Feeling a bit better and waking up to sun and warm temperatures gave us the cojones to pack up camp and brave the river. We figured if we’re lucky, we’d be able to run it (rigged to flip, obviously) and maybe even get as far as Ledge Rapids Camp; if we were only a little lucky, we’d make a little headway, pull out to portage, and potentially find a campsite with some more sun exposure.
We were decidedly NOT lucky.
We got the boat packed (which was a huge pain in the ass, waist-deep in a stream with a stiff current while simultaneously fighting the backwash from the eddy on the edge of the rapids) and pushed off… except we didn’t. It took everything we had to get into the main river, and we immediately discovered we couldn’t paddle hard enough to get out of the damned eddy. Blocks of ice the size of small sedans cruised past us, caught in the swirl of the backwash. It was all we could do not to get sucked backwards and recycled into the rapids.
Forcing our way to the bank (about fifty yards from where we put in), we hopped out and lined the boat downstream through a waist-deep UPRIVER current for another 200 yards until we hit a swampy stream outlet that we could pull into. We admitted defeat for the day, and almost immediately it began to rain because WHY FUCKING NOT.
After slogging around in a charming mix of thigh-deep snow over downed trees and swamp water for about an hour trying to find a straightforward portage/campsite/literally any appealing option whatsoever, we gave up and ended up pitching the tent on the only dry ground we could find within feasible walking distance. “Dry ground” is a relative term, since it was actually a snowbank on top of a downed tree in the middle of a swamp, which meant we both had a moat and were about a foot and a half of river rise away from getting flooded out.
“Exhausted” doesn’t even begin to describe it. I still feel like lukewarm dog poop. Steve’s back has started bothering him, and it’s bad enough that he’s actively pretending to be fine. We were so tired we didn’t even cook dinner; we just ate fistfuls of gummies from our sleeping bags.
That said, we’re still doing surprisingly okay. Our gear is dry. We have plenty of food and fuel. We have clean water and the ability to filter more. This sucks a whole bag of fake-cherry-flavored gummy dicks, but we’re still nowhere near dire straights or dangerous conditions.
At some point Maine needs to make up its mind if it wants us gone or to stay here forever. We can’t leave while it’s super shitty, so if this place hates us so much it needs to cut us a little bit of a break so we can GTFO safely because otherwise we’re not moving.