Fording a stream, creek, or river is quite stressful. If you fall you could get hurt, you’ll definitely get soaked, and your pack will get soaked too. A soaked hiker is a cold hiker and you need to worry about hypothermia. Most are just little streams, but some are full rapids. Did I say they are STRESSFUL! Right now I’m camped beside a raging river which hopefully tomorrow morning will be less raging. My shoes are wet and they don’t have time to dry by morning. So I just assume they’ll be wet all day long.

Update: The next morning the raging river was still raging. Although I was told that in the morning the river would be lower, because the source above would be frozen, this was not the case. I should have crossed it the night before. Oh, and my shoes were frozen solid which made getting them on very difficult.