Day-late - Other Trail Journal - 2019

Announcing my planned trip for 2019

My plans for this year are to kayak the Missouri River from the source to St. Louis. I've never done a real long kayak trip before so this should be interesting. I have done a week long canoe trip years ago but I supect this will be a little more challenging. The plan is to kayak from the source of the Missouri River at Three Forks Montana down till I get to St. Loius. I am planning on taking about 7 weeks off during this trip starting in July to hike the Montana Section of the CDT this summer as well, that is unless I am just having too much fun on the river. The plan is to get to Three Forks just before May and kayak down the river until July. In mid July I will head to Montana and hike the rest of the CDT that I haven't completed and then head back to the river and go as far as I can, or until I get to St. Louis, before it gets too cold. Yes, I know I plan to spend several months sitting in a kayak atrophying my legs and then heading out on a long hike!

I've been slowly getting the planning done for the river. It is a little more difficult than my thru hike planning because there is not a convienent one stop source of info like a Yogi's guide so I am in the process of putting that info together myself. I have found several good resourses and am combing through those and will be for the next couple of months. There is a book by a paddler that did this several years ago that I have found very helpful.

I am doing this journal on postholer, a hiking site, becasue my other journals are here and this is close enough to a thru hike - a thru paddle - I guess you could call it.

The river is about 2300 miles long, and I beleive there are 9 dams that must be gotten around. The river will at times be shallow andl low flowing and at other times large lakes with potentially big waves. I have been warned that there are some very challenging sections that I will have to navigte through. I will be bringing a bit more gear than when I hike becasue I should be able to carry a bit more in the boat then I would on my back - just a few extra luxuries - but my base gear will be all the same, except no backpack and instead more drybags and clothing better suited to water activities than hiking.

I hope you get to follow along in my journal. I plan to do an entry for every day and update it as often as i can.

Entry 1 of 41
First :: Previous :: Next  :: Last