Day Two
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| Approaching beaver dam |
It had stopped raining by dawn, but was overcast and damp-ish. We shook off the wet tent as much as possible and packed up. A short paddle took us under the bridge into Seventh Lake and to the inlet on the north-west corner of Eighth Lake. Here we started the first long carry, through the Eighth Lake State Campground. It would have been a mile, had we beached were the NFCT map indicated and gone straight north through the state campsite, but by going up the inlet and using a side road we saved about .4 miles (I’ve been using the measuring function in Google Earth to check distances).
The next carry was the longest: 1.25 miles (though it seemed longer). It ends with a long boardwalk through the marsh surrounding the stream and a dock at its terminus. Here we dropped our packs and loaded the boats again.
A word about our method of carries might be in order here. Folks with traditional canoes, when confronted with a portage will carry the canoes first, and make a second trip back for their supplies. Some people use little two-wheeled carts, which are compact enough to carry in a canoe or even stow in or on a kayak. On most – but not all – of our portages, this would have worked fine, as they were fairly smooth-surfaced. Our strategy, with our lightweight boats, was to pack light, and carry everything in one trip. I made yoke for the canoe Randy was using, and used the two halves of my break-apart paddle, lashed between the thwarts to perform the same function. I used my large hiking pack and clipped an old Boy Scout canvas pack to the front with the food and cook gear (sort of like wearing a sandwich-sign. It worked well enough, though if I do it again I will try to trim my pack weight even more.
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| Clearing a sluice in a beaver dam |
Brown’s Tract Inlet, the stream we now entered, winds circuitously a couple of miles to Racquette Lake. We crossed four beaver dams, plus one half begun and apparently abandoned, on our way to the lake. Twice we had to step out of our boats onto the dam and re-enter downstream. On the other dams we could remove a few sticks and create a sluice through which it was possible to run (with a little scraping) the canoes. The waterway was so crooked, that it was long after we could see a church and power lines in the village of Racquette Lake that we reached the big open waters of the lake.
I was afraid we might have difficulty here, as Racquette is a big lake, and notoriously windy, but it was tame compared to our first day’s paddle. This was a long stretch – seven miles to the next stop and carry. Much of the shoreline is privately owned land, so we ate our lunch floating in the boats, shifting around to try and rest our backsides. From the northern outlet, there is a half-mile carry to Forked Lake, and then a 3.5 mile stretch to the Forked Lake State Campsite. This is a nice campground. All the sites, which are roomy and have their own privies, are ranges down the south and eastern shore of the lake and even across its North
Bay, some only accessible by boat from the camp center.
At this point, the weather was fine, and it was still early (6:00 pm?). We pitched our tent to air out, hung our wet gear and went to work on dinner.
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| Forked Lake site #3 |
