PacketFiend wrote:
Bad weather can really slow you down, too, and that factor really snowballs after days on end, so please factor that in.
save a couple of good, sunny days for layovers to repair, dry and clean your gear, wash your clothes, and to bathe properly.
Paddle Power wrote:
Pacing. Do you usually plan for weather bound days, layover days, short/half days? You may want to consider a bit of down time from paddling to allow for rest and recovery as well as for extra stuff such as cloth washing.
Agree absolutely about the wisdom of building in some layover days. The frequency and quantity is personal style conditional. Unless I am on a shorter trip near to home with a reliable weather forecast I build in one layover day for every four or five day’s duration. That’s a lot, but I have a lot of uses for them, and I don’t mind hanging in camp and dawdling.
If I have “unspent” layover days near the end of a trip I can linger at some idyllic site another day, or move on more slowly; later start, earlier camp, making fewer miles between. Or at least do some exploring on the got-time drive home, maybe truck camp and day paddle somewhere different to help ease my reentry.
Layover days can help prevent me from making risky decisions, paddling in high winds on open water. Or when I am hurting, fatigued or simply not feeling on top my game; a condition where I am more likely to screw up on land, in camp, or portaging than while in the canoe.
Or laying over to prevent me from packing up wet gear in the morning, paddling all day in the rain and setting up a wet camp at the end of the day. Especially when the next morning dawns bright and sunny and I coulda laid over dry and comfy, read a book under the tarp, putzed around with camp and gear, taken more photos and written some trip notes.
Ah, there’s one we missed. I do not know if Henda maintains a journal or keeps trip notes. I have every trip journal since 1976 and wish I had started earlier. Those are most helpful in writing a trip report afterwards (I don’t remember the little nuance of stuff from day 6) and are fun to look through years later. For me sitting quietly, pondering, thinking and writing is part of the enjoyment of being in camp.
Or sketching. Although my artistic abilities are barely beyond the stick figure level I have a few sketches that, while crude, are more meaningful than anything I wrote. Including a 1970’s “selfie”. Very “selfie”, a self-deprecating ballpoint self-portrait, with lines and arrows and descriptions of everything that is wrong with me and my shown-festooned gear at the time. I remember there was an arrowed notation “Far away look even close up” and some NSFW stuff. Probably inspired by Davidson and Rugge.
That trip notebook also contains all paper necessities, held flat and organized in the same place. Tide charts or permit if needed. A one page meteor shower/astronomical event date/time/direction list.
A blank grid for recording the forecast if I could pick up a weather radio station (or even AM); temp, chance precip, cloud cover, wind speed/directions, with fill-in-the-blank grids for a couple days out. Looking back at the original “forecast” for 3 or 4 days out compared to what conditions actually transpired over that period becomes weather pattern educational, or at least cautionary.
And lastly, a calendar, or at least a few calendar pages, so I don’t lose track of time. Not that I myself have ever lost track of what day it was while on a trip. Hell, I was rarely off by more than two days. But the calendar has notations of important-to-me dates. Oh look, it’s (aptly dated) December 5th, I believe I will celebrate.
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/night- ... tion-1933/Alliteratively, precious paperwork and printed pages to the point that I make a new “field desk” annually to hold it, updated all. I write and make field notes often enough that it’s worth going big and stiff, so I’m not scribbling indecipherably notes in a teenyfloppy 3x5 notebook.
I know it is thick and heavy, and worth every ounce to me. YMMV.
http://www.canoetripping.net/forums/for ... field-desk