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Written by Alden Bird

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 11 July 2005

Hits: 30

Organizer(s): Alden Bird

Date: 2005-07-09

Kayakers (K1): Doug Piatt, Bobby Miller

Deck Canoers (C1): Alden Bird

Predominantly: Advanced WW

Water Level: Medium

Painted Gauge Height (ft) e.g. '3.3': -5\"

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Site: Jacques-Cartier

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Flow (cfs), e.g. '797': 28 cms

This past weekend we ran the Neilsen and Taureau rivers in Quebec. Both were very long and hard, and in the middle of nowhere - especially the Taureau. I think the Taureau has well over 100 rapids. It was absolutely remarkable. I got redemption this year - having for a year imagined the corrections that I would make in each painfully memorable rapid. This year I vowed things would be different - and they were. In the whole 8-hour day, I failed to flip over even once! For me, this was a great accomplishment.

The most memorable rapid was Logjam. We made a marathon scout along the right bank, swimming out to rocks to scout and assuaging the curiosity that had been nagging me for a year. Bobby and I dropped into the rapid together and solved the problem of the pillow move at the bottom. As we shook off the spray from the big waves and descended into the correct chute (which last year had been denied to me) I experienced a wonderful feeling - of teamwork, and of - peace.

Yet at the same time, this trip converted me into a Taureau expert and burned into my memory with clarity scores of rapids which had hitherto been merely haunting sketches - like when there is a great song that you can barely remember, yet which is that much more intriguing for each note you cannot recapture. The Taureau is less of a myth now and less fascinating, but it has already lifted me to great heights and thrown me for great losses. Maybe it is more intriguing now as a place to journey to every now and then to get what I want, again and again. Now that I know what is there, I can pass through with an eye towards pure enjoyment, rather than with fear and obsession.

On the paddle out (through long class III and IV rapids that seemed suspiciously now like rests) we saw two moose in the river. The Laurentians Mountains are the most spectacular when viewed from within, preferably while in a mellow, afternoon mood at the end of an 8-hour epic whose riddle one has solved, and while watching the mist rise above the high peaks that clump into formations above as if just for this, your victory lap at the end.

The next day we returned to Vermont and ran the New Haven and Middlebury rivers, with great crowds of sunbathing people at Toaster Falls. It was a far cry from the deep, tense isolation and the same two other faces I saw in the Taureau, but it was wonderful. The Middlebury in particular was at a juicy level and was indeed impressive to my out-of-town friends.

All in all, it was a enchanted time.

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Written by Eric Bishop

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 19 June 2005

Hits: 23

Organizer(s): E. Bishop

Date: 2005-06-18

Canoers (OC1): E. Bishop

Other Personal Watercraft: Molly, solo yellow lab

Predominantly: Intermediate WW

Water Level: Medium low

Painted Gauge Height (ft) e.g. '3.3': none

I've wanted to paddle the Wild Br. for many years and Saturday I drove up assuming it would have enough water to paddle, and it did. Because the level had to be falling I just drove up the Craftsbury Rd. about 7 miles and put in on a side road bridge. Decided to gamble on the hitch hike shuttle after the run instead of before. For the first mile it was a narrow flat trout stream but once it passed under the Craftsbury ( or N. Wolcott) Rd. it dropped virtually continually for the next 4 or 5 miles. Low water and several nasty river wide strainers made this too difficult for beginners, in my opinoin. I was testing Molly's new PFD, and her ability to sit quietly in a solo open boat. She boated the slow parts and swam/ran most of the whitewater. The hitch hike shuttle was a total disaster. I walked almost 7 miles back to the car, while at least 100 cars drove by - a very large percent of the vehicles being pick-ups driven by a solitary male. If this isn't the sign of a culture in decline, I don't know what is. I also lost a very expensive paddle and have no clue where or now.

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Written by Tony Shaw

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 11 July 2005

Hits: 234

Organizer(s): Tony Shaw

Date: 2005-07-10

Kayakers (K1): Ryan Young

Canoers (OC1): Eric Bishop, Tony Shaw

Predominantly: Advanced WW

Water Level: Low boatable

Painted Gauge Height (ft) e.g. '3.3': n/a

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Site: Willsboro (mouth)

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Flow (cfs), e.g. '797': 1500

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Height (ft), e.g. '2.96': 4.7

The AuSable feasibility study planned for today was a wash-out, or at least that would be my interpretation given the gauge reading at 7 am over 3400 CFS. This left Eric, Ryan, and myself looking for something saner to paddle.

The Adirondacks were an obvious choice, given how heavily it rained here all day Saturday, but we needed to be looking in a higher, smaller drainage. Enter the Boquet. Going only on Jamieson's text, which calls the North Fork Boquet "unrunnable" and the next 2.4 miles to Split Rock Falls "class III-VI", it seemed like a good bet for two aging open boaters and a kayaker we'd never paddled with before. LOL.

I don't want to bore you with the details. Suffice it to say the river flows with incredible clarity from one boulder seive to the next. Saturday's torrential rains here did nothing to affect the water clarity, remarkably. Given a gradient of 100 feet/mile and the amount of boulder congestion wherever it got steep, the only saving grace was that we didn't get to the put-in until almost noon, and the level was starting to fall into bonydom - maybe 150 cfs. By the time we reached the take-out it had fallen even more, and bonydom was the unanymous opinion. In between, we nailed a bunch of very narrow/steep drops ranging in height from 4-6 feet, and we picked our way laboriously through several wide/shallow segments.

I wouldn't recommend the upper Boquet to ANYONE lacking expert whitewater skills if the stretch along Rt. 73 near its junction with Rt. 9 is bank full, nor would ordinary paddlers think it much fun at 150 cfs. But WE did.

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Written by Dave Packie

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 18 June 2005

Hits: 37

Organizer(s): Dave

Date: 2005-06-18

Kayakers (K1): Ryan, Matt, Dave, and Bob

Predominantly: Nov-int WW

Water Level: Medium low

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Flow (cfs), e.g. '797': 1400

Finally we got some rain, and with Central VT getting the bulk of it, Bob and I were looking to expand our horizons and run something down that way. The lower New Haven seemed to be at a low Medium level, and that sounded perfect for a coupla first timers. I traded messages with Ryan and it turns out he turned up at the white church right on time. Bob and I hooked up with he and Matt, set the shuttle rig, so we hit it.

There were river wide strainers just at the corner below the Rt 117 bridge, so we carried just below them out of the back corner of the lot and put on. After snapping a few rolls in the eddy, because it's been a while, we rolled on down stream. It was a fun, bolder filled river that reminded me of the NBL. A little less tech., with some great surf on the fly. Matt was surfing his blunt like it was made for it, and led the rest of the group down thru for most of the run. The rest of us ran it in smaller boats and had no issues.

There was some more wood of note, a tree just below the surface that disguised itself as small ledge or horizon. After Matt bounced over it, the rest of the crew regonized it for what it was and were able to get around the root end on river left, but if the water was lower it might block the entire channel. It is located about half way thru the run, in the left channel of the river where it splits around what I think was the first Island. The right channel was just a trickle, so again, at lower levels this may not seem to be a fork at all.

At the most difficult rapid, a SHORT class III- at this level, bob and matt ran the meat, and ryan and I sneaked a river right line. From there it was II+ continuous to the take out under the next bridge.

Good trip to get my feet wet again, a river worth doing once, and at slightly higher levels worth doing again.

On a side note, we then watched Matt and his partner mac the Ledges. So THAT's what the Blunt is for. Nice boof Matt! I want a creeker!