RE: Is there a prize for fastest portage time?? I thought this was a vacation...

Being tall, I take long strides. It's more comfortable. And sometimes, toward the end of a loonnnnng travel day, when I'm feeling the pack weight and can't wait to get to a camp to set up and settle down, I get into a zone where my pace quickens even faster.

A few years back, about halfway across one of the Twin Agonies, I was in such a zone, when traveling companion "Smashdancer" up ahead heard me coming up behind him. So he started walking faster. And so I did ... and then he did ... and then I did. Pretty soon, we were practically sprinting despite our weariness, trying to beat the other.  

We kept it up until the end. With the rocks and the mud and the heavy packs, it was probably one of the stupidest things we've ever done. But we ended the portage laughing our fool heads off, and we couldn't stop laughing on the whole trip back for the canoes. The others deemed us idiots.

So, should a "fastest portage time" list exist, I submit that time for inclusion. It should make the top 50 or so.

(But then we also have one of the slowest, fighting the waist-deep bogs and deadfalls on the Sauvage and Bon Homme portages in the north.)

-- kypaddler