The Vermont Paddlers Club

This past weekend was the scheduled annual pilgrimage from PeeYea for a handful of my creek boating buds.

This year Jason, Dan and Brenton headed up on a Wednesday night from Harrisburg to the Glen Falls, NY area. They broke camp early and got on the Mettawee and Furnace Brook to get the weekend started right. The Mettawee was at a good medium flow and there was enough water in Furnace to make a run out of it. From their report when I saw them Friday morning there was a Dead deer in the second tier of Calfee falls.

Friday Jason awoke to a stomach flu and it dogged him the rest of the weekend...We also picked up two other boaters from PA and Simone (Fastest boat on the NH Ledges). Off we went to the Lamoille drainage only to find the NBL too low to bang down....bummer!!! We did get in a decent run on the Gihon though. All drops were styled including two partial runs of the Mustang. The Dam owners are sending mixed signals as the lady came out and gave us hell and a talk with her husband later was in complete contrast saying he enjoyed watching the boats go down and though anyone to portage the dam was nuts. Looks like some diplomatic outreach to the owners to clear up the situation would be a good thing. FERC would definitely side with the owners if they decided to get serious about cutting off access there. Anyways the run went well with only one swim in Spinach at the Carpet Factory by the group's esteemed squirt boater.

The next day we all met at the Famous Wayside Diner and beat feet over to NH for a run on the White Mountain Classic...."The Upper Pemi". We ran it from the Basin down though several quality rapids including the parts of the North Pole, Wham Bam, Sentinel, and more or less a couple more miles of quality class 4 read and run in an amazing gorge. The run started in the 20s and a blizzard under the watchful eyes of Cannon and Lafayette and finished with bluebird sunny skies. Once we were off the river we beat feet over to the Wells and got in a speedy dusk run on the regularly run section. Everyone liked the action on one of the VT classics.

Sunday the group broke and Simone took Art and Wayne to Texas Falls and Middlebury Gorge....I took Dan and Brenton to the NH Ledges for a lap. We were a ways behind Tony's group and no one was behind us so we had the river to really take our time and pick down different lines. I was trying out a new creek boat (think I am going to be getting a Bliss Stick Mystic) so was not feeling overly chargy any ways...It was a nice mellow end to a pretty action packed weekend......

Oh if I didn't mention this...if you are feeling your oats and can handle never ending class 4+ water read and run with a couple of really stout class 5 drops. Go see this river. It is AMAZING!!!!!

Here is a video from 4/10's runs... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6Yqb7vYLgU

Enjoy