The Vermont Paddlers Club

Whew - I have a lot of runs on the NBW but this may have been the lowest yet. The three bags ones were about as sketchy as they get for low flows and the lesser drops offered up multiple piton potential as well.

That being said the group bucked up and we pointed our boats down into one of the true gems of Vermont. After a handful of warm up ledges ranging in height from 3-6 feet we came to the first real drop. Broken Drop was showing it's fangs Friday with a very narrow landing zone between two pieces of broken ledge. The whole group ran it cleanly right down the green finger of water and though to the pool below....No problem. The next major drop which is more or less the first of the big'uns was really bony with the right line looking like the only line...at least to me. Jamie however took the path less traveled and worked a right to left move down the face of this drop and made it look very clean. The mank mank in-between this drop and Big Bouncy was almost too damn shallow to run but we banged our way down it with some of us portaging a small segment. We all walked Big Bouncy paddled down through the pipe and then took a look at the 8 footer that is wicked shallow. Some of us ran it with more success than others with only on really ugly piton at the bottom. Next was the sliding board....Stay WAY LEFT on this one. Jamie was kissing the left wall the entire way down. Francis very much the same except for a slight variation at the end and I ran the same line as Francis. We all walked Double drop (WAY TOO LOW). The next drop was Cave Drop - again the nice slide into the mini gorge was out of play as no water was punching over it. We actually had to seal launch in on a thin lubed up slide with some assistance. Our only swim of the day occurred at Cave. A short paddle to the slack water of the Final Drop and we all pulled here.

It was a really long paddle on the NBW at close to 4 hours. No one got hurt. Everyone came away with a big smile. It was a beautiful day to be in a beautiful river valley in Vermont. I was glad to be of the river by the time we pulled up the bank and the ice cold PBR in my truck couldn't have been calling my name any louder.

A great day on a great river....

Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqa8BWFUF9Q&feature=channel