Icebreaker Canoe Trip in Lake Saranac (22.-24.11.2002)
This trip is a tradition of the McGill Outdoor club and takes place every November, when the lakes around Montreal are already covered by a slim layer of ice.
As it is difficult to find a canoe rental place that is opened this time of the year, we crossed the border to the USA and went to Lake Saranac in the Adirondack National Park. We were first a bit depressed, because it was raining all the time on the way there, but when we arrived, the rain just turned into snow. We set up our tents, and decided first of all to have a small drink to be able to sleep better that night:
When we awoke the next morning, our tents were covered by about 5cm of new snow, and the temperature had dropped strongly.
We then received our canoes, but realized that one of them had to be repaired before we could set of:
During this day we travelled through several lakes, but without actually hitting any ice, except for a very small part:
We searched for a place to stay for the night before it grew dark, and actually managed to set up the tents and start a fire in an incredible speed. This night, the temperature dropped down to below -10 degrees, but most of us didn't have big problems, as we were equipped quite well. This breakfast picture from the next day shows the whole group (except for me, of course):
This day we had several portages to do (sections, where you have to carry the canoes to another lake) and accidently landed in a wrong lake, so that we had to go back for quite a while. Later on we reached a lake where there was a big stripe of ice through which we had to go through. This small, about 10m wide stripe took us about 30 minutes to get through, as the ice was nearly 7cm thick and was very difficult to break.
Because of our delay, we didn't arrive back at our starting point before it was really dark, but with headlamps and by trying to identify structures at the riverside we actually managed to find the spot where our cars were parked.
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