Date: 2022-08-18
From: Cooper Brook Lean To

To: Nahmakanta Lake
Miles today: 21.0
Weather: clear sky

¢A young man will always underestimate danger. A father will always overestimate it¢ -me, circa oftenI¢m writing this entry a week late: Wednesday, August 24 after dinner. We are camped in Vermont about a half-mile north of Barnard Brook. The rain at Cooper Brook Shelter began to ease as the sun rose. It had rained for 14 hours or more. We all stayed mostly dry but the tents, ground-cloths, rain gear, and yesterday¢s wet clothes were all now thoroughly wet. Grayson had to put wet shorts and briefs back in to start the day. Cooper Cteek was raging. Like a Best Buy crowd trying to get in the store on Black Friday, the water in the brook could not get downhill fast enough. It was mayhem. I knew that it was not unique among the brooks in the 100-mile. The wide valley we had seen from Whitecap was filled with brooks, ponds, and lakes and we had several creek fords in front of us. Any one of them, if too swollen, would stop us for the day. We would be forced to camp and wait in the water to find the lake. We were scheduled to meet Buddy for a second food drop at Jo Mary Road at 9:30. We were 4 trail miles from the road. We left camp a bit before 8:00. The going was slow. Morale was low and the trail was wet. Slick rocks held our attention. Several small rivulets now required each of us to stop and strategize our rock hop. Our feet were wet though the socks within three first mile. Buddy was at Jo Mary when we arrived at 9:35. He had a big Tupperware bin of food in the backseat. ¢You lift that out of there. I gave myself a hernia this morning getting it in there!¢We divvied up the food into bags while the rain threatened to douse us again. Joni had called Shawn¢s and had a water bottle holder for Grayson¢s pack strap added to the packout. We all got moving again close to 10:00.The water crossings were so frequent we all gave up trying to keep our feet dry. Antlers lunch? P-shelter dinner?The first of 2 dicey river crossings came after lunch. The brook, probably benign in normal times, had now become a two-pronged crossing with some deep and fast-moving water. Flowing water is a stunningly powerful force. Even if I could navigate the ford in thigh-deep water, no other member of our crew would be able to do it. Thankfully, Jasper seems to have an appreciation for the danger and was able to scout dozens of yards up- and down stream until he discovered a submerged rock hop. All the stepping stones were 6-inches or more beneath the water but made a way for all of us to navigate the freshet. The second ford, however, was a different story. I remember seeing it for the first time. We have video of my first reaction to it. I was amazed at what the rain had done to this unnamed stream. It was a torrent, 15 yards across, with submerged boulders downstream of the trail. A very large boulder in midstream, supporting several trees, split the flow into two forks that converged just upstream of the crossing. The blaze on the opposite bank was clearly visible and the path on each side showed where the crossing should be. There was no transition between the dry bank and the angry current; no eddy or shallow bench afforded a test-step. Figuring I should at least try the ¢standard¢ route I unclipped my hip belt (so I could ditch the pack if I fell) and stepped into the torrent with my right foot. It found the bottom about a foot down. I stepped in with my left foot and steadied myself. Another step out with my right foot went a bit deeper. The third step was the deal-breaker. I was quickly in well above my knees. I retreated to the bank.We searched up and down the bank for a solution. We were fairly certain that several of our northbound comrades must have successfully crossed this today. There was nothing to be found. We returned to the trail. We finally gathered the nerve and found the solution at the large boulder. The near bank was separated from the boulder by a fast moving flow about 8-inches deep and 10 feet across. What had, at first, appeared to be a mass of sticks and debris underneath the flow turned out to be live, stable roots of the nearby trees. This flow was out of the banks. On a normal day, the 10 feet between the bank and the boulder would have been dry. I was able to use these roots as a ¢bridge¢ to get from the near bank to the boulder-island. The boulder was separated from the far bank by 20 feet. There water there was the true channel. It was deep, quiet, and fast. A tree trunk, fallen from the far bank and still anchored there by the root ball had it¢s other end in the boulder. This was to be our bridge to the far bank. It was directly in the water, stable, with acceptable grip. We had crossed big bridges for the last 500 miles and often joked about lava or alligators or deep canyons underneath. ¢Could you cross this if there was a 400-foot drop underneath?¢, we would joke. Now we got to find out! I made it across fairly easily with careful steps and by keeping my wits. I dropped my pack on the far bank and retraced my steps back across the stream. I took Joni¢s pack and offers to shoulder Grayson¢s as well but he wanted to keep his. I helped him across and dropped Joni¢s pack to make another trip. Baxter and Joni were next - champs. Jasper came last and never hesitated. All¢s well that ends well, I suppose, but I get a little squirmy watching that video. Joni found a sweet camping spot outside the trail corridor on the banks of Nahmakanta Lake just as we were pulling out headlamps to hike by. We were crossing the 20-mile mark for the first time this trip and needed all the day¢s light to do it. We watched a campfire far across the lake as we set up camp just inside the trees. The loons were having their nightly dialogue as the lakes waves lapped the shore. We crawled onto wet tents but thankfully had dry sleeping bags to keep us cozy.