Ritzhikes

Where: Lake Lila, Adirondacks When: 7/26-7/28, 1997 With: Bill, Tom Bill just bought a canoe of his own and we were all in need of some Ritz Brother camping, so we started to make arrangements. We settled on a date and Bill came up with some ideas for destinations. I suggested we try communal dinners for a change. Tom agreed to come along. To get an early start, I packed up the car the night before with my gear and my kayak and left it out in the driveway. Saturday morning at 5:15, I slipped out the back door and headed to Delmar, arriving around 7:45. Bill drove up a few minutes later and we discussed food and destinations. For the food, we each described what we'd brought and found we had more than enough provisions for the weekend ahead. For a destination, we considered and rejected Bill's original proposal, a ten-mile upstream paddle on the Bog River and a campsite on Grass Pond. It sounded like an interesting trip, but a bit ambitious. We figured we'd be spending...

Where: Westfield River When: 7/12-7/13/97 With: Andy Andy's first camping trip! He'd been showing interest for some time but I'd never managed to get organized and go. We'd done a couple of successful overnights in the backyard, so I knew sleeping in a tent wouldn't be a problem. It was just a matter of finding the time to get away. Finally the opportunity presented itself. A good weather forecast and no conflicts with other activities, so off we went. We set off late in the day, around 3:30, and arrived at the parking area a little after 5:00. We packed up pretty quickly and headed down to the river. I was carrying my new Lowe Contour IV pack (its first trip too) containing the majority of the gear (sleeping bags, tent, food, clothes) and Andy had his Cookie Monster pack with his essentials (Mr. Clown, Teddy, books, crayons). We followed a pickup truck past the gate and found a sizable gathering of folks down in the Indian Hollow camping area. I briefly con...

Where: Farmington River above Collinsville, CT When: 6/21/97-6/22/97 With: Chip, Dave, Seth The annual excursion to Collinsville. As usual, Chip was the organizer and he proposed a couple of dates in mid-June. The weekend of the Solstice was good for everyone so we started the preparations. Chip, Seth & I made good use of our new Internet connections and did a fair amount of the planning via e-mail. Our first need was boats. We decided to go with smaller boats this year, so that meant leaving Dave's sea kayaks at home and renting three boats. Dave was elected to call Collinsville Canoe but they told him they had nothing to rent. Something going on, apparently. Chip & I called around Boston, but no one would rent us kayaks. We considered a number of options, including doing a hike instead or postponing the trip to later in the summer, but then Chip tried one more phone number. Somehow he found the number for Main Stream Canoe in a Boston phone book and got in touch wit...

Where: RMC Crag Camp, Mt. Adams When: 3/24-3/27, 1997 With: Brian White, Brad Hennemuth, Jim DeLuco This hike began to form in late 1996, when Brian started recruiting for a winter trip to the Northern Presidentials. He'd tried to organize a similar trip the previous year on short notice, but was unable to pull it together so he figured that the long lead-time might yield more success. Though I'd never hiked with Brian before, my winter camping experience got me on the invitee list and the time frame he was suggesting - mid to late March - fit right in with my annual birthday vacation, so I signed up. Brian proposed a trip to one of the shelters run by the Randolph Mountain Club. His preference was Crag Camp, an unheated enclosed cabin on the rim of King Ravine. Second choice was Grey Knob, a heated cabin with a caretaker, though in a less spectacular location. The other two, The Log Cabin and The Perch, were both open shelters and thus fell to the bottom of the preferenc...

Where: Bondcliff Trail When: 3/15-16, 1997 With: Chip This was our second attempt to reach Guyot Shelter. Last year's effort was thwarted by an odd, late January rainstorm. This year had its own set of troubles. Just getting started proved to be a big problem. Our original date was January 25-26, but the Patriots made it to the Superbowl and Andy had a birthday party to attend so we pushed it off a week. The next week arrived and I cancelled at the last minute, for a variety of reasons. Heavy snow in the mountains, lots of things going on at home and at work...my heart just wasn't in it. A week or so later, my head had cleared and we came up with date #3, the first weekend in March. Unfortunately, the combination of a rainy forecast and a case of the flu for Chip resulted in yet another postponement. And so we found ourselves heading into the mountains on the Ides of March, hoping for a better fate on that date than poor Caesar. This would be our last chance to get in a...