The Vermont Paddlers Club

Year #5 for the road tripers to make the pigrimage north to get after the goods in New England, specifically VT.

This year the crew was whittled down to just Jason and Dan driving up and for a change it was low key, low pressure. In addition it meant that I didn't have to drive around by myself as the other 1/2 of the shuttle carried on in the PA-party mobile. This year we were set. I had a small shuttle rig 125cc enduro that I could mount on the back of my truck and we all hauled around together for 3 days getting after what water was left of the measily runoff the lack-luster winter provided us with.

Day One... We got an alpine start, NOT!!!, and headed out the door around 11am to Warner New Hampshire. Neither Dan nor Jason had been in their boats since 2010 and wanted to get some warm-up action. The Warner was one of the only things running that they could get their "mellow" on. Blar - low manky and down-right pitiful. None the less we headed down it and left it littered with lots of little pretty, colorful plastic shavings..

Quickly we regrouped and headed north up I-91 to get in a lap on the Wells.... fun low risk creeking and even more fun when one of the guys has no idea what is over each horizon line but is more than willing to follow you off of them. Needless to say we bombed this run and had a blast - for the entire 20 minutes it took to get down it. Back to Monty-P and then on to Waterbury and the Prohibition Pig for some quality drafts.

Day Two..... Dan is one of those weirdo squirt boaters. A few years ago we hit the stuff up in NVT like the NBL, Gihon, Waterman and others at Amazing levels. However, the only thing Dan could talk about was this AWESOME seam he saw on the Lamoille at Ithiel Falls. So back to Ithiel we went for a few hours for Dan to get is down-time in before we headed over to only real thing that was running this weekend.....the Green River.... Yea we had convinced Morrisville Water and Light to give us a minimum, one tube release for the weekend. So after packing up Dan's Squirt Boat and gear, off to Wolcott we went for some amazingly fun creeking on a warm spring afternoon. Those of you that know the Green, know it starts with a bang no matter if you run the meat or the sneak. I didn't fail to entertain by running the meat of the sneak (Huh - wtf is Ryan talking about again). The left side of the sneak is a sure fire way to put a crease in the nose of your boat so that it looks a little like the backside of a super model. Makes for some really weird water dynamics too with that butt crack in there (resurfacing after Humble Pie). None the less it was caught on film and is pretty funny to watch. After that the run went without incident with Jason running all of the drops, Me walking the gorge and Dan walking Humble Pie. The run was as good as always and having the Moto Shuttle makes it just that much more fun to buzz up the back roads to get the Truck... Getting back in time to Monty-P for some killer Positive Pie Pizza and good local company.

Day Three...

Off we went in a southernly direction...I was hoping that maybe by some chance there would be some flow in the New Haven...NOPE, then we headed on town to the Midd and it was BONE DRY. Further south we went - looking at BB - Nothing and finally we headed out of Danby in an easternly direction toward the Mettawee.... A first for me but getting the guys headed in the right direction toward home. We ran all of the drops on the Mettawee except #2... Why mess with a rapid that is a known to be potentially lethal. I especially enjoyed triple drop - very cool feel to that rapid with the way it is walled in and the holes you must skirt. The last one was a blast too with the big spout/boof on the right side. Anyways - we wrapped it up and got moving in opposite directions. Jason and Dan to PA and I, back north to Monty-P.

It was a fun weekend even though it was the worst water we had seen in the 5 years we had been doing this. I am sure we'll be looking to hit the goods again in 2013.... Stay tuned - hope to have better stories for the PA to VT creek weekend then!