35-30-25 (Day 2)

I was very familiar with the course we were to travel day 2.  In fact, over the course of that day, I was to cover the same distance as I had done in 5 days in A Not So Brady Sequel.  Even if my oars had been replaced with tooth picks, I am confident that this would have been a better trip then the adventure with Brady.

This was a perfect day.  It was bright and sunny as we started and Long Lake is one of my favorite lakes in the Adirondacks.  Per its name, it is about 22 miles long.  Although there are some houses, most of it is designated as wilderness so there is a lot of shoreline with forests. The lake is also plenty wide enough that there is ample room to pass other slower boats.    This was one of those perfect days where the lake stayed almost glass smooth the entire morning.  So it was fast travelling. 

I don't know if this is from the year we did it, but coincidentally, you can see a guideboat in the foreground of the picture in the bottom left corner.  The boats are travelling away from the photographer, so even though the guideboat is in the foreground, it is actually behind all the other boats in the picture!

Jim and I had learned our lesson from the day before, so we made sure that we took a couple of minutes on every hour to munch on some trail mix and stay hydrated.  We reached the end of Long Lake and then transitioned to the Raquette river.  There had been a bit of a drought that year, so the river was a bit lower than usual.  We were travelling with the current, which is always nice.  It is a pretty gentle current, but it is nice to take a small break and notice that you are still making forward progress.  Unlike Brown's tract, the raquette never got so narrow as to make it uncomfortable.  The biggest obstacle today was the carry.  There was only 1, but it was 1.5 miles and particularly the beginning involved a fairly steep climb.  So steep, that there was a rule that you were not permitted to run during this part.  It was only for a race like this that you would need to have a rule like this.  In all my other times doing this carry, it was just a push to get people up the damn hill!

The payoff for this carry is that the end of it is very pretty.  The carry is around a set of waterfalls and the end of the carry goes no further than necessary to avoid these falls.  Usually, we would have lunch here and swim in the rapids.  Today, we had to push on.

Not the best picture, but this is the put in at the end of the carry.  It is usually very crowded, even on non-race days.  

This last part of the river I always think is shorter than it is.  I knew we were on a lookout for a parking lot called "The Crusher".  I never knew why they called it that.  It was a small unassuming lot.  My buddy thought it might have been because it was not paved, but rather had crushed rock.  I don't know. So we would pass bend after bend, but no crusher.  We were involved in a bit of a race against a fellow guideboat.  We had not been in contention with them the day before because of the big slow down.  Each time we would pull within passing distance, they would pour on the coles and surge ahead.  But, you could tell it was getting to them.  Finally, we made a big effort and pushed hard, and we were buy them.  At first it looked like they would challenge us again, but we put some distance between us.  The beauty of the guideboat was that Jim could see what was ahead, and I could see what was behind.  Perhaps it added a bit of motivation to my rowing to see the distance increasing.

Finally, we made it to the crusher.  Once again, it was all class.  They had volunteers in the hip deep water who would help you out of your boat and guide you to shore while your boat was whisked away by some other volunteers.  Unlike the day before, there was a relatively small area, so it was necessary to move quickly to avoid congestion.  Day 2 was far better than Day 3. I was tired, but not exhausted.  I looked forward to day 3.  See you tomorrow!