The Vermont Paddlers Club

So Saturday 16th of October we all meet up at the cottage in Old forge. Four intermediate boaters contemplate running the Middle and Lower Moose. The big hardcore guys listening to out conversation seriously advised at the current levels to skip the middle and just run the lower...we all felt we wouldn't get the warm up required before plunging ourselves down a grade 4 run. We opted for the last 3 miles on the Middle followed by the Lower. We were sooooo glad we didn't run the middle.

More flat, flat sucks, I hate flat...if I see any more flat I am taking off and hiking out...where's the take out I am sick of flat...and flat sucks...they were many of the comments heard from our mouths as we run the lower section. I have to say out of the 13miles we run only about 1 mile was worthy of being classed as white water and worthy white water it was. We managed to catch the last few grade three drops on the middle which wetted our appetite for the big drops to come. We remembered the other guys warning us of the first drop and we should scout. We eagerly scouted from the bank, it looked fairly straight forward. The fact you couldn't see all the drops made it difficult. The last being the most difficult, the line was hard right, if you took the left you were sure to be eaten in the hole. Two out of four made the incorrect line and got munched and the hole managed to spit out one swimmer. The other two made the correct line by strangely following someone who they thought was me??? Only to realize it was somebody else in the same boat. The next was rooster tail. We saw people scouting so thought it would be sensible to scout as well...my god it wasn't worth the effort of squeezing ourselves out of our boats feeling the chill of the cold air to realize this drop was super easy with a huge fluffy rooster tail dead centre which was our mark for lining up to run it...no problemos.

Have I mentioned the flat bits...low, flat and some places if we didn't quite follow the main current we would find ourselves beached and have to scrape and drag ourselves to the safety of not much deeper water.

The next drop was froth hole...a scary diagonal ledge drop with a nasty piton rock to the right. We scouted it carefully and took the advise of other paddlers on what line to take. Will runs the perfect line leaving Luke and Me in the eddy above looking for the perfect line...which I couldn't see. I neared the edge slowly in the hope that someone scouting would direct me...they sort of waved at me...oops I was a bit too close for my liking to the piton rock, but I survived and was quite chuffed I made it over. Luke despite following me made a nice line.

So the monster of all holes appeared next, Mix Master. I was way too tired by now to even considering making the necessary line. Dora agreed and we portaged around to watch the guys . Will did it with little effort. I then wished I had done it for all of about two seconds. As we all watched Luke flip in the worst possible place and take a huge hole beating. He flushed rather regrettably as a swimmer.

We came upon the last drop Elevator shaft. By this time I was too tired to even get out of my boat to scout it from land. I edged my boat up to the two options of drops and decided one was too nasty to even consider, I paddled to the right and noticed a lovely drop, a nice couple waved at me from their open canoe to take the line, so I did and it was fantastic. I shouted to the others follow, but I noticed Dora had nicely spotted a easy sneak chute which she took.

We thought we had finished and prayed for the take out which as per usual was a couple of miles of flat first....I HATE FLAT, FLAT SUCKS.

We were advised to take out above the bridge, but the last rapid at the take out bridge looked way to good. It looked the perfect way to end then run. We ploughed down through the ledge drops to finish the run at 4.30pm....definitely a good job we didn't run the middle we would have been taking off in the dark.

Personally I wouldn't consider running this again unless the gauge was showing around 3.5ft and above.