Its been a silly dry fall. The Mountain Biking has been limitless and the foliage primo. The West River and the ACoE gave us releases two weekends back to back, The Missisquoi at Sheldon Springs has been flowing in the bypass because the turbines are down for maintenance and we asked Morrisville Water and Light for a couple of releases that they came through on for us.
Getting a release from MWL on the Green is no easy feat. Not that MWL doesn't want to give us a release, but the 80 year old dam is beyond its design life and the penstocks are finicky and have a mind of their own... meaning they will kick off from time to time with out being prompted. This spring we had a scheduled release and they shut down before we ever made it to the put in.
With John Tilton at the helm for dam operations, he fired up the release the night before and checked it in the morning to verify it was still flowing on the 7th. We had 22 folks show up to run the river and before we knew it we had a group of 22 folks running one of the smaller micro-creeks in VT together. It was fun if not chaotic. Every one was running good lines and smiling. We got to the bottom and rallied for a second run. Got to the top and found the put in high and dry - the turbines had kicked off and we were out of water. It was a fantastic day with smiles and high fives all around.
November 21 we got MWL to give us another day of releases. the caveat was the same - we'll do what we can to give you a release, but it may kick off unexpectedly. we found out later that It did kick off that morning for about 30 minutes and fortunately John was in Morrisville that morning to flip it back on for us. We all had noticed a dip in levels while on the water for our first run, but nothing significant. Most of the folks gave it one run and done. Myself and Justin Worth cracked our boats on the first run, but found Jordan had a heat gun so we found an outlet and welded the boats up to join a group for their third run. with water levels higher than run one, lines were smoothed out and boofs were grabbed like champs. We cleaned the run in just over an hour. Looking to head up for one final run, we got to the put in and had noticed the water was considerably lower than it should be for a run. Looks like it had tripped off again on us.
We looped the car around and headed to the take out to pack up gear and beat feet to Lost Nation for some local brew and grub.
Having the Green in our back pocket for runs when all else is dried up is a great wild card to have. Its a super high quality run with lots of rapids to work and more character than can be written up about.
Stay tuned for the next release. You just never know - there may be a few more in 2015 if our weather patterns continue to hold warm and pleasant.....
