The Sturgeon River Gorge is a fun paddle if you know what you're doing in whitewater. Portage the falls and you're all set! Tell that to the little aluminum boat I found at the bottom of the gorge just after the falls one summer. This little boat had very clearly gone over the falls and barely lived to tell the tale. It was banged up with several leaks. Helpfully, someone had tied it to a tree to prevent it from temporarily floating away, at least until the next big flood. Where it came from, I don't know. The nearest access point is at least half a dozen miles upstream, and there's no way this boat would have been anyone's first choice for floating downstream given its terrible whitewater capabilities.

That wouldn't do! I couldn't leave this diminutive clunker to live out its days here until it inevitably sank further downstream. The leaks prevented me from floating the rapids at low watre (not to mention the lack of a paddle), which left only one solution: haul it a mile up out of the gorge by hand.

So we did. On a 90°F+ day. My adventure buddy Anthony was a good sport and went along with the bonus adventure, even though this was his first trip out with me. What a trooper! He has a great future ahead of him getting into ill-advised predicaments with me.

When I got it home, I threw it on my boat pile alongside the 16' canoe I rescued off of the South Branch Ontonagon River the previous summer. Old boats love me!