Details

Written by Michael Mainer

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 04 August 2016

Hits: 92

Organizer(s): Late-season Quebec snowmelt

Date: 2016-05-22

Kayakers (K1): Jordan, Culley, Scott, Ben, Mike

Predominantly: Flatwater

Water Level: Medium

Estimated Flow (cfs), e.g. '600': 1500

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Site: QWW - Tourilli

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Flow (cfs), e.g. '797': 1000

On Sunday morning we awoke high up in the Sainte-Anne watershed.  We were pretty beat from the previous day's adventure, but we were in the middle of the Quebec whitewater vortex and it appeared everything was at a perfect level and we had all day to paddle.  Did I mention the previous day's adventure had us kinda beat?

The most appealing option seemed to be the Neilson - a classic run that was at a great juicy medium level.  But as it turned out, we were really close to the Tourilli, none of us had run it, and the whole purpose of the trip was to run some new things.  So we grudgingly sacrificed a great Neilson day in the name of exploration on a run that was described as "less steep than the Dryway".  Oh well... at least days like that strengthen your resolve to get back up there and run something good.

Truth be told, Alden describes the Tourilli as recommended... but somehow the description is just not that inspiring.  Maybe it's because it's accompanied by a story about a hideous waterfall beating.  Or maybe it's that the picture shows riffly class II-III leading up to a drop that looks a little to scary to be fun.  Regardless, it was warm and sunny - perfect for napping and drying gear at the put-in while shuttle is being set.  And there sure were a lot of locals around and they all seemed pretty stoked about the run and the level.  Once on the water we saw why.

Juicy class III started just out of sight of the road, and quickly built into fun, very continuous class III+.  This went on a ways, and in a few spots pinched down or steepened into a little class IV.  There were a few holes or rocks to dodge, but nothing particularly worrisome - just continuous and big enough that I didn't want to swim.  It was classic Quebec whitewater too:  juicy boat-scoutable rapids, impeccable water quality, clear blue sky above and the river twisting between steep spruce-covered valley walls a long way from civilization.  This is why Quebec whitewater is awesome

There was a group right in front of us that we followed so we knew we weren't going to accidentally drop into something nasty.  After about 3 miles things widened out into the aforementioned riffly class II-III for a couple hundred feet and we hopped out to portage the U-Hole.  One of the locals said he ran it earlier that week, but everyone seemed pretty wary, so we followed them off a great seal launch into some solid class IV with a couple real holes to avoid.  Another mile or so and we got out to portage the waterfall.

With all due respect to Alden, no wonder he got a beating in there.  It looks like while it wouldn't hold you forever, it would happily rip off your skirt, shorts, eyelids or shoulder connective tissues and probably fill your stomache with uncomfortable amounts of river water.  Just below here was a great final stretch with some friendly but very rowdy class IV.

At the take-out we seriously considered another run, but enough soreness was creeping back into our muscles to hold us back from a second run on this Quebec classic.

The Tourilli is one of the finest sections of class III-IV whitewater in the northeast.  It usually runs into June, is just 4 hours from Burlington and has a ton of other great stuff around.  Do it!

Details

Written by Ryan McCall

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 07 June 2016

Hits: 94

Organizer(s): Ryan

Date: 2016-04-29

End Date: 2016-05-02

Kayakers (K1): Jason M, Dan M, Ryan M and a few others...

Predominantly: Advanced WW

Water Level: Low boatable

Painted Gauge Height (ft) e.g. '3.3': 000

Estimated Flow (cfs), e.g. '600': 000

It was another year of the PA crew coming up to hit some VT Creeks. This year was the latest it had ever been for the trip.  We paid for it in low water and plastic shards left on the river bottoms.

To start off the trip - Dan and Jason made a leisurely drive up from South Central PA to meet me for a late afternoon lap at the Ledges.  It was stupid low.... like 140cfs low.  Although we were all smiling and laughing about how damn low it was and how bad we were banging our way down the river, it was fun to be out in the evening sun and on water again with each other.  Living close to 500 miles away from each other, all dads, and in busy careers - doesn't leave much time these days to make road trips to get together for random weekends of boating.  After the suffer fest on the ledges, we decided on lap of boat abuse was enough and beat feet over App Gap for some BBQ at the local smoke house.

Next up was the Hudson.  We entertained heading up to QC with another crew, but ultimately headed over to NY for some fun on a classic none of us had ever paddled.  To round out the group, Jamie D and Paul C met us in Addison for the rip over to the put in on the Indian.  When we got to the put in a random Toyota Prius came skidding in beside us and out popped this crazily energetic little old "dude" that quickly introduced himself to all of us and then asked to join our group since we were the only kayakers on the river that day.....  Mind you, after he introduced himself, I started to put some recognition to his name.  Pete Skinner... Where the hell did I hear that name before????  Then it just popped - this squirly old guy that was bouncing of the ground with each step, was the famous Pete Skinner that has paddled the Niagara Gorge not once but twice!!!  He also has had first descents all over North America and is responsible for a number of our whitewater releases here in the north east!  So quickly my day turned from just a paddle on the Hudson to, Holy Shit, I'm Paddling with the "Sam Snead" of kayaking today!

The run went with out much incident - we all had a blast, dodging big holes and moving around a big water river, something we don't need to do much of in VT.  The PA fellas, were loving the sunshine and the scenery is absolutely gorgeous down the river!!!  I personally was trying my best not to get munched on too much in some of the holes, and was loving the big water all the while listening to story after story from Pete.  What an ambassador for kayaking!  I could be mis-quoting this, but I believe he said he was 69 years old and with out a doubt was paddling way the hell better than any of us.  On the way home we scouted Putnam Creek and managed to hit a great spot in Vergennes for Dinner.

Day 3 we woke to rain and I had to coach a soccer game for my Daughters team.  So we made plans to head to the Wells after the game and get in a few laps there.  I believe it was flowing around 160 cfs, low but not the lowest.  We fired off two laps and made the most of it by sessioning El Salto and trying to perfect the middle line off the flake.  We all hit it cleanly a number of times, but there were some really ugly lines that were too close to the shelf as well....ouch.

A run home and the weekend of festivities had come to an end for me - my 7 year old was sick and I'd be hanging with her the next day as Dan and Jason headed back to PA.  Visions of hitting up the Midd dissolved as we all said we can't wait to do it all over again next year....albeit, with more water!

Details

Written by Michael Mainer

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 03 August 2016

Hits: 92

Organizer(s): Jordan & Culley

Date: 2016-05-21

Kayakers (K1): Jordan, Ben, Scott, Culley, Mike

Predominantly: Advanced WW

Water Level: Medium low

Estimated Flow (cfs), e.g. '600': 250

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Site: Quebec Whitewater - Gauge location classified

Primary Realtime USGS Gauge Flow (cfs), e.g. '797': 160

"Scott, Welcome to the A team"

-Jordan V

"Hah, I'll remind you of that tomorrow when you're sweating yours *$s off thrashing through dense Quebec forest portages.  I'm still game, ***k 10k, I can portage the whole ***m thing if I have to..."

-Scott G

The paddling scene in Quebec has grown a lot the past couple years, from the number of paddlers, to the number of known runs, to how much of a paddling destination Quebec has become.  Of course there's something to be said of the skill of local paddlers - mainly that runs up there will always be harder than you expect.

A long shuttle brought us far up a drainage I had heard of, but never explored.  Yet our goal was not in this watershed, but the one next door - a creek dropping 1400 vertical feet.  It was first paddled a few years ago, and had only seen a few runs each year, but was rumored to be on of the best in Quebec.  Culley and Jordan wanted something new and challenging, and this seemed like a good opportunity.

The hike in started with a mile or so up a logging road - steep but not unbearable.  Then we took a right on an ATV trail and followed this a half mile to a small, very quiet lake.  This was a pristine, beautiful spot - perfect for an afternoon spent napping and fishing.  We paddled across the lake and then thrashed and post-holed through rotten, brushy, surprisingly deep snow for an hour or so.  We got the route just right and hit the put-in lake, had a quick snack, and then paddled across.  There was really no question of where to go - one end of the lake wandered off between mountains, while the other end led to a huge horizon line.  Not the sort of horizon line you get at the top of just a single big rapid.

We made a quick portage around an old crib dam, then routed through a few nice boat-scoutable rapids.  There was a bigger drop - good to go, then a canyon rapid that ended in a bad hole - also good to go although we decided we couldn't spend the time doing a full scout and safety with so much river left.  There was more good stuff below here - reasonable class IV-IV+ boulder and bedrock stuff.  We followed this into a sketchy eddy above something larger - another canyon rapid - doable but terminating just above something truly huge.  I didn't even look at the big one before being sure we wouldn't run it.

The portage was classic Quebec.  Steep, very brushy and somehow extremely hot despite the late-May snowpack.  We dropped down a gulley to the bottom of the massive rapid, which turned out to be a big slide with real gnar above and below it.  I'd guess it drops at least a hundred vertical feet in about the same horizontal distance, and it's hardly clean.  Remarkably, it's been run twice by crazy locals - they call it "Gandalf the White".  This is probably the biggest rapid I've ever personally seen that's been run.

Below this things dropped into what looked like a deep canyon.  Worried about portage/exit options and not wanting to spend time with a thorough scout, we carried another quarter-mile downstream.  At this point we saw enough of the gorge to regret our decision - it looked like big but manageable quality stuff with plenty of space on the banks.

There wasn't much time for regret - back on the water we got into a section of fast, jumbled boulder gardens that would have made most Taureau rapids blush, then more great bedrock stuff.  This went on for a long time - miles - and it was just great.  Things weren't too stacked, but every couple hundred feet there was a nice, good-sized bedrock rapid - mostly slides or ledge sequences but with some great pinches, boulder gardens and small falls as well, with shallow but pleasant class III between.  It wasn't glacially-polished Pemiqewasset granite, but was pretty smooth for Quebec and made for a lot of really fun boating.  This took many 1-person scouts and plenty of full scouts and every tenth of a mile we hit something bigger that got our attention - I think we carried two more rapids in here.

Of course planting so many awesome boof strokes is tiring and as the afternoon wore on energy levels dropped.  We didn't really know how much more we had left so kept moving.  I had gotten enough of a glimpse at the valley during shuttle to know it did have a steep section near the end.  I think it was around 5 pm that things started narrowing and dropping again.  I was ready to be done at this point and felt like I was tired enough to be an accident waiting to happen, but if anyone else was in the same position they didn't show it.  

This last section was incredible.  Definitely the best of the run and perhaps one of the nicest riverbeds I've boated in.  Nothing big, but constant, engaging, quality whitewater, continuous enough to be exciting but with plenty of eddies and a wide variety of rapids to keep it interesting.  The group did a great job of working downstream with coordinated, efficient, judicious shore scouting and boat scouting.  This was steep too - I think the gradient was close to 300 feet per mile and it went on for probably close to two miles.

At some point Jordan gave some hand signals and I ran down through a blind notch that turned out to be a great angled slide.  A few eddies and boofs later and I was emptying my cracked boat while the rest of the crew came down and then kept moving.  I hopped back in and spent the final 10 minutes fighting with exhaustion with my eyes glued to the stern in front of me.  All of a sudden we came out of a boulder garden and a few islands appeared in the middle and things got shallow - we were on an alluvial fan!  Another couple hundred yards of pin-spot and wood-infested boulder crud and we hit a little flatwater and then out onto the very large Jacques-Cartier at full spring flow.  A quick ferry across the big river and we were at the takeout after about 10 hours of quality boating and Quebec spruce-thrashing.  We were all pretty beat but still had time to grab beers with a couple friendly Quebec raft guides who were hanging around.  This was after I completed the wretched task of taking my socks off - not the most pleasant or sanitary thing to do after spending a full day in a leaky drysuit.  We reversed the 1.5-hour shuttle and were snoozing next to a random logging road deep in the Quebec woods well before midnight.

So I guess the five of us are one more incredible creek run into what's shaping up to be an fantastic Quebec season.  Here's to many more awesome days up there.

Details

Written by Ryan McCall

Category: Trip Reports

Published: 07 June 2016

Hits: 93

Organizer(s): Ryan

Date: 2016-06-06

Kayakers (K1): Ryan <

Predominantly: Advanced WW

Water Level: Medium low

Painted Gauge Height (ft) e.g. '3.3': 3.5

Yup - a solo run of the NBW....  I was shocked that I couldn't rally anyone that was able to lap it with me.  But sometimes its just better to have all to yourself.

We got one hell of a rain storm Sunday and then Sunday night.  I was up before 5am to my phone pinging off texts from Mainer about the NH Ledges...  Awesome run but over an hour away.  I looked at the gauges and then at Wunderground Weather maps and saw that Worcester saw and additional 1.7 inches after midnight that other places didn't.  I send out a flury of emails and texts and then loaded up.  I only got casual responses other than Chris Ingram, who was tied up for the early part of the morning with family but wanted to meet up later.

Off I went up route 12 toward the boarder of Elmore and Worcester and the put in for the NBW.  While I was gearing up a fellow kayaker honked at me on his way by to his office.  I was lucky - I wasn't at any office that day, I was in paradise.

Sliding into the river solo, even a river you know intimately is a special feeling and provides an electricity that you don't always get in a group.  All I could hear was moving water, down the channel, off of my boat and paddle and birds getting their day going.  There was still fog in the air after the storm but it was a sunny morning that was cutting through the trees dripping off the last of the showers.  It is pretty dang magical to get to have that to yourself.

I needed to focus though - a solo run on the NBW (at least for me) is not something to take casually.  So the warm up rapids early on should be used to dial in moves and mentality.  I had a great first run, even cleaning up some of my sloppy lines from earlier in the spring.  My second run I cut short because the river had dropped out so fast and lines were becoming more and more bouncy and less fluid.  I told myself I was making a good choice cutting run 2 in half and sparing myself an extended welding session later to repair my cracked and battered boat if I had completed the run.  there was no need to be greedy. I just had the NBW all to myself on a Monday morning, while co-workers were pounding their keyboards and drinking coffee to get their day started....  Paradise - Green leaves and short sleeves on the NBW.

As a side note - there are two new pieces of incidental wood.  One is early on in the run that needs portaged, the other is after the tube and it needs portaged.