Festus and I had a great weekend trip. We met up on Friday afternoon to camp at Jone Pond, up in the Adirondacks...sorting gear and talking about our plans for the next 2 days...
Our plan was to hike 11-12 miles on Saturday with full packs from Saranac Lake to Onchiota, along a retired railroad bed through a mix of swamp and forest...the fact that it was predicted to rain most of the weekend, and that it was (and is) the buggiest Summer the Adirondacks has known in a generation, didn't change our plans, although our preps and packing did change a bit...
I was trying to reach a balance between lightweight and practicality...I rocked a Hennessy Hammock (to provide me some protection from the bugs), along with their tiny sil-tarp to give me minimal weight while still getting enough coverage for 2 nights of rain (including one night of horrific thunder and lightning)...since I was planning to bring long underwear bottoms and a fleece top anyway, I wanted to try and trim weight by skipping a sleeping bag, so I slept in my fleece and wrapped myself in a microfleece blanket...the first night was in the mid-40s, and the second night was in the mid-50s...I tend to sleep warm, and was fine both nights...
We got the cars and boats (more on that later) settled early the next morning, and were on the trail by 8am...it started to drizzle about 40 minutes into the hike, but I was comfy leaving my raincoat on top of my pack, keeping the top dry for the moment...
I bought a GraniteGear Virga, an ultralight backpack, about a year ago, and wanted to try it out on this hike...the pack weighs only 19 ounces, and is rated to carry up to 20 pounds (which I exceeded by a couple of pounds)...the pack adjusted very well to my back and the hike and the weather, and didn't seem to mind the extra weight I loaded into it at all...i consider it a win, and will use it again...
We walked for a couple of hours in the rain, swatting more flies than seemed possible...we saw lots of deer prints, a fisher cat, bear tracks, a beaver slapped water right next to us, and a mink crossed the trail about 10 yards in front of us...we took a couple of minutes at this beaver swamp, took off the packs and ate/drank for a bit of rest...we had just crossed a stream over a bridge we made from a downed tree...using our walking poles for balance/support...
We finished up the hike by a couple of minutes past noon, and made our way to our boats, to begin the second leg of this trip...a paddle from Onchiota up Lake Kushaqua to explore a bit before finding a nice island to camp on for the night...it was still raining the whole time, and cooling off enough that we both wanted to put on our raincoats, more for warmth than to keep dry (that ship had sailed hours ago in the swamp)...
We paddled the length of Kushaqua, a manufactured lake, to the dam at the top, and then back down a bit until we found a nice spot to camp for the night...
The rain broke for long enough to allow us to setup our hammocks, and hide what dry clothes we still had inside the hammocks for later...we didn't think there was much point in changing into dry clothes that would only get wet before we wanted to go to bed...
I cut 2 sections of a Z-lite pad off of a dog-chewed pad, used that to provide some rigidity in the GG-Virga pack, as a seat while in camp, and it worked amazingly well to keep the night-chill off of my back while in the hammock overnight...
Some ducks came by, and begged some gorp off of Festus...
While exploring the little island during the remaining hours of daylight, we found a bunch of coyote poop, but never heard/saw one while we were there...
We stuck with best practice and hung our food using the PCT method, which worked as well as it always does...
Festus used his alky-stove, I used my JetBoil, both worked perfectly... I tried some new Coleman freeze-dried food, enjoying both quite well (bigger than a MH single portion, but not as much as a a double portion)...
By the next morning, we had spent the night being woken up every hour or so by loud/bright thunder/lightning, and our boats had more than inch of water in them...the hammocks (both of them hung with HH tiny tarps) made it through the night essentially dry, although it rained hard enough to splash more than a foot up from the ground...
We paddled for a couple of hours from our spot on Kushaqua down through the Rainbow Lake Narrows, and eventually down into Rainbow Lake...these lakes are all long and narrow fingers, gauged out by the last ice-age, and connected by tiny cuts between them that were pretty tricky to find in a couple of cases...
The rain picked up in earnest by late morning, and we got back into our rain gear for the final push through Rainbow Lake, which is filled with loads of tiny islands, including some that are floating masses of sphagnum moss, some big enough to have trees growing on them, that move back and forth across the lake with the winds...
We pulled out at the bottom of the lake after two days of rain and bugs and living rough in temperatures in the 40s and 50s...I tested my UL pack, a lightweight sleeping system, some new foods, and a new raincoat, along with a bunch of tried and tested gear over a broad range of terrain and activities...we portaged our boats and gear about 150 yards out to the road, and hiked the short distance to the car we left at the bottom of the lake...cold and wet and tired and bitten and dirty and happy!
We hiked about 12 miles and paddled about 8-10 miles, and lived/slept out in rainy/buggy weather for about 48 hours, living out of the packs we carried...
It was a great trip!
Jamie - nfa
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H.Y.O.H.
Short but sweet!
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