Gossamer synthetic fabrics and compression stuff sacks have made it possible to reduce the packed size of sleeping bags to an absolute minimum. This makes sense when you’re living out of a rucksack, and it’s one reason why I bought a new sleeping bag not long ago. I wanted a bag that would slip into my getaway pack or my Axiom Champlain panniers and still leave enough room for all the rest of my gear, including a Big Agnes Insulated Air Core sleeping pad. As this shot of a pannier shows, my new down-filled Kelty Coromell 25 fits the bill admirably:

Rated to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s the significance of the 25 in the name, I suppose), the Coromell is plenty light—less than 3 pounds total. Better yet, it scrunches down into a 7-inch by 14-inch package:

That’s a one-pint thermos in the photo, by the way, and the billy in the plastic bag to the right of the Coromell is a diminutive Mini-Trangia cooker. A GSI Personal Java Press completes the picture.

So… The Coromell packs a lot of comfort into a small space. I wouldn’t be doing it any favors if I kept it trussed up in the tight confines of its stuff sack between trips, however. Down is wonderfully compressible, but the tiny plumules are fragile things. Which is why I remove my sleeping bag from the stuff sack as soon as I get back from a trip, air it on the line (weather permitting), and then transfer it to a large, breathable storage bag. If the bag is badly soiled, I wash it first, of course. But be warned: Down bags aren’t easy to clean. Folks who like to snack in the sack should consider this—and remember that bears, who have a nose for any free lunch going, like to eat in bed, too. They don’t much care whose bed it is, either. And they have terrible table manners.

You say that your bag didn’t come with a handy storage sack? No problem. A large cotton pillowcase works just fine. The price is right, too.

The bottom line? Whenever your sleeping bag doesn’t have to be in your pack, give it some breathing room. After all, none of us likes to be cooped up unnecessarily, do we?

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We drew the Tripper ashore well upstream of the weir, carried around it, and then walked back to see what we could see. To be honest, I was disappointed. The four‑foot‑high dam didn’t look like much, and the meltwater‑swollen stream flowed over it smoothly, descending in a graceful arc. I was sure we wouldn’t have hung up on the lip if we’d continued downriver. And I certainly didn’t understand why Farwell had insisted on our portaging around it.

I was about to say so when he picked up a tree limb left behind by the spring floods and flung it wordlessly into the stream, just above the dam. The limb — as big around as my arm, and longer than I was tall — was swept away by the spirited current. It reached the weir in no time, plunged unhesitatingly over the drop, and then… I lost sight of it. A frothy apron extended some eight or 10 feet below the little dam. The swirling water didn’t look as if it could swallow up a whole tree limb without a trace. In fact, it seemed no more dangerous than the head on a glass of beer. But where had that tree limb gone? I couldn’t see it anywhere. Seconds passed. Nothing. How could I have missed its passage through the foam? Yet what other explanation was there? So I looked downstream. Still nothing.

Then Farwell nudged my shoulder. He pointed upriver, and I turned my face back toward the swirling water. There was the limb. It lay parallel to the face of the weir, caught in an almost imperceptible crease where the froth met the plunging torrent. It wasn’t going anywhere. But it wasn’t exactly dead in the water. On the contrary, the limb spun round and round, like a chair leg being shaped in a lathe. I watched it for several minutes. Every so often, some imperceptible alteration in the balance of forces would pull it under. There it would remain, sometimes for many seconds, only to pop up again and resume its restless spinning.

Now I imagined our canoe alongside it, spinning endlessly. And where were we in that picture? In the cold, meltwater‑fed stream, that’s where, alternately pulled down below the surface and pushed up, breathing only when the river loosened its grip on our bodies. Suddenly, I started shivering, and it wasn’t because there was a chill in the spring air.

Experienced boaters will be surprised at my naïveté, I know. But this was early in my canoeing career, and I’d never before taken a close look at the phenomenon whose name I was about to learn: keeper. Seldom was a name better chosen, since a keeper by name is a keeper by nature… Read more…

Contributing Photographer Tony Jancek recently shot a few pictures of the weir in relatively high water. Here are three of his photos, which can be enlarged by right-clicking inside their borders.

When seen from upriver the weir doesn’t look like much. If you weren’t paying attention, you might miss it altogether:

Until you went over it, that is. Thirty years have left their mark, but the weir is still an impressive sight:

Look carefully and you can see the concrete beneath the water:

Thanks, Tony, for bringing the story of the weir up to date. The passing of the decades has done nothing to lessen its ability to ruin a paddler’s day.

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Not long after I acquired my first kayak, I found myself on a fast‑moving little river in the eastern Adirondacks. It promised to be a straightforward run, and it was — at first. But halfway between put‑in and take‑out the river ran out of water. It was a little river, after all. And this happened at the worst possible spot, just as I was negotiating a sharp bend. The current was pushing me toward the cutbank on the outside of the bend, where a tangle of sweepers waited to enfold me in an unwelcome embrace. So I decided to “hop the ferry” out of trouble, pointing the bow of my kayak toward the very sweepers I wanted to avoid and backpaddling furiously. It worked, too. That is, it worked right up until the moment when my paddle stopped moving water around and started shifting rocks. My back ferry had taken me over a gravel bar in mid‑channel. I now had just enough water under my keel to float my boat, but not enough to allow me to control it. I didn’t need a crystal ball to predict what lay ahead. I knew I’d soon be headed back toward the sweepers.

Luckily, after a few seconds of feverish indecision, I had the presence of mind to make a quick — if somewhat clumsy — exit from my kayak’s cockpit. In no more time than it takes to write about it, I was standing in less than a foot of water, picking my way cautiously down toward the end of the gravel bar, one hand on my paddle‑cum‑wading‑staff, the other on my boat’s stern painter. All was right with the world once more.

Looking back, I can’t understand why I hesitated even a few seconds before abandoning ship. After all, I’d waded my canoe over washed‑out beaver dams and sandbars many times before. Not to mention all the days I’d spent wading trout waters, fly rod in hand. But for some reason I didn’t connect wading and kayaks. The combination seemed unnatural. It doesn’t seem that way today, however. Wading may lack the fluid thrills of river‑running under paddle, but working watermen have waded their boats around obstacles and over bony shallows for centuries. And the technique hasn’t outlived it usefulness. In fact, it’s worth considering the very next time a river runs out of water under you.

First things first, though, beginning with the obvious question: What’s the right time to abandon ship?… Read more…

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