Raquette 8-21

Another summer weekend, another trip to the Raquette...This time, Ben had had an unfortunate fight with some pavement at 2am the Thursday night prior and had 15 stitches in his forehead. But, we figured it'd be fine and he came along anyway. We encountered a moose on Midd Gap who seemed pretty unamused, but stood there while we took his picture:

Moose. (Photo Ben Peters).

We also took a new route to the Raquette with my apparently amphibious Outback:

Ben's new toy thinks my car is a boat. (Photo Peters).

Unfortunately, it turns out that having fifteen stitches and a badly bruised shoulder is not conducive to class V, so Ben didn't make it more than one rapid, though his boat continued right on through to the top of the next rapid, Colton Falls. It pinned pretty solidly in the lead-in and we couldn't get it off, but a heroic young Middlebury student named Morgan came by, pinned himself on the boat, unpinned it, and then ran the horseshoe boof in Colton from the wrong side backwards, freeing the boat.

Me (Nick Gottlieb) airing it out on the horseshoe boof at Colton. (Photo Chris Zentner).

Later on lap one, we get to Particle Accelerator and Alan explains the line to Chris as, "Don't flip over." Moments later, upside down, it was clear that Chris had forgotten the line and rolled up at the bottom with a badly scraped up arm. Meanwhile, I almost swam in the eddy at the bottom of the drop after washing up onto a rock and falling over.

Me driving over the boof on the slide on Colton (Photo Peters).

By lap two we'd already lost two paddlers (Chris and Ben). Lap two went well for most of us but Simone had a wicked piton in the Tubs followed by a missed line (he flipped over) in Particle Accelerator that left him bracing in the pool with two half paddles.

Alan Panebaker with some airtime over the horseshoe; me in the eddy. See if you can scout the beer bottle in the photo (Photo Peters).

For lap three we lost another three paddlers, but fortunately gained three more. One of them flipped on the slide in Colton. Then Christian Woodard (who was more drunk than he should've been from the takeout beers he'd been consuming when we found him) tried to freewheel the 3' boof at the nothing rapid two after Colton (Mushroom?) and pitoned, getting worked in the hole and losing his paddle and swimming. A quick regroup and we routed through the Gnarrows only to have Christian and Morgan both get surfed in the middle hole of the Tubs but manage to sneak away OK. Clean lines through Particle Accelerator and that last little drop. The Raquette can certainly dish it out when it wants.

USFS Project on the Big Branch

A few NH/VT boaters and I have been in an email conversation with the USFS for a few weeks about a proposed project to place large woody debris (LWD) into the headwaters of the Big Branch. Naturally, we were all pretty concerned -- LWD is the kind of thing that kills boaters. The USFS has been very receptive to our concerns and altered their plans to try to minimize impact on us and offered to meet with local boaters at the Big Branch to discuss the project. Today, Adam Herzog and I drove over there to meet with them and check it out. Would've been nice if a few other boaters had showed up, but at least we were there.

A shitty picture of Adam on one of the bigger drops of the Upper Mile at 4'.

They were very informative and overall, it sounds like their project won't affect paddlers. They are going to be dropping logs into upper stretches of the Big Branch and into parts of another tributary, Ten Kiln Brook. Typically, they only drop logs that are longer than the river is wide. They want the wood to stay put as much as we do, or the whole project will have been pointless. All the logs on the Big Branch itself will be above a culvert, meaning even in large floods they probably couldn't make it through into the stretches we paddle. The Big Branch wilderness -- and much of the Green Mountain National Forest -- was logged and otherwise torn apart 100+ years ago. Many of the trails in the area are on old road beds. There's one that runs down river right from the putin through below cave drop that's pretty obvious. The whole forest up there is very young so the stream doesn't have the dead trees falling into it that it should, meaning the river habitat needs some pushing and prodding to get back to its natural state.

Xavier Engle boofing Cave Drop.

A couple things to note. First, they mentioned that because of the age the forest is reaching, we should expect to see more and more trees naturally falling into the river -- so be careful. Second, they're happy to collaborate with us on all their projects. You can sign up to be notified of any river projects they are considering (or actively pursuing) and contact them if you're concerned about the impact they may have on paddlers. Finally, they're very receptive to our concerns so if you ever have an issue, send them a polite email or give a call and they'll be happy to discuss it.

Assorted boaters cruising down the last drop by the takeout bridge.

Also -- one of their current projects is on Bingo Brook, and one of the guys there mentioned the idea of building a whitewater park there in a way that would help both fish habitat and whitewater boaters. I doubt they have a ton of money, but if anyone else has any other ideas for whitewater parks inside their jurisdiction, it might actually go somewhere if you get in touch with them.

They also suggested we check out Lake Brook, a tributary of the Big Branch at the end of one of the forest service roads up there. Turns out it's definitely a wide enough river bed to be runnable. Gotta look a little closer to decide if it's ever worth it (based on gradient), but if you get up to the Big Branch and it's over the gauge sometime when the road is open, well...give it a shot, drive up to the end of the road and put in. Could be fun.

Summer is Boating Season in New England?

In a shocking twist of events...it turns out summer is boating season in New England. The New Haven has run at least once a week for the last month, and northern VT went huge on Wednesday (5" of rain in places), with another big storm coming through southern VT on Thursday. Not to mention dam releases.

So -- Wednesday, No. VT got anywhere from 2-5 inches of rain. Ben couldn't leave till 4pm, so at 4, we drive up to Joe's Brook, find a good low side of medium level. We drove up to the dam to check out the slide up there -- didn't end up hiking down to see the BF Slide, but I liked the looks of the dam-slide right below it and will be taking a look at it the next time I'm up there as well...It's a bouncy 40 or 50' slide that's pretty steep. Major issue is the mandatory piton/boof onto rocks that is the dam above, and there's no way to put in between them. We headed down and put in at the bridge about a mile above the covered bridge. Covered bridge rapid was great. I had a massive piton on the first lap so hiked up again and eddy-hopped down the thing the second time around. We don't have a lot of pictures since we ended up taking out early due to it being pitch black and 9:30pm.

Here's me on the last drop of the Covered Bridge Rapid. Photo Ben Peters.

Thursday, So. VT looked like it got a lot of rain. Arlington claimed 2", Big Branch rain gauge claimed .07", but we decided to head there first anyway. Lo and behold, the Big Branch was lower than I have ever seen it. Definitely mountain biking level. So we kept driving south...and every drainage was just about dry. Eventually, we got to the Roaring Branch in Arlington and it looked barely runnable, so we drove up till it was too small and put on. There were a few fun drops and a lot of very shallow boogie.

Friday night, Ben and I drove up to Colton, NY for the Raquette release on Saturday. After a late bacon filled morning, Alan, Simone, and Erik met up with us at the putin. It was Ben's first time so we scouted Colton and watched the usual crowd of boaters mess up the line every which way and turn out just fine, so we put on and routed it. On lap one, we took out river right after Particle Accelerator and hiked back up. Lap two, paddled all the way to the conventional takeout (which apparently nobody uses anymore) and luckily managed to hitch a ride with some locals. I ran shuttle for lap three, the other guys took out river left at Particle Accelerator and hiked up the tube to the road. As always, more pictures are available on my Picasa.

Me being steezy on the boof-to-slide at Colton. Check out my one elbow pad. Photo Erik Debbink.

Ben Peters on the first drop of the Tubs.

Alan Panebaker on the second drop of the Tubs.

Erik Debbink cruising down the slide part of Colton Falls. Alan and Simone Orlandi in the eddy.

New Haven River, VT

39 days out and I'm creeking again...it didn't even hurt that bad. The New Haven River is a mile of excellent low-stress creeking: slides, boulder gardens, funky slots, a waterfall, and the fact that it comes up easily combine to make this one of the best miles of river in New England. Below 1000 cfs, it's only really IV+, but it's still good fun, and when it seems to get hit by every thunderstorm and run at least once a week in the summer (when just about nothing else runs), that's perfectly fine. Went up last Thursday and shot a few pictures.

Ben Peters on Toaster, the 15 foot waterfall

Kurt Kostyu on the aptly named All American Boof

Back on the Water

5 weeks out and I'm paddling again...35 days without whitewater is too long. Two laps on the Dryway (Deerfield River, MA) today with the Ledyard crew. Snapped a few cool photos:

Labyrinth wave.

The crew in Dragon's Tooth.

Also went to the Black River Festival last weekend...it's a fun time. I wasn't kayaking, but I did attempt to surf an inflatable pool. I took a lot of pictures at Hole Brothers so if you were there there might be a few shots of you on my Picasa.

Dave Goldberg surfing Hole Bros.

A Yule Creek Epic

After a quick pit-stop for breakfast burritos, Nick, Xavier, Ben and I drove to the town of Marble where the infamous Yule Creek was told to be. We made it to Beaver Lake, and looking across, were greeted with an impressive view of a chasm that split the mountain range; an inferno of falling water—this was what we were looking for. We loaded up on one car and drove to the top of the creek. After a conversation with a gun-slinging cowboy about a 60 footer that killed one person and maimed two others, we started to hike down past an unrunnable section looking for a reasonable put-in.

The river was fairly gorged out, and after angeling through several rapids, we all skidded into eddies above an intimidating horizon line. Xavier was in the lead and routed straight off the lip, deciding to boof at the last minute, which turned out to be the line. The drop started with a 3 foot folding ledge with a killer seam, followed by a 30ish foot drop. Halfway down the flow is broken up by a ledge with a landing pad in the middle and a pile of rocks on either side—a must-make boof. I shimmied out of my boat and peeked over the lip where I could see Xavier in the pool below. He was fine and signaled boof and transition onto rocks, so I turned to Nick who was barely hanging in an eddy at the lip. “Boof this ledge, then boof a 20 footer.” I relayed, not wanting to freak him out. “Boof hard.” I added as he peeled out and disappeared over the horizon line.

What ensued was one of the most stressful moments of any of our lives. Nick missed the boof, and rather than transitioning smoothly, pitoned the ledge, bouncing onto the rock pile upside-down before landing in the pool. We all froze, petrified with the possibility of what may have just happened. It couldn’t have been more than a second, but it felt like time was standing still until Nick busted a quick roll and made his way to shore, yelling in pain. As the adrenaline wore off he realized he could not move his left arm. After trying to reduce what appeared to be a dislocated shoulder, Nick and Xavier began hiking back up the trail on river right to a bridge that led to the car. I took his fully loaded boat and bushwhacked a nearly half mile straight vertical to the road and stashed his boat while Ben took a look at what lay downstream.

Nick's Drop from below.
DISCLAIMER: we had some camera issues so the pictures of this run really don't do it justice.

Nick was fine to drive, so he decided to take himself to the hospital. Reassured that he would be alright, the remaining three of us hiked back into the canyon to continue the run. Our day had barely started and already we were one man down. We portaged a few not-so-clean ledges, then put on with shadow of what had just happened on all of our minds. From here we ran through some “warm up slides” that we looked at on the drive up. On any other run these drops alone could be the main attraction, but on Yule they hardly deserved a second look.

Its easy to tell when you’ve come to the big four. After a half mile of read and run class four, the canyon will open into an exposed V shape and the river will fall off the edge of the world. Although the sides of the canyon are at about a 60 degree angle, on the right they are entirely covered in bits of shale that you can scramble over for relatively easy yet heart-pounding scouting. We had a good crew for this run. Although there was a moment of “What have we gotten ourselves into?” as we caught our first glimpse of the big boys, after a minute of going over possible lines we were all ready and fired up to go.

Professor X getting Nervous

The first pair of drops is a 30-footer stacked on top of a huge slide which careens 90 degrees to the right, smashing into the left wall at the bottom. I lost rock paper scissors, so I worked to get a good photo angle of the drop while Xavier ane Ben ran it with good lines. At Lower flows there is a pool to eddy out in between the two drops, yet at this level nearly all the outflow from aptly-named Nervous Falls pushed straight off the lip of Wall Check.

Ben Dropping In...

...And Wall-Checking like a boss

It was now my turn. I hopped in my boat and paddle through the lead-in. The lip of this drop is truly surreal. All you can see when approaching the 30 footer is the lake in the distance at the take-out, about a mile away and what seems like a mile down. I busted right which looked like the cleanest line at this level, and as I went overt the lip the entire sequence appeared before me, almost out of thin air—a view that will literally take your breath away. I tucked up at the last second and hit the pool hard with an explosion of pain in my left ear. I suddenly remembered hurting my ear earlier in the week, but managed to push the stars out of my mind with the mental image of what I was floating towards upside-down. Just in time, I rolled practically as I was going over the lip. Fortunately I was lined up perfectly where I wanted to be and blasted down the slick rock, riding high up the left wall until it fell away and I flew over the hole into the pool below. This is probably the coolest drop I’ve ever run, the shape of the rock along with the direction of the water creates an incredibly dynamic line. Ben and Xavier were waiting on the rocks below so I hopped out to join them and scout Oriental Massage, the biggest of the run.

This drop is basically just a huge straight slide with several rooster tails and flakes to deal with. Wary of the right side where a piton had broken a paddle and helmet the day before, we took a few minutes talking about where we wanted to be setting up for this cascade. I went first, entered center with slight left angle and hit the first rooster tail perfectly. After a moment of weightlessness, I skidded down the second half of the slide and sailed off a kicker into the pool at the bottom. Ben and Xavier followed with similar lines and we all dropped the last waterfall, a 5-foot vertical tongue onto a 20 foot auto-boof flake, stoked but relieved to be at the bottom unscathed. Elated, we paddled out to the lake where a car was waiting, picked up Nick’s boat and went to meet him in Glenwood.

Me preparing for an Oriental Massage. The final drop is visible far right.

This run reminded me of a New England creek done Colorado style. There was a manky lead-in, complete with rock-filled landings, pitons and the occasional railroad tie pinned in a rapid. The paddle out had some wood in it, but in between are some of the biggest, sickest slides you could imagine. For me, this run truly lived up to all the hype.

According to the doctor, Nick escaped with just a broken collarbone, not bad considering what could have happened. We’re now driving back to the northeast where I’ll be flying home from. Although this incident put an end to our plans for another month in California, it opened other opportunities. Nick will take classes this summer and have next winter available for a trip to Ecuador, while I should be able to get on some Washington classics before they drop out. It was cut off early, but at least the road trip went out with a bang.

A Week in Colorado's Front Range

We arrived in Fort Collins at 5 AM after two days and two nights of driving. Here we were staying at alum Xavier Engle’s house. After some confusion with his roommate (who apparently almost shot us), we crashed for the night and woke up ready to paddle.

Xavier took us out to their local bread and butter run the Poudre at 4.5 feet that afternoon where we lapped the narrows and ran through the marathon stretch. This was stomping high and it was fun to be back on some technical big water after scraping down rocks during the New England creeking season.

The crux move of the Lower 'Gnarrows.'
Hard to get perspective without paddlers but this hole is actually huge

The next day we woke up and rallied early to run Joe Right and Spencer Heights, two sections of the Poudre further upstream which have a creekier feel, are more technical and slightly more demanding than the lower runs.

Nick Entering Carnito on Joe Wright

Me Boofing the Carnito Flake. Photos courtesy Evan Stafford,
check out his full report at Poudre Rock Report.

From there we drove to Idaho Springs where we stayed with our boy Brandon Gonski and his fellow raft guides at the Surf Shack. After a fun night out, we enjoyed a mellow day in true raft guide fashion, played some Frisbee golf, then ran Black Rock canyon in the evening with Chris. This was a fun, continuous big-water class 4 section with a few 5’s mixed in.

We stayed another night with the crew at the Surf Shack, then headed back towards Boulder for some front range creeks that were apparently going off. We stopped and scouted high water Eldo on our way up, and decided it was a pile of mank that definitely goes, but would most likely leave you with a broken boat and a bruised tailbone. Props to some local folks who ran this as part of the Sick Bird Loop the next day, a challenge which involves 5-11 B trad climbing, biking over a pass, then running South Boulder Creek all the way through Eldo all in a day. We opted for the mellower Boulder Creek, but put in a few miles above the normal run for more exitement and a few bigger drops.

Eldo, some classic Colorado Mank

Bombing through this run was awesome, we only caught a few eddies in the upper section above horizons that looked like they might land on rocks. It was a nice change of pace after all the pushy technical big water we’d been running. At the takeout we met up with Ellen and Laura, two other Ledyardites who had just arrived in CO on their way to Fibark. We had a little gypsy party on a dirt pullout across from the takeout where we fired up the grill and made dinner. At this point we were truly getting into the swing of the dirtbag lifestyle.

A rapid above the put-in on Boulder

Gypsy Style

We spent the night at ’08 Clara’s house and woke up early to drive to Lyons where we met up with Xavier and a crew of Front-range paddlers to run the North Saint Vrain. After driving along a hiking trail to the put-in, there was a 45 minute trek to the river which avoided an upstream portagefest and got us straight to the goods. After an eventful lead-in, things began going smoothly once we got to the meat of the run. This run is fairly short and the crux is a half-mile long stacked boulder garden. Another steep 45-minute hike out boats loaded with wet gear was just what we needed for a little bit of “Cali Training.” From here the plan was to either head to Fibark for the night or run Gore Canyon at high water then hit Crested Butte and OBJ, but we were all pretty beat and decided to rest up for the next day. Luckily for us, we heard Yule Creek was running on the high side of good. Yule is one of those runs that has been a long-term goal for me, something I’d set my sights on ever since the days I was a little webelo paddler, watching kayaking videos until the VCR ate the tape. With this gem in sight, Nick, Xav and I made the trek to Glenwood where we spent the night and met up with Ben Luck.