Details

Written by Ryan McCall

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 23 October 2010

Hits: 1545

Organizer(s): Ryan

Date: 2010-10-23

Kayakers (K1): AJ, Russ, Jamie, Jim, Ryan, Ben

Rafters: Gerard

Predominantly: Advanced WW

Water Level: Low boatable

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Site: Brookville VT

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Flow (cfs), e.g. '797': 320

Everyone had the bug to get wet...The ledges were at a low boatable level yesterday so why not. Everyone was game so the plan was made. We met over at Rocky Dale 11am - closer to noon actually. The river looked really low but what the heck, Would be a good way to see what all the hype was about with the new changes to some of the rapids that took place from the flood high waters of October 1st.

Doing a little roadside scouting as a group and me taking my grand old time up at Eagle park we finally got on the river as a unit at about 12:45. I threw a couple of quick braces to get wet and loosen up and ended up upside down the last man back and now needing to roll right off the bat in way too shallow water...SHEESH!

Around the bend and into Rick's Phu$k Up. It actually wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting at this level. The main flow of water was relatively fluid. We all met Russ just below this rapid as Russ has about 5 cracks in his boat that have been welded in some form or another, but others just keep on coming. It may be reaching the brittle point now. Off to Road Side Rapid we went with Russ leading the way we all had varying lines of success. It was bumpier than I ever remember but then again, I have never run this river at such a low level.

Next up is Secret Compartment...Definitely has changed with a PIA boulder in the normal line/boof move and what seems like a sure fire piton in the left channel you either had the make a pretty fast move right or eddy out above the drop and then jet across and peel into the drop to smooth it out. Again, I am pretty sure everyone had their own rendition with two capsizes to quick rolls, a backwards go at it, A hip check on the middle rock, and one raft making the left line look way smoother than it was! Nice Gerard!

Now the river opens up a few lines down to the Ledges proper. Fun ELF boating. Everyone was bobbing and weaving through the various slots...some more fluid than others. The river right line at the ledges wasn't an option today with the low flow so you had to run down and get left for the longer slde and then work back right and left again to set up for By The Way. This rapid has changed as well. It is a funky slide into a heaved up ledge on the left and an actual 4 foot vertical drop on the right up against the bank. Very substantial change. We all took the slide on the left and it was relatively violent slam-bam - one party member had a rather substantial piton and gave us all the standard grimace.

Below we boogied on down to Toaster but not before smashing into what used to be a nice pillow on rooster tail transfored in to another piton rock. Remind me not to hit this next time! Toaster time - everyone styled toaster that ran it - including Gerard in his pack-raft...he even banged out a beautiful roll at the bottom.

Off to Playpen...Seemed to be to be much easier than the last couple of years. The sieve in the lead in rapid is now a non issue. The FU rock at the entry to the actually playpen is gone now too leaving a really nice jet of flow up against the river right wall that you can hop on and shoot dowon on through. Everyone cleaned it nicely.

All American Boof - clean and purrrdy... Same for Mamma Tried and we styled the next few ledges and were out above the bridge.

Two had to hit the road and two had broken their boats....We ended the day with a couple of Genny Cream Ales and got on our way...

Nice to be in the river under blue skies with a great crew of paddlers and friends alike.

Details

Written by Ryan McCall

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 19 October 2010

Hits: 21086

Organizer(s): Team effort

Date: 2010-10-15

Kayakers (K1): Dave P, Russ K, Ben G & Ryan M

Predominantly: Advanced WW

Water Level: High

Estimated Flow (cfs), e.g. '600': 200

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Flow (cfs), e.g. '797': 200

Ever been shot out of a cannon or at least felt like it? From the moment my bow hit the water to the premature end of the run, I am pretty sure I had a Concorde jet engine attached to the stern of my kayak. That should set the stage for this TR....

It was noon on Friday, almost a mirror of the Friday 2 weeks prior. Stuff took it's time to pop but when it did, everything was too damn big. Believe it or not the NBW was too friggin' big again!!!!! Having a good hook on the local beta (living 10 minutes from the NBW and its tribs) I had a couple of options up my sleeve. When Dave rolled in from scouting the upper part of the NBW he said he wasn't comfortable with the level and I definitely wasn't just looking at the last drop and knowing what the flow there translated to on the bigger, more convoluted ones upstream. The decision was easy; let's check out a rarely run tributary to the NBW. Fortunately Dave and I had done some woodworking on said drainage at one point with Chris Weed a few years prior and the wood situation was much better than you would expect. Ben and Russ were all for checking out the roadside romp and had heard of the infamous teacup gorge at the bottom.

Off we headed to Hancock Brook.... We parked and scouted the meaty sections with the majority of the vertical drops near the bottom. I knew from first look I was out for any of these. The undercut slide looked like death and the usually calm pool above the teacups had a concave hole in it of about 3 feet and was actually looking more like the inside of a toilet bowl than a pool with a whirlpool forming....forget about it! So we headed upriver to scout along as we went. Above the vertical drops the river looked much more manageable but still balls to the wall!. I was really impressed with how fast the water looked to be moving. Everything looked clean up to what was thought would be a decent put-in except for a small log just downstream. We dislodged it and the current swept it away downstream to who knows where; man that floated away really fast!!! When we got back up to the vehicles we decided to drive up further. The run looked too good not to keep checking up to the last major culvert before it becomes a true mountain brook coming off of Mt. Worcester. Right below this culvert there was a pretty good sized log jam that we all thought putting in below would be the best move. IF we were to run from this spot to just above the waterfall section it would be close to a 2 mile run. Not bad and at the speed the river was moving it may take 30 minutes if all went well.

Speaking for myself, as I was gearing up my stomach was in my throat. Ben, Dave, and Russ were pretty calm compared to how I was feeling. Dave was first in the water and ferried to the other side of the river into one of only about 3 eddies on the entire river that was big enough for 4 boats. Did I mention there were barely any eddies and most were 1 boat in size? Instantly we had to make a decision of which way to go at an island. I led the right side and we all bopped down a-ways to where we knew there was a limbo log and a right hand turn in the river that was the start of the first real rapid. It was a long class 4 and relatively steep with holes and waves all over. The ironic thing is it really wasn't much different than what we had just boated through. Dave led, and Russ followed with Ben and me in sweep. As I rounded the corner and ducked the birch tree I saw Russ stopped river right — stopped in a hole and surfing like mad to get out. Ben eddied out river left and I met Dave below in a slightly larger eddy. As soon as I peeled in I heard Ben's whistle and saw the boat. Russ was out of his boat and it was on its way to us. Dave and I quickly jumped out of our boats and grabbed the Jefe and pulled it ashore. Russ was out of the river and his paddle was pinned on river left. Russ was okay but a bit winded and eyes like saucers. We reacquainted him with his gear and we scouted the next drop that had a decent eddy behind it and then the flush on under Hancock Brook Road.

From this point things eased up a bit and I caught the eddy behind abandoned bridge abutments, where we initially thought we would put in. It was a good place to regroup and get the team on the same page. Just below here is where we had dislodged the river-wide strainer and let it take off. I knew we had one significant rapid and then a 5 foot high sloping ledge that quite possibly had a retentive hole at the bottom. As Ben and I peeled out and headed downriver Dave and Russ followed. We passed the place where we let the log go and then you could see the horizon line for the rapid. Definitely a class 4/4+ with a center to left move over two distinct drops both forming broken holes. Ben did a good job of navigating them so I followed his line to some success on the first part and basically just throwing two huge back-to-back boof strokes on the second part to bridge the two holes. Little did I know Dave was more or less under my stern on the first drop and was off line to the right in the first part of this rapid. He stopped in the first hole and never made it out of the second hole so he was getting recirculated in the top part of this drop with two substantial holes below him. He came out of his boat to be pulled back into the hole now having an "out of boat experience"....his first ever. I caught an eddy and saw the boat go by me, then the paddle. Russ got the paddle out of the river but the boat was headed to the ledge drop below. Dave was out of the river and safe on shore — road side. I had been sitting in the eddy assessing what was next and if I should chase the boat down. As I peeled out Ben and Russ were screaming that I need to eddy out. Just as I was headed into the eddy where they were Russ pulled out and I missed my move. I was just going to run the drop and deal with it when Ben bellowed that I needed to eddy out above the drop...Not much of an eddy but I jetted my bow up on a shallow bench, launched my paddle on shore and jumped out of my boat about a foot from the lip. At that moment something red caught my eye; Dave's boat was vertically pinned below the drop in the main channel on the exact log that we had dislodged earlier. At this point Dave, Russ, and Ben were on river left and I was on river right — good thing because I could wade the river right channel and get a line on the boat from the island. The boat didn't have any water in it and was light. Stupid me; I got the line on the boat and to the guys on shore. No big deal — I can just lift it up and out. Sure enough the log cut loose and I almost was caught up in it, the boat, and the rope. It had snagged my leg on its release; I got lucky and the log took off. They reeled Dave's boat in and realized it had split on the stern again. Dave's day was over, leaving him with all of his gear and another weld job. Ben and I decided to pull the plug on the run and I headed downriver to a small bridge to join up with the guys.

We gathered up the vehicles, Dave headed home, and Ben, Russ and I met up with some UVM Kayak Club members to run Martin's. In hindsight we could have paddled downriver a good bit in more or less class III/IV boogie but we had made a decision and called it a day on Hancock with our parts intact in spite of a couple of severe beat-downs on a full-on steep creek. We'll be back for more of what Hancock dishes out!

Details

Written by Ryan McCall

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 20 October 2010

Hits: 506

Organizer(s): Ryan

Date: 2010-10-15

Kayakers (K1): Ben G, Danny S, Mike M, Rogan, Russ K, Ryan M

Predominantly: Int-adv WW

Water Level: Medium

After a hair-raising experience on Hancock (with my hair on fire), our group being dealt two substantial beat-downs and a broken boat, something a smidge mellower was of order. Ben was supposed to meet up with some of his old UVM club-mates at the NBW so he and Russ raced off to check the take out for them. I jetted over to Minister to get a look at the old breached dam drop at the bottom of the run and to meet them over there. No one liked the looks of the drop or the hole at the bottom. It's not very often you see a recirculating hole at the bottom of a horsetail spout waterfall; there was one there though. We all loaded up in the cars and boogied over to Martin's to get in a run before the sun set — the biggest and easiest of the tribs to the NBW and definitely the cleanest. After the UVM guys got suited up and were ready to get wet we loaded up and headed up to the put-in off of Macy's Road. We probably didn't put in until 5:45 and it was more or less dusk making the initial gorge pretty dark. The flow was good but definitely dropping so we were lucky to be catching this run at a medium level. Any lower and Russ would have added more than just the one additional crack to his multi-welded Jefe.

Martin's Brook is a pretty mountain stream that gathers the water from Patterson, Martin's and further down, Herrick streams off of the slopes of White Rocks, Hunger, Putnam and a few others in the Hogback range in Middlesex. We put in on Patterson above where Martin's comes in. There are a handful of mild class 3 rapids above a boulder choked Big Branchesque rapid that with more flow pushes class 4+. Today it was a 3+ with broach potential. Below this rapid things pick up to the confluence with Martin's Brook. We all found ourselves in line like ducks with either Russ or myself in the lead. We bombed down through the continuous class 3 action from the confluence of Martin's and Patterson to Shady Rill and one of the bigger drops on the river that you can catch a decent boof off of — this is where Herrick comes in as well boosting the flow some. Once you cross under Shady Rill bridge, you enter the ledge drop section straight away. It has holes and ledges to avoid or crash, and plenty of boof moves to make if you choose. At this point the group was loose and paddling cleanly. Danny, Mike, and Rogan were fresh and making crisp moves. Russ, Ben, and myself were enjoying low stress creeking after the freight train ride we had just been on over at Hancock Brook. From the straightaway you run down to a few vertical drops that require some precise maneuvering to run cleanly and a confident line to avoid excessive bracing. The group of 6 ran this section cleanly, Blue Angel style, except for me; I flopped the last rapid and had to throw a HUGE brace on my left side in the landing pool...no harm, no foul though. From there it is a couple of more class 2+ rapids to the take out at the Shady Rill Park. Everyone was happy to be off the river as we were out of daylight! We all had huge smiles and were pleased with the run to wrap up another epic October 2010 Friday.

Fun stuff...

Details

Written by Peggy Pelckmann

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 18 October 2010

Hits: 5246

Organizer(s): Tony Shaw

Date: 2010-10-16

Kayakers (K1): John Atherton, Jon Deerfield, Peg Pelckmann

Canoers (OC1): Tony Shaw, Eric Bishop

Predominantly: Intermediate WW

Water Level: Medium high

Painted Gauge Height (ft) e.g. '3.3': 9

Estimated Flow (cfs), e.g. '600': 6000

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Site: Hartford

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Flow (cfs), e.g. '797': 5650

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Height (ft), e.g. '2.96': 7.90

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge URL: 17