My worse had to be up north, in Canada.........in a Canoe.

The weather was COLD, about 45 - 50 degrees, and the water was in the 40's. Late May, Early June....GadgetMan and I had been having a BAD day. Got turned around on a lake, paddled 5 miles out of the way..........

So, we're mad, cold WET, and it is getting dark. We paddle up to Silver Falls. THe second LARGEST waterfall in the park..........Not Niagra or anything, but pretty scary.

NO WAY around it, you have to paddle upstream, and then "cross" where the water spills into the lake. THIS is normally a trickle, but this time, the the water is really RUNNING. AND the other side, is a shear cliff, no WAY to get out, NO WAY to go around.......NOTHING but going through it.........UGLY.

We put the nose of the canoe into the TORRENT, at a 45 degree.......and PADDLED like HELL. As soon as we hit the SERIOUS water, it hit is broadside, and started to fill the canoe.............fortunately, the canoe was a Kevlar tripping canoe and was riding on top of the wave.... On the backside of the wave, we took on some more water. By the time we finished "riding it out".....we were close to crashing into the ROCK wall. THAT would have been horrible.

Gadget and I were both on our knees paddling like hell, in 8 inches of water INSIDE the canoe. How we didn't flip the canoe was a miracle. We managed to make it to the other side of the torrent, where we sat and rested a few minutes before tackling the 160 rod Silver Falls Portage........

Thinking back on this........It was REALLY SCARY.

We were already cold, the water was cold, and it was running down stream. Had we flipped our canoe, and dumped our gear, we would have had a HARD time collecting it.

And if we would have had to get out and build a fire to warm up, we would have had to float 1/4 mile before we would have found somewhere to get out and actually build a fire.

Not only that, but all of our gear would have been floating DOWNRIVER. All of our camping gear, all of our food gear, all of our spare clothes, all of our sleeping bags.....

THIS would have been a disaster, and we seriously could have died.

Here are some links to some pics of silver falls:

http://www.geofisher.com/BWCA_2001_Picpage3.html
http://www.geofisher.com/BWCA_2001_Picpage4.html

Later,

Geo