The Vermont Paddlers Club

After a series of postings canceling the NB Lamoille I was a little disappointed but understood James's reasons. After a few late e-mails and quiet discussions, an unofficial trip transpired.

At 10 am Saturday morning a group of well balanced paddlers decided to help James redeem himself on the river.

We started off on the upper section and all most everyone ran the first drop. We then hit the small surf wave below the bridge and paddled off.

I was surprised at how fun the river was turning out although I expected all the drops to be ledgy like the first few drops. But has we continued down stream in to the section known as the "gorge"...more dense tree lined in, in my opinion, than the walled in gorge I expected. But the formation of the river surprised me and it tuned out to be a lovely continuous technical class 3+. As we ventured down James warned us of the "event area from the week before" and that a couple of us should scout. We hopped out and I somehow missed everyone that was left in the water run it. I looked at the line but was a little hesitant, but decided I could make it. I got Simon to run it directly in front me just in case I messed up I made the perfect line...But to everyone's delight James redeemed himself and made it through uneventful...Blame the Java James...It is always the boats fault!!

We continued down stream and suddenly we were at the take out or put in for the lower section...But nobody took off...I think it was just too perfect of a day, Blue sky's sunshine and a great group of paddlers.

We scouted mill drop and Simon and I decided to run it first..We perfectly landed the lines...But I missed the must make eddy and caught the micro eddy above the next drop...unfortunately I missed the ferry to the right hand slot and slowly flipped and went down in to the left hand slot...taking the biggest hole beating (I actually swam before the hole) but it doesn't matter what ever way I would have landed the hole I would have "had my ass handed to me" as my friend D likes to say. Everyone else made it through totally unawares of my swim...I should have kept my mouth shut!!

I carefully scouted the next set of ledges with everyone else and decided with Luke to just check out the bottom drop...The advance paddlers of our group were making it look easy and tempting...but I was unsure. Luke decided to run and unfortunately took the second hole beating of the day...but without him his boat decided to run it anyway!!

This made this decision to portage around easy. So I joined everyone at the bottom drop, Luke was reunited with his boat and we all ran the bottom drop..what a perfect ending to a perfect day. The whole group was inspirational, new friends were made, redemptions were earned and sandwiches & MM's shared. Fantastic!!