, most of the time you wouldn't get carded if you had a full blown Paul Bunyan esque beard going on.

I have talked about Lake George a few times before, in general, it is a touristy town, but I still have some very fond memories. One of those memories involves a place I can only remember as the "Pitcher Place". It was a little pizzeria in Lake George and served pretty good food. One evening, the Load, the Weebs (full story on that name perhaps forthcoming with his permission), C. Coady, a buxom kitchen lass and a few others were at this place. We started out with a pizza and perhaps a few other dishes. I then ordered a pitcher of beer, almost just to see if it would work; true to form, the beard did not let me down. The pitcher came with 2 or 3 glasses, enough for those who actually were 21 and those who may have had the facial hair of a hobo. However, the pitcher went very quickly. There is nothing to stop someone from emptying a soda glass and refilling it with beer. More pitchers were ordered and I think the waitstaff were onto our little trick. But, business was good and we were behaving ourselves. It was a great night because the place was relatively empty and we had some great chats. Usually when we went to the local bar, it was packed and you really couldn't have a conversation. This was more like a tavern. Also, the bar we frequented the most, had absolutely no beers on tap. It was only because of its location that it did so well. A valuable part of the drinking experience is drinking draft beers from pitchers. We stayed for hours, perhaps until closing time. One of my favorite places in the Adirondacks. At least that is how I remembered it.

More than 15 years later, the Weebs and I happened to visit this place again. At this point, neither one of us had worked at camp for several years. Also, I was now cleanly shaved and it was the Weebs who sported a beard. However, his beard was well kempt and fitting a professional where mine had simply been an exercise in not shaving at all. We had planned a weekend hiking around in the Adirondacks, mainly hitting Mt. Marcy and a few other peaks.

We didn't have the load with us. The load is exceptionally good at planning activities and putting the needed logistics in place. The Weebs and I, not so much. We made it a point to harrass the Load via phone every 30 minutes or so with pointless updates as to what milepost we had passed, but nothing useful. So we ended up in the Daks with our packs, but no supplies. We didn't make it up until quite late the first day, so we decided that we would stay at camp since it was further south and hopefully free.

There was a bit of trepidation though. Camp was in full session with scouts and staff members. The Weebs had received a less than warm welcome when he had visited the camp a couple of summers before. Nevertheless, I thought we might try something that we had never tried before ... respect. So, we drove onto camp and immediately reported to the Central Office and announced ourselves as visitors and asked if we could speak to the Hammer, the director. Curiously, camp actually had official wristbands, sort of like you get when visiting a museum or a bar, to denote that you were a visitor. The young lady that received us got this box down from a high shelf, remarking that she didn't think she had ever issued one before. The thing is, this box was enormous. There were thousands and thousands of wrist bands in there, yet ours were the first two that had been handed out in recent memory.

We chatted for a bit, realized that we knew hardly anyone that still worked there. Eventually the Hammer rolled up. He could not have been more welcoming. We explained our plans and asked if we could sleep in the Howie Hut (the tenament I had occupied before when collecting all the old soda cans) and he graciously allowed it. What's more, he invited us to the staff bbq. The Weebs and I discussed this unexpectedly warm welcome and finally understood some things that had eluded me earlier. First, this was Hammer's full time job. Although the camp was only open for the summer he worked for the Boy Scouts full time. Second, he was responsible for everything that happened on the property. In years past, we would have probably have just rolled up and done whatever we felt like. Understandably, this was not the right course of action.

The BBQ was pretty good, although it did reinforce the idea that we were definitely the old men there. The only person I recognized was good old Maggie. During my last years at camp, Maggie had been a CIT, probably about 15 or 16. She had memorized Lewis Carrol's Jabberwocky and would recite it at campfires. She had become a bit of a free spirit, travelling around the world. Anyway we got to talking with her and agreed that we would prep for our hike by travelling down to Lake George for a few bowls of loud mouth soup.

I can't remember exactly what we talked about during the 40 min ride, I wish I had, because a lot of it was absolutely hilarious. Maggie told us stories about studying in NY and missing a lot of classes. She didn't intend to cut classes, she would dutifully set off from her apartment to the college. However, if it was a particularly nice day or if there was a sidewalk performer or an exhibit that caught her eye, she tended to miss classes. This tended to happen a lot. Also, Maggie had been working at camp for quite a bit while we were gone, so she was able to fill us in on some history. We did not end up at the pizza place that night, we visited a bunch of other places.

The next morning, we had a lot to do. I am not sure about the exact sequence of events. I know that we phoned the load a lot to give useless status reports. Even though it was in totally the wrong direction and we still hadn't picked up and supplies, I was able to convince the Weebs that we should have lunch at the pizza place. It wasn't exactly how I remembered it. It hadn't changed, it's just that my fond memories had painted it to be far better than reality. The pizza was good, not great. The tables were kind of sticky. In short, everything you would expect a touristy pizza place to be. Still, it was fun to be back. Some of those same memories came back.

We then had close to an hour and a half drive to the trailhead. Still, we had no supplies. At least if we had the load he would have at least planned the menus so all we would need is to run in and pick up the supplies. But, since it was the Weebs and me, we wandered around this supermarket like a couple of idiots. Picking up 20 pound sides of beef and joking about how funny it would be to pack something like this. In the end, we got the usual trail food, also some not so usual food like big cans of stew. But, we figured we would eat it the first night and it was not too far to carry.

Turns out we reached the trailhead at around 4 or so. Really late. We only hiked 2-3 miles that first evening to a pretty popular campsite. It looked like a woman's college outing club had claimed the lean-to. It was clear that they meant business. They had that lean to impeccably organized. Sort of like a display at a camping store. Everything was set out neatly, they had color coded stuff sacks, the works. So Weebs and I roll up and ask if it is cool if we pitch our tent in the clearing a few hundred yards off. We could not have gotten a colder reception. They avoided us like the plague. So I don't feel too bad about what happened next.

First, we had to open the cans of stew. Naturally, we had not packed a can opener. So I used Nature's can opener, a big rock. After wailing on it like a gorilla, I finally got it to the point where we could get at the contents. I happened to do my cave man routine in an area where the girls could plainly see me. I am sure they had no end of can openers, but offered no assistance.

After the Weebs and I had eaten, got the tent set up and generally set up for the evening, we realized that we had no way to hang our food. Since this was a very popular area, the bear activity was pretty high. So we did the only thing that we could. I went up to an 8 foot tall spruce. I was able to pull the top of it down, hook our plastic shopping bag full of food on it and once I released it our food was about 6 feet off the ground. A squirrel could have easily got it, much less a bear.

Sure enough, in the middle of the night, the Weebs woke me up to let me know there was a bear outside and it had been making a lot of racket and had even put its nose against the tent. I had missed most of this, not sure how I slept through it all. Of course, my first reaction was to think that the Weebs was just messing with me. But, he was absolutely serious.

The next morning, our bag was in tatters. The bear was actually quite picky. For instance, it ate most of the pepperoni stick we had bought and a good bit of the cheese. We had also bought a pack of 6 tortillas, the bear evidently did not like it. There was an enormous bite mark through the entire package, but it looked like very little had been consumed. Regardless, we would press on. We still had quite a bit of food and only planned to be in the Daks for a couple more days.

Unfortunately, the Weebs developed a bit of a problem with his knee. Apparently the knee cap was rubbing against some bone causing him quite a bit of pain. He pushed on, but by the time we reached the summit of Marcy, he was hurting. What's worse, going downhill was a lot more painful than going up. We phoned the load at the summit for a status update. So we ended up limping out that night. Funny thing was, Weebs was wearing sandals for while carrying his 40 lb pack. Probably not the wisest choice. At some point on the way down, this very fit older gentleman came up to me and told me "I cautioned your friend back there on his choice of footwear." Of course he was right. He was also very prim and proper, so it only seemed right that he would be so formal! It was a long day hiking out. I think we spent the last day just cruising around Lake Placid and phoning the load. We stayed at the Econo Lodge in Lake Placid, which had very good rates and even a pool and a hot tub. The Weebs and I may or may not have ended up two guys just chilling in a hot tub, Dumb and Dumber style. All in all, a great trip.

Voaygeur Part III: Being Preppy (Wherein the long name referencing the Denver Omlette gets explained and dismissed finally)

In previous posts we discussed camp school and the follow up remedial training.  This post focuses on the Sunday afternoon before a group leaves.

Sundays start off with a brunch, a ton of coffee consumed out of 4 fl oz cups and waiting for your trek group to arrive.  Once the group arrives, there are quick introductions, a brief discussion about the planned route and plans to meet later for pack inspection.  As it turns out, at least for me, Sundays were always extremely busy.  I could have done a lot of the work on Saturday, but I viewed that as my Summit Sabbath, and made sure that I did not do any work or anything morally correct on that day.

Load purpling it up here and there on this post.  Sundays always stared out well.  Especially my last year (2000 when I came back full time, not freelance).  There was no breakfast, just brunch and dinner that day.  Brunch commenced around 10:30 or 11:00, yet the Voyageur and I would usually arrive at the dining hall at breakfast time (7:30) and begin to drink that aforementioned coffee.  There really is nothing better than having a few free hours to caffeinate your body while bullshitting with a friend on a beautiful summer Adirondack morning in front of a gorgeous wood structure (the new dining hall).  I looked forward to those times.

In addition to meeting the group and making sure they were ready for the trip, you had to pack your own gear and make sure all the group gear was ready to go.  Packing your own gear was pretty easy, because my pack was typically 85% ready to go at any time.  Most of the gear just stayed in there from week to week, the clothing might get changed out, but really the only thing that certainly got changed out was the socks.  That is one area you don't want to take lightly, you really do need fresh socks each day.

You always hoped for early arriving groups (post-brunch though) so you could go through your paces with them, do pack check, discuss this and that, distribute gear, and still have time to chill in the late afternoon.  

Our groups usually ranged in size from 8-12.  Over the course of 5 days, this is a lot of food to consume.  Fortunately, there is an entire line of backpacking food.  The food is freeze dried, meaning that there is little to no moisture content.  The food is comparatively light and does not require refrigeration.  Something is lost in the freeze drying process however, that something is taste.  But it gets the job done.  Generally, the dinners were the best of the worst, the lunches in the middle of the pack and the breakfasts were really really bad.  For whatever reason, freeze drying eggs doesn't work.  It go to the point that we would typically pack two freeze dried breakfasts for the group (one denver omelette and one eggs and baco bits) and the other breakfasts were instant oatmeal.  I think we universally agreed that the Denver Omlette was the worst.  Perhaps it was the lofty title that made you think of a diner where you would get a lovely fluffy omlette, perhaps some plump juicy sausages and a glass of orange juice.  In the field it was a slightly runny mess with flecks of green pepper floating in the eggy soup.  We started wising up at the end and just packing oatmeal for all 4 breakfasts.  It was cheaper, tastier and required almost no clean-up. The Denver Omlette is the meal I took w/the Voyageur when we hiked up Stevens for the (very) abridged training when it turned out he was going to fill in to take a trek out.  It's also the meal that we threw out after having tasted a bite each.

The lunches typically consisted of some sort of bread that never went bad, but was never really good either, either a cheese spread or peanut butter and jelly and some sort of energy bar.  I imagine it was similar to what they ate during the Korean war, in fact some of the adult leaders who were vets remarked that it was indeed similar.  All in all, the dinners were not too bad.  They were usually hearty enough that people did not go to bed hungry and actually tasted ok.  My favorite was the nicknames for the meals, only one sticks in my mind because of the totally juvenile nature, and that is "Happy Cow" for Beef Stroganoff.

Two comments here.  When I began, in '93, the lunches were pre-packaged deals that contained Mountain Bread.  This was the stalest, driest cracker you could imagine, along with two packs of squeeze jelly and peanut butter.  These were definitely reminiscent of military MRE's.  Lunch was the first to go, we would end up taking a bag of bagels, peanut butter in a jar, GORP, granola bars, apples and oranges, etc.  Quick, yummy, saved money, filling, etc.  Oh, and pepporoni!  After a few days of heavy hiking, nothing beat sticking a large slice of pepperoni into a jar of peanut butter and chowing down.  Later we got rid of breakfasts in favor of fortified oatmeal.  That's oatmeal with anything added you could think of.

I always made the "Happy Cow" joke about Beef Stroganoff until an adult leader I was taking out commented that "Happy Bull" was more accurate in this instance. 

Each one of the freeze dried meals was packaged to serve 4.  It worked best if you had a group of 6 or 10, because a meal for 8 served 6 very well, and a meal for 12 similarly worked well for 10 people.  Typically, I would round up.  People get cranky enough in the woods away from toilets, showers and general creature comforts, you don't want to add in hunger.  We would also give each participant a bag of trail mix (M&Ms, peanuts and raisins) that was to be used as they saw fit.  Interestingly, many scouts chose to break out this bag of treats on the drive to the trek start, about an hour after they had breakfast.

Packing all this food was relatively simple.  As mentioned before, we had an old dining hall at our disposal.  The walk in refrigerators were still there, but inoperable.  That didn't matter though because the food didn't need to stay cold.  My approach was pretty haphazard.  I generally grabbed as many bags of each food as I thought we might need, supplemented with some extra oatmeal and trail mix and called it good.  The load, who is a bit more of a purist, put more thought into it and even carried a spice kit with him.

After packing the food, you needed to get the rest of the group gear, namely the cooking gear, stoves and fuel.  The cooking gear was relatively straight forward.  All the meals could be prepared in a big pot and or a frying pan and the scouts were responsible for bringing their own plate and cup.  You needed a big spoon and a spatula, and then you were all set.

We used stoves like the one below:

These were really efficient machines, when working correctly.  Probably the most useful thing I learned at camp school was how to repair one of these in the field.  You poured liquid fuel in the tank.  There was a pump on the other side of the stove:

You can see the pump on the right side of  fuel tank.

In order to get the stove started you would pressurize the tank with the pump and light her up.  At first, a mixture of liquid and gaseous fuel would come out, creating a nice dangerous flame.  Eventually, the heat from the flame would convert all the liquid fuel to vapor and the stove would run smoothly.  The problem was that the stoves were pretty finicky and over time some would work better than others. Rather than figure out ahead of time which ones were working well, my approach was to grab 3 or 4, with the idea that at least one, and hopefully two would work well.  These stoves didn't use much fuel, but you never wanted to run out. Generally, I would estimate what the worst case scenario would be for fuel usage, double it, and then grab an extra couple of bottles of fuel to be safe.  I never ran out of fuel.  In fact, I often came back with enough to do an entire follow on trip.   (A bit of an aside here, at the end of the year, we had to get rid of all the fuel that remained in the stoves or in the expedition fuel bottles.  I don't know exactly what the approved method was - my method, which I greatly enjoyed - was to build an enormous bonfire and pour the fuel onto it.  I think the hair on my hands and my eyebrows have finally recovered from the constant singing!)

Then you had to get the incidentals, like a shovel for burying your poop, something called polar pure that we used to treat the water.  This was an interesting product.  You can use Iodine to treat water so it is safe to drink.  Polar pure was a product that contained pellets of iodine under a net.

You could put water directly from a stream into the bottle and then it would form a solution that you could use to treat water.  It was really quite ingenious, the bottle weighed a few ounces and you could treat many many gallons.  The other option is to pump water through a filter, which works OK if there is just one person, but would take forever with a group.  Granted, you knew it was working because the water had a lovely brown tinge and iodine bouquet, but it beats getting sick.  You are supposed to fill the bottle up and then there is a scale on the side with a film that changes color.  The color is supposed to indicate how many capfuls of solution you should use to treat a quart of water.  Our bottles were quite old though, they still contained plenty of iodine, but the scale was impossible to read.  Once again, my motto was to over compensate.  It seemed to work.  

I became a polar pure convert.  It was much more efficient than straight pills, and I've always ended up clogging filters, even on my own.  For fun, you could drink a bit of the stuff straight, though from a medical and sanity standpoint I don't recommend this.

All of this took quite a bit of time, particularly when you were new.  It was not at all uncommon to stay up until 2-3 am getting ready.  It made for a long first day, when you started at 5.  But, there is plenty of time to catch up on sleep during the week and get ready to do it all over again.  

The Voyageur and I have very different recalls on this - or perhaps we did things quite differently.  It's a peculiar quirk of my character that as much as I broke rules of camp often concerning fermented hops and amorous adventures with the ladies, I actually was quite rule and regulation bound  otherwise - at least during my first few years.

Part of what we had to do with our trek groups was medical check, swim check, and pack check.  

We usually met in a gazebo for first aid check.  The guide, nowhere near qualified as a doctor, would look over the first aid forms of all participants and ask questions.  Somehow we were supposed to suss out some debilitating issue that would prevent a week of canoeing that the participant themselves were unaware of.   "Oh, it says here you suffer from a severe fresh-water allergy?  Do you think that will be a problem canoeing?"  I can't recall a time when I learned anything useful during medical check except to affirm that everyone had a health form signed by a doctor.  After medical check was swim check.

Now my first year I walked the groups down to the Bucksin waterfront and did a full swim check at a regulation waterfront, Boy Scout style (remember I actually followed regulations?).  I quickly wised up.  100 yards from the gazebo was the Zip-Line pond.  We would wander down there, I would have the group fly down the zip line into that god awful freezing water.  If they struggled swimming out, I would mark them as someone to watch whenever we went swimming on trek or if they fell in canoeing; if they were fine, they were fine; and if they refused to go in, then I wouldn't allow them to swim on a hiking trek and they weren't allowed on a canoe trek.  

Finally was pack check.  Voyageur recalls this as a time to make sure everyone had what they needed.  He skipped this eventually, because there was no way to get something left at home a four hour car ride away and he would end up carrying spare everything anyway.  I used pack check as a way to take the crap out of their packs they didn't need.  Ten t-shirts for a 5-day 4-night trek?  Gone.  A hatchet?  Gone.  I had troops argue that they might need to cut wood crossing their path while canoeing.  Step out and carry it over.  Or they might need it to make a fire.  Nope, any wood that can't be snapped is too big in my book.  Nintendo Game Boy?  Gone.  Deoderant?  Don't need it, gone.  It attracts bears, your girlfriend won't be with you, etc.  

What you have to understand is a lot of 12 year old boys are still packed for by their mothers who only think of comfort and not of the carry part.  They don't realize that in addition to what was packed at home, the following would be added: full water bottles, share of food, share of cook gear, share of fuel, half a tent, etc.  So I whittled down.  

Finally it was time for dinner.  We used to march down to the dining hall and eat the food they were serving.  This was tedious because though the food was ok (on a sliding scale) there were tons of announcements for new troops arriving that week that didn't concern us.  So we started having barbecues at Summit on Sun. nights and these became major affairs and attracted all adult volunteers and any staff member that could sneak away from the dining hall.  Our food kicked ass.  After that it was off to bed.  Originally we had trek groups stay in two sites at Summit (names?  I'm drawing a blank!  They were named after geographical landmarks in the 'Daks; I want to say Saranac and Colden, but I'm not sure).  This was a waste as it took a loooooong time to set up the platforms and canvas tents at the beginning of Summer and they were only used Sun. night and Fri. night.  So instead we sent troops up to the sites with their backpacking tents and they learned on the fly how to set them up.  In stormy times they slept in TAC.  Not sure what they do now that it's burned down.  

And then any reasonable person would go to bed and get some sleep.  I would go party or hang out.  Lots of fun things to do at a scout reservation.  Go for a midnight stroll or swim, hike up Mt. Stevens, pull a prank, drink beer, play darts, hit the bar, hit the climbing wall, play chess, carry a canoe somewhere pointless  - often it was a combination of all of these.  We would get back to our cabins between 12-2 am, wake up at 5, pack (which was quick as there was very little unpacking from the previous week) meet our trek group at 6, quick breakfast and off we go.  That's when the real work and fun began....

The Speed Trap

The main drag that runs through camp is a dirt road.  It is actually in pretty good shape, but it is still a dirt road.  There is a lot of engineering that goes into designing roads, you want to make sure that the road drains correctly and that there is adequate line of sight so that you see oncoming traffic in plenty of time.

The camp road did not adhere to these standards, it really couldn't.  Consequently, there were lots of blind turns, the conditions could change rapidly depending on whether it had rained, etc.  When it came to traffic rules, there were really only two.  1.  No riding in the back of a pick-up truck; 2. The camp speed limit was 10 mph.  Amazingly, almost everyone followed rule #1, it was strictly enforced and for the most part followed.  Not by these people, but otherwise, typically followed.  The speed limit was not followed by anyone except John C.  Different people disobeyed it to different extents, but no-one regularly drove at 10 mph.  I think the idea was if you set it at 10, you would hope people would mainly do 20-25 mph.  Which, for the most part was safe.

One of the unique features of driving at camp was you were always on the look out for someone coming the opposite way to put an arm out the window.  This was the universal sign for a road side chat.  Road side chats were one of my favorite parts of camp, because you had no idea whether it would be a quick 30 second talk, or a full blown 20 minute conversation.  The procedure was always the same.  Both vehicles would come to a stop, window to window.  If it was to be a quick chat, you would simply stay in the vehicle, but the extended chats involved everyone getting out of their respective vehicle and gathering around the bed of a pick-up truck.  The bed of a pickup truck is the perfect height to lean against with your elbows at about chin height and shoot the breeze.  The other unwritten rule was that the vehicles were left with the ignition on.  I think this was due to never knowing how long the convo was going to be, so it made little sense to take the fraction of a second to turn off the ignition.  This is where the true business of camp was done, under the sun, surrounded by the mountains, around the bed of an ancient pick-up truck.  You would think that with two trucks blocking traffic in either direction it would be a problem, but more often than not, other vehicles would simply stop and join in on the conversation.  Because you may encounter a couple vehicles in the road at anytime, it was another reason to take her easy on the camp roads.

I can't remember which summer it was, but on one weekend, M.L. and I decided to set up an informal speed trap.  We were missing a few key elements: (1) Any authority to do this; (2) Any equipment to measure the speed of oncoming vehicles; (3) Any way to indicate to other drivers that we were cops for the day.  We also chose an odd vehicle for our pursuit vehicle.  It was a 1984 dump truck, 4 speed manual transmission, not exactly a speed demon.  For some reason, I loved that old truck.  There was one summer where I didn't take out many trips and mainly helped out with maintenance around camp.  I think I was informally assigned that vehicle as my own - I have to guess that is why M.L. and I were using it.  Generally, the camp road went past the Ranger house, up a hill, past Camp Waubeeka proper, then past Lake Waubeeka, past the old wood dump and Old Farmhouse, to Camp Buckskin, Past Central Office and then to Summit Base.  As I write this, I realize Central Office really wasn't very central at all.  But, for whatever reason, that was the name given to it.  Near Lake Waubeeka, there was a little pull off that was kind of hidden.  I am not sure what the real purpose of this was, but M.L. and I decided it would be perfect for our speed trap.  The thing is, we did this on our day off, a Saturday.  There is never much traffic on the camp road, but particularly on a Saturday after all the scouts have left there is even less.  So, we spent most of the time talking.  Every so often a vehicle would come by, we would decide it was speeding or perhaps was not up to some other code and would do our best to pursue it.  The problem was, the old dumper was pretty slow.  It topped out at about 5 mph in 1st and you had to get into 3rd before you were even at 30 mph.  Still we thought it was great fun.  We would come tearing out of the hiding space (in reality, we would leave it as a brisk walk pace) and get behind whomever was driving and flash the lights and honk the horn.  Every so often they would pull over and generally would play along with the game.

Looking back, it was stupid, but it was lots of fun at the time.

90 Miler Pics

Turns out my brother from another mother is quite the photog.  Here are some pics from the 90 miler.

Very Crowded Start.  Note the fancy wheels in the canoe in the foreground

Getting the Oar locked in

Maneuvering to the Starting Line

Still Waiting for the start

You can see the very pretty cedar guideboats here.  Again, note the wheels for faster carries

Add caption

I think this is the finish - off in the distance

Passing the buoy that marks the end of 90 miles

Letting the boat glide

35-30-25 (Day 3)

The Load and I plan to do a series where we talk about the various treks that we typically went on along with the highs and lows of each one. When it comes to the Saranac trek, I think we will almost certainly have only positive things to say about it.

Day 3 started in the Saranacs. Day 3 was to be the shortest day, with only 3 carries, and two of them very short. However, we knew something was a bit different when the race organizers told us that we had to wear our life jackets for this leg of the course. Up until today, it was only necessary that the life jacket be in the boat. It didn't make sense at the time because it seemed very calm at the start. Nevertheless, we followed the rule. To an extent. One of the fastest guideboats, that had led consistently since day 1, came up with a unique solution. He simply tied the life jacket around his waist. I think he was concerned that if he wore the life jacket it could interfere with the rowing. When you are going as fast as he was, I think it was a legitimate concern.

Jim and I were in good spirits because we had moved up 2-3 spots in the rankings. I think it was a combination of a very slow first day and a better than average 2nd day. We had found our rhythm at this point and it was like we were back in college again. The start was uneventful, we separated into our respective groups. But, after 30 minutes or so of paddling, we left the sheltered confines of fish creek pond and entered Upper Saranac Lake. This was a big lake, and we now saw why the life jackets were required. The wind was shipping pretty good, there were whitecaps with 2-3 foot waves. Fortunately, we were heading straight into them, which is a lot safer than having them come across the bow. Personally, this was my favorite part, I would routinely get a good soaking as the bow would come crashing down off one wave and encounter another. A number of boats capsized or swamped here. When you build a boat for speed you sacrifice stability. Some of the really fast boats simply couldn't handle the waves. It was heartwarming to see teams that were obviously racing, take time to help the capsized boats. Even though it was a race, people never forgot that we were all out to have a great time.

For whatever reason, Jim and I seemed exceptionally good at rough water paddling. We probably had about 5-6 miles to do along Upper Saranac Lake. At the end there is a carry to Middle Saranac Lake. Unbelieveably, we actually reached the carry a few yards ahead of the leaders. Our guideboat was the only one not made of wood, it may have been a bit heavier than the other crafts. I tend to think that this additional weight was an advantage in the rough water and made the boat more stable and better able to handle the high waves. This was definitely the roughest water I had taken her out in. A couple of times I would travel from the Chicago River, through the locks to Lake Michigan, but only if it was calm. Mainly I had stuck to smaller bodies of water.

We were feeling pretty good reaching the carry first, but our lead did not last for long. The usual leaders simply picked their boat up, put one end on each shoulder and took off at a jog, while we took off at a fast walk. I lost sight of them about 1/2 way through the carry. Midway through the carry, there is a relatively steep hill. Although I didn't know it at the time, there is a guy who comes out every year to play bagpipes to motivate people along. It worked. Perhaps it was because it was so unexpected, or perhaps it is because bagpipes are inherently awesome, but I felt like I glided up the hill. This was to be the last carry of any real distance, the next couple were about 100 yards each.

We continued on through the rest of the Saranacs, Middle Saranac and Lower Saranac. At this point, the wind had died down but it was still very gray with bouts of rain and occasional winds. The Saranacs have a number of islands that dot the various lakes, which makes for extremely beautiful scenery. Although Jim and I were still pushing hard, we admired the scenery a bit more than we had in the past.

There are two small locks that you have to go through to get from Middle Saranac to Lower Saranac Lake. These locks are a lot of fun, because you get to operate the smaller one yourself. But, since this was a race, we had to carry around the locks. The first one was easy, it was probably 50 yards or so. The second one was a bit trickier because even though it was only 200 yards, you went up and down a steep hill. I was at the front of the boat and Jim was at the rear. I noticed he was struggling going up the hill, but he didn't complain or ask to stop. Once we started going down I realized why. There were several gallons of water in the boat. Going up the hill, it had all sloshed down to Jim so he was carrying an extra 40 pounds or so. I immediately noticed it on the way down, and realized how much more difficult it was. But, I was going downhill, it had to be particularly difficult on the way up.

From that point on, it was smooth sailing to the finish. The finish line is at the end of Lake Flower in the village of Saranac Lake. It is an exceptionally pretty town, so it made the finish even more special. Also, as you reached the finish, the race organizers would call out your name and everyone would cheer so enthusiastically that you thought you had won! There was an after race picnic and a few other events, but it was still cold, raw and windy, so we didn't stick around for too long.

All in all, it was a great experience. There are trophys given out at the end, but even more impressive they hand out pins for number of 90 milers that you have participated in. Jim and I were in the 1st group, towards the end, they handed out pins for 25 90 milers. I can see why people come back year after year, and I would Love to do it again. Particularly, I would like to enter the father daughter division!