The Vermont Paddlers Club

It had the makings of a wonderful day. Five experienced paddlers on a sunny day on Joe’s Brook. Well, it was a wonderful day but not as first imagined. The water was at a stout level. Water was flowing well over the gauge rock and the turbines adding their share. We encountered wood from the get go.  Mainly trees bowing in the river that we were able to paddle around or through.  But there was also plenty of random logs in the water.  There also were plenty of ice shelves.  The first rapid, island rapid, had a healthy combination of both, with a fair amount of water juicing it (there was no island at this level).  Nothing too hard but consequences (ice shelves) could be vexing.  Tony was particularly concerned with the ice shelves.  While I ran it without mishap it apparently did not inspire any confidence. All others decided to walk.  Island rapid is quickly followed by S turn (where we had to portage last year due to wood).  Oddly enough, this river trip got interesting on the portage.

I was on river left waiting for others to get back on. Eric was the first to come over and indicated he had his fun factor filled for the day.   He was ready to walk out. The river was much higher then he had ever run it and he was in a new boat that he was still getting used to. Again, Eric and I were on river left, everyone else on river right. Tony indicated (I thought) he and Tad were ready to call it a day and were going to walk out river right. I relayed this to Eric (on river left) and he decided to crest the steep bank and put in the class II downstream to cross over and join Tony and Tad. During this Sarah lost her boat into the river while she was portaging.  She lost her grip on it while trying to climb the steep uphill on river right. I saw it float past but wasn’t able to help as I was out of my boat. Sarah got my attention and indicated she was off on boat retrieval. We were now five people in four different places, none within sight of the other.  Nice! Suffice it to say we eventually regrouped, retrieved her boat from the middle of the river (class II rapids), walked the next two drops (the three foot ledge and a small slide) and took out at the first bridge we came to. While Tony was particularly interested in going on to the covered bridge (two more significant rapids) where we had left a car, we called it a day.  We had gone maybe three miles in 2 1/2 hours. Paraphrasing Sarah “We used a lot of skills that day though paddling wasn't really one of them”.