We are at the halfway point!

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The Plan

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Our intrepid plan starts by meeting in NYC at JFK on the night of May 24th. We will drive to Taylor’s parents’ house, where we will catch a few hours of sleep before the real adventure begins. The next morning, Taylor’s parents will drive us a few hours to the starting point, at the Upper Works Trailhead in the Adirondack Mountains. From there we carry our gear in dry bags and our packrafts 2600 feet and 8.7 miles up the trail to Lake Tear of the Clouds, the beginning of the Hudson River and just 1000 feet below the summit of Mount Marcy, the highest point in New York. From there we have under 2.5 days to make it 28 miles downstream, sometimes walking sometimes navigating - depending on the water level - the small stream as it forms a more pronounced river. On the morning of May 28, we will meet a local guide with a whitewater raft to help us get from the confluence of the Hudson and Indian rivers through the Hudson Gorge and down the class 3 whitewater to where we will meet Taylor’s p...
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The Gear

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What gear will we need to make it 315 miles from New York’s highest peaks to its largest city and the Atlantic Ocean?  We will start out with two, one person pack rafts. Weighing under 6 lbs and packing down to the size of a paper towel roll, we can easily hike to the start of our journey with these vessels, and carry them as needed during the beginning section when the waterway will oftentimes be too small to paddle. After a couple days we will come to the Hudson Gorge, a stretch of active class 3 whitewater. Here, we will turn in the smaller and less durable packrafts for larger whitewater rafts for the day. On the other side of the rapids we will abandon rafting altogether and use a two person, Kevlar canoe for the remaining miles of more calm river. Throughout the trip we will carry our gear in 65 liter dry bag backpacks, which will allow us to keep everything dry and easily portable for the sections we must portage. We will camp on the riverbank in simple tents and sleep...
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Two men, a canoe and a dream. Lots of dreams.

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Why are we paddling the Hudson? Well...Why not? Because the Hudson Valley is beautiful. Because we want to see if we can actually do it. Because we often hike and this time we want to seek a different physical challenge. Because we want to experience the thrill and trepidation of approaching NYC via water and being engulfed by its overwhelming size and skyline, and by the immensity of the ocean. Because we have two weeks off work and we want to do something unordinary.  Who are we?  Good question. Maybe we'll go to our graves without ever fully knowing the answer. But we know this: sometimes we like to go completely crazy. Bukowski said that people that never go crazy must lead a horrible life! When we get together and decide to take on a challenge, we definitely go a little insane; we push ourselves to the very edge of our physical limits (at times mental too!); we challenge our body and ourselves to hike an extra mile or two or twenty, to paddle a little farther, to bik...
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