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Written by Scott Gilbert

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 27 April 2008

Hits: 159

Organizer(s): Scott Gilbert

Date: 2008-04-26

Kayakers (K1): Scott Gilbert

Predominantly: Int-adv WW

Water Level: Low boatable

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Site: Moose River @ Victory

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Flow (cfs), e.g. '797': 500

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Height (ft), e.g. '2.96': 6

So after eying this stretch of river for a while on topos and one summer trip to check it out and seeing some good looking roadside stuff, I finally had to scratch the itch.

A two hour drive from Burlington, and I am at Gallup Mills a tiny little cluster of North East Kingdom residences. Turn to go up radar road...and the road is gated!! Couldn't believe it, and already knew from an attempt last week that coming up and over the east haven range is not an option.

So a little bit of driving around trying to figure out an alternate approach and I resign myself to my two options; drive home or hike up the road with boat and gear in tow and make my way down.

After some internal debate I decide I've driven this far, and probably am not likely to be up here again any time soon, so I stuff my gear in my boat and hike up...4.5 miles and an hour and a half later and I am at the confluence of the west & east branches of the Moose. I gear up and put in here in a beautiful deep amber pool below the culvert.

About a 1/10 of a mile of class II and there is a clean 5ft waterfall, quick plug into cold water, and then another 1/10 of a mile and there is another tongue on river right dropping over a square boulder and into a strong looking hole. Being alone and the left side of the drop looking rather sketchy, I portage around. From here there is about a half mile of class II interspersed with several III & IV ledges, with more water this would be quite a bit of fun. Then another horizon. A big rock island splits the flow. The left is choked with wood, the right is a 7ft falls that at this level would require a dry-rock boof and midair sideways turn to prevent a hard piton. Again I boat on shoulder I walk around. At higher flows the move would not be very challenging and would be quite fun. From here the river stays II-III and even mellows to wider and class II with lots of small boulders. More water would definitely be nice. This continues for about a mile and a half until the river drops into a very scenic little gorge. Definitely felt like 'the shire' type territory. In the gorge there are about 5 III - IV- drops, all fun stuff! After this the river mellows again for about two miles of wide-bed boat scratching (at this level) until the bridge.

I took out at the bridge but then driving along the road could hear the river gain lots of volume (the audio kind). Found a pull off and hiked down to find an awesome rapid dropping through rocky outcroppings, then a nice 4 ft boof a shortways downstream. Would definitely have geared back up and run this but had to make it home in time to catch the Habs game, (which they lost to philly...booo) Checking out google maps it looks like there might even be a little bit more downstream.

The Stretch:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=8674060833312725336,44.633807,-71.811329&saddr=Radar+Rd+%4044.633807,+-71.811329&daddr=44.574726,-71.784883&mra=mi&mrsp=1,0&sz=15&sll=44.577018,-71.776471&sspn=0.023141,0.045319&ie=UTF8&ll=44.604646,-71.774025&spn=0.092519,0.181274&t=h&z=13

Check the paddle pix section for photos of this trip. All in all not quite the outcome i was hoping for, but there is no such thing as a bad day on the river.

Details

Written by Tony Shaw

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 13 April 2008

Hits: 198

Organizer(s): Tony Shaw

Date: 2008-04-08

Kayakers (K1): Tyler Billingsley, Dave Hurley, Eliot Lothrop, Dave Packie

Canoers (OC1): Tony Shaw

Predominantly: Int-adv WW

Water Level: Low boatable

This may not have been the first or the last bootleg Mill Brook Jericho trip of the season, but for the sake of everyone else I hope it was the boniest.

With no online gauge it is challenging to forecast the level. The nearest small stream gauge I can think of is Allen Brook in Williston, which (for comparison purposes) crested at 2.9 the night before (65 cfs) and 2.7 (48 cfs) the night of our trip. Another possible gauge correlation might be Lewis Creek; it was running around 350-450 cfs April 8th.

If the streambed where Mill Brook passes under VT 117 isn't filled with water, and the route down through there doesn't look fluid, then the class II+ sections above are all going to be rough and rocky. After a bit of discussion, with full disclosure on the point, we went ahead and paddled Mill Brook anyway.

We put-in off of Tarbox Road, keeping the trip as short as possible, ~1 ½ mile all told. After a meandering put-in, where the sun broke out of the clouds, we had no trouble avoiding the tree on river left in the first 2-tiered drop (the best route is river right, anyway).

S-turn Rapid had thin cover (to borrow a euphemism from the ski industry). Everyone nailed Wide Ledge, easily avoiding some tree branches sticking out from river right at its entrance. From above it was difficult to discern the full-size tree trunk lodged in the Swimming Hole drop - a log that narrowed the slot and the landing options considerably, but Dave P. had no trouble staying well to its left. The rest of us more prudently opted to lift around instead. There was still a foot or more of dense spring snowpack on all the south banks.

The last 3 drops are all high enough, and technical enough, that some of us opted to carry...even in these low water conditions. Tony flipped and swam in the "receiving pool" below Cabin Falls. Dave H. struggled to pull free of the whirlpool on river left below Hydrodam Falls, but then redeemed himself by lining up (and landing) Cabin Falls perfectly. Today's adventure will have him shopping for a creek boat, I predict!

Mercifully the river wide strainer below the hydrodam turbine facility present in 2007 has been breached, and a clear route to the left bypasses the only other river wide obstruction in this rollicking class II+ section (at least until the beavers get back at it again).

Both Dave P. and Tyler found a way to avoid pitoning the final 2-stage drop by landing on the upsloping and thinly covered intermediate rock slab with their bows pointing river right, a move I might be willing to try in the future, once my souvenir from the trip (a 4 inch gash in my canoe's chine) gets repaired.

Details

Written by Ryan McCall

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 24 April 2008

Hits: 138

Organizer(s): Ryan

Date: 2008-04-23

Kayakers (K1): Woody, Jim, Karl, Dave, Ryan

Predominantly: Int-adv WW

Water Level: Medium high

When its up its up.

The group started 6 strong at the Warren General Store...After 5 creek boats showed up the playboater headed back north to an impromptu Lower Mad trip. Now down to 5 we headed south over Granville Gulf to the headwaters of the White where the confluence of Patterson Brook joins and boaters hop in the creek. The level was probably 4 inches over the gauge rock and rising as everything seems to do this time of year with snow still melting off. This made for a very lubed up run, padding out the standard slalom run through the boulders down the creek. For what it padded out though, it also generated several sticky holes that really needed to be avoided. There are three significant rapids on the creek at lower levels but at this level two of them became more flushy and the other one just got faster. Eddys were abundant to catch your breath.

It was an amazing night to be on the run and another group was also enjoying the higher than ususal flows on the creek. With three swims and and gear retrieval our group got in only one lap, but what a fun lap it was. All ended up safe and sound reunited with gear smiling none the less at the take out.

As I have said before - when there is a chance that Patterson is up and running - go get some of it....What a gem in the heart of the Green Mountains

Details

Written by Richard Larsen

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 10 April 2008

Hits: 164

Organizer(s): Richard Larsen

Date: 2008-04-06

Kayakers (K1): Dan Beideck, Dan Ott, Brent Osborne, Gregg Punchar, Dave Hathaway, Jamie Dolan

Canoers (OC1): Mike Smorgens, Jack Daggitt, Len Carpenter, Richard Larsen

Predominantly: Nov-int WW

Water Level: Medium

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Site: East Georgia

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Flow (cfs), e.g. '797': 3100

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Height (ft), e.g. '2.96': 5.80

The river gods decided to smile on us this day, and everything was just about perfect. The day was sunny, and relatively warm, up into the 50s. The water level was 'just right' for a novice / intermediate trip, at 3100 cfs, right near the average flow for this date. The power company (or someone else) had significantly improved the access on the north side below the Fairfax dam, such that even passenger cars could cruise down to river level. We met at the take out, consolidated cars, and headed to the put-in for a start at 1 PM. We had a nice float through the flatter sections, with no substantial headwind. We had a least one first-time-on-a-river boater, but with Dan Beideck helping him out he did fine. No one swam, which was good, given that the water was extremely cold. At the main rapids, we ran into a couple of other VPC folks, including James Raboin, who paddled a ways down the river with us. After a short stop at the island, a few folks heading down quickly to get in some time on 'Smiley', which had a well-formed hydraulic. We continued down through five chutes, and were off the river about 3:45.

The trip did provide a study in paddling demographics. Without getting into detailed numbers, it is safe to say that the average age of the open boaters was 'substantially greater' than that of the kayakers - very substantially - and that each open boater was probably older than any of the kayakers. As we know, there are indications that the open-boat community is going the way of the dinosaurs!