{WADE!}{BOAT!}{WADE!}{BOAT!}Re: [at-l] Kennebec

[Sloetoe <sloetoe@yahoo.com>]

This was a great little postie, btw, although wayyyyy too short!
But then, you've got a whole book I need to read, don't you. OK, you win!
But in the meantime, one of the topics which this list has NOT beaten to
death is how to cross the Kennebec. Your opinion (BOAT!) is plain, and I
think many agree. 
I disagree, but very weakly. I was canoed across in 1979, but the dang
aluminuminuminum twanged on rocks THE WHOLE way across. I felt like a fool.
I'd been rafting, wwcanoeing, and wading streams in search of fish/fishing
holes for years, and in all kinds of "treacherous" conditions (which are
familiar to any wading fisherman), including Connecticut's Housatonic -- very
similar in size and behavior to the Kennebec. But I was already a bit
paranoid about doing anything to "endanger" my hike, and had eaten 52
pancakes at the Carry(?) Camp that morning, and had radio-phoned for the
canoe w/o knowing the exact crossing..... so I rode. Like my skipping of the
approach trail to Springer, I was haunted by it.

For the 2000 throughhike that didn't happen, I was planning on shipping
blow-up life rings to Caratunk(?), and floating the family across a'la Colin
Fletcher.

Chaulk me up for {WADE!}
Sloetoe deFloat


--- david horton <runhorton@juno.com> wrote:
> 
> I have some vivid memories of crossing the Kennebec in 1991.   I had been
> chasing the Maineak in an attempt to break the speed record on the A.T.  
> I heard he had waded across.   If he waded I was going to wade.   and so
> I started across a little upstream from where the trail comes down to the
> River.
> 
> I carried a stick and started across.  At first I thought why do they
> make such a big deal out of this.  But the further I went the deeper it
> got and the swifter it got.  3 fourths the way across  i thought that
> this was a stupid idea and I wished i had taken the canoe.  However, I
> was comitted and could not turn back and made it safely across.  I forgot
> to mention the rocks were also very slippery as well.
> 
> Come to find out Maineak had taken the Canoe???   Then the next morning
> he swam back across and then swam back again.
> 
> It was not a good idea to wade across
> 
> 
> In Christ
> David Horton
> The Runner

=====
"A man who is not a liberal in his youth has no heart.
     And  a man who is not a conservative in his maturity
   has no brain."         W.Churchill


Call me 'middle-aged.'    T.McGinnis

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