On Saturday Dan and I went up the Rock Of Ages trail in the Gorge. It was pretty muddy and a pain to go up,but the Devil's Backbone is super cool. It was cool out and we had fog, which made it like Mordor or something. For once I didn't bring too much food and I was eyeing my advil as a source of food. Not that I'd really starve, but once you think about air dropped Philly CheeseSteaks (Dan's idea), it's hard to not get hungry.
While crossing one of the larger streams I thought I'd make it an easier crossing by chucking my boots across.
Bad Idea
As soon as the boots left my hand I knew it was going bad. They might have made it 2/3rds of the way across before landing in the fast part of the stream. As opposed to rushing to where they plopped in thestream, I stared at them in disbelief and thought "I used to throw in High School, how did they not make it?".Dan pointed out where they floated to and I moved there to snag them. They fell under a waterfall and got stuck. I tried grabbing the one boot and yanking on it, but the other boot was stuck somewhere. I regretted leaving my knife at home (I looked at it twice and thought "Why would I need a knife?"). I also regretted using 200lbs tensile strength cord for shoelaces as it's next to impossible to break with one arm.
I saw it getting worse instead of better, so I decided it was time to get heading back to the quasi warm confines of the Van. I had some duct tape and put it on my feet for the 3 mile hike out. After a while Dan pointed out I could put on my socks, so I did that and added more tape. Dan headed out faster to get my sandals from the car and brought them back to me about 2 miles later. A few people hiked by and wondered what the deal was. The deal is I can't throw two boots across a stream.
