MIDDLEBURY — The Green Mountain Club Bread Loaf Section’s annual meeting will be held Thursday, Jan. 26, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Champlain Valley Unitarian Universalist Society. The annual meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. with a brief social time, followed by a short business meeting and a guest speaker with slide show.
The featured speaker will be Dan Brown, owner/innkeeper of the Swift House Inn and part-time adventurer, whose talk is titled “Jeff and Dan’s Big Adventures or Two Coots, One Canoe” on the Northern Forest Canoe Trail.
In 2014, at the young ages of 65 and 64, Brown and Jeff Loustaunau completed a canoe through paddle of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail (NFCT) leaving from Old Forge, N.Y. and paddling through Vermont, Quebec, New Hampshire and Maine with the final destination of Fort Kent, Maine.
Brown and Loustaunau accomplished the feat in 29 paddling days, enjoying beautiful sunshine and enduring the cold, rainy weather typical of the Northern Forest in May. They paddled 535 miles, many upstream, portaged 118 miles over road, wooded trails and swampy terrain, and shuttled 49 miles around impassible rivers.
Raised in Ithaca, N.Y., Brown grew up camping and boy scouting was a passion. He and his wife Michele own and operate the Swift House Inn.
All GMC events are free and open to the public. Voluntary donations to the Green Mountain Club’s Education Fund will be accepted at the door. Information about this and other Bread Loaf Section events is available at www.gmcbreadloaf.org/outings.