12 Hours of Much Needed Sleep & Lining Rapids

June 16, 2024

Mile 189.6-197.5

Slept TWELVE hours. It was glorious. Henry woke up around 6 again with his terrible hand pain. I heard him holding his breath as he tried to be quiet and not wake me. I gave him two Aleves and used pain relief balm to massage the nerves in his wrist since I’m pretty positive the pain is carpal tunnel. He lay back down as the pain faded, already falling asleep again saying “you fixed it, you fixed it”. I fell back asleep immediately too and slept until 10 a.m. I have never needed sleep so bad in my life.

When we realized the gas station we wanted to get to was 7 miles instead of 15 like we originally thought- we had a slow morning. Henry made us bacon and egg burritos on the backpacking stove and we drizzled them with hot sauce and devoured them, licking our greasy fingers.

We finished our portage and were on the water by 2:30, our latest start yet. My body is still sore and tired and I really could’ve went back to sleep after breakfast, even after I drank my C4. The upstream wasn’t tough starting out and then we reached our first rapids- a set of class 2s. We had fun taking turns pulling the canoe up them, the sun was out and the water felt good on our hot skin.

Paddled for a short while before reaching our next set of rapids. This time we had to carry the canoe around some sharp, steep rocks then push, pull and line the canoe. We repeated this most of the day and honestly it became demoralizing moving a half mile in an hour.

The last set of rapids had a trail off to the left where we were able to carry almost the whole rapid thankfully. Henry caught a nice bass around sunset and then his fishing rod snapped in half ☹️

After our final rapid we reached the dam and our portage but decided to camp right here instead of trying to make it to the gas station. Our guidebook says you shouldn't drink the water of the Missisquoi due to the number of farms in the area and we'd planned on getting to the gas station so we could buy a few gallons of water. Well... I'm sure we've drank worse on the AZT. We knew even if we started the portage and made it to the gas station before dark we would then be stuck in a village at dark with nowhere to camp. So we found a semi flat spot in some pine trees and set up the tent.

Henry made three cheese mac n cheese with cream cheese and it was soooo creamy and good. A little mouse is visiting our campsite looking for a snack. We're hoping we can portage around a large chunk of river tomorrow.