The Vermont Paddlers Club

Finally we have some flow and it seems to be all in only one river....The Mad! What started out as a pre-meeting group, grew to 18 deep. Yes you read that correctly - we had 18 boaters on the river. I was late to arrive so walking down the put in path it was absolutely amazing seeing all of the boaters popping in and out of the eddies above Elevator Shaft (the first rapid of the Lower Mad).

It was a really fun night because all boaters were solid and everyone was pretty lose (even the swimmers were having fun). Every eddy was worked by our resident slalom expert Hugh Pritchard, Other studs were playing features up like they hadn't been on water in years and my not be again. I think everyone got two rides on the wave below 100b!

On to Horseshoe Falls....Most everyone ran the right side, some multiple times. There was lots of the eddy game on the lower rapid tons of play inbetween.

The Mad is a really good option when nothing else is running - I think all of us that are local and paddle it regularly take it for granted. IT is amazing the number of boater days it actually has a year.

Considering we put on at 4:30 and wrapped up shortly after 7pm I'd say there were 18 boaters that got off the river with perma-grins!

Lets hope for many many more days of flow this spring.....