The Vermont Paddlers Club

100 Foot Fever – Joe’s Brook

November 1, 2021

It all started with a significant rain event on Halloween weekend. I received 3 inches of rain in Richmond with this storm and all the local rivers were going off.

Jamie put the call out on Sunday evening about a Joe’s Brook run on Monday. Tony immediately came down with 100 Foot (per mile) Fever and called in sick for Monday. Overnight, Jim too, came down with 100 Foot Fever and the Joe’s threesome was set.

It was a lovely early November day, sunny with a high about 55 in West Danville. A bit of a breeze at the put in and take out, but not down on the river.

At the Joe’s Pond dam we found the pond level to be about 5.1 on the gauge (very hard to read) and the bladder deflated. At the put in we saw “gauge rock” with a good pillow pouring over – maybe 3 or 4 inches? This led us to declare the level a solid “medium”.

A note that VT Creeks dot com’s correlation with Sleeper’s River predicted Joe’s to be too low to run on this day. So take that into account when determining if Joe’s is a go.

Since this was higher than the normal boat scraping low levels we are used to, we put a car at the midway point – the covered bridge – and would assess if we should do the lower half after experiencing what the upper half had to offer.

The rapids were nicely padded. As Tony said, “we didn’t leave much plastic out there today”. The sun made visibility challenging at times but you really cannot complain about that! There was some wood to contend with. A couple of river wide logs we could boof over, a couple that we could sneak around and couple we needed to carry. All the wood was in spots where we clearly saw it coming and the current was not too strong. There was some wood in some of the rapids – most significantly in the big slide– that alternated the usual lines.

We walked a couple of rapids (not Jamie of course) but everything else was read and run. It was nice to see Joe’s with a little juice. Tony and Jim set safety at the big slide for Jamie’s run and while getting hung up on a few FU rocks in the middle section trying to avoid the wood filled lines, he styled it. We finished with a bit of boogie water to the covered bridge.

We scouted the covered bridge rapid with no intention of running it. It is amazing when the boat is firmly on terra firma, the lines become crystal clear!

At this point we had enough and thought the more difficult section below the covered bridge would best be saved for another (warmer?) day.

All in all a great small team on a great river in Vermont on a glorious late fall day. What more could one ask???

JimP