The Vermont Paddlers Club

The trip schedule called for the Lower New Haven, which is always a bit of crap shoot, but too low for this day. After a bit of discussion we settled on North Branch of the Lamoille. It was a cool day (40 degrees) and as we approached we saw snow Waterville we saw snow up in the mountains, we wondered if maybe John had made the right call to go skiing today. The gauge was sitting at the line below 2 ft (call it 1.5). Although, cloudy and cool the gorge was beautiful as always. No drama through the gorge as the 5 of us picked our way down hitting the occasional rock but it was largely fluid.

Running the first drop of the Waterville ledges found each of us getting hung at the top as the left hand slide was not particularly fluid and most of the water was flowing to the right. Ultimately, we all ran cleanly. The rest of ledges ran cleanly with only the occasional snagged rock. We stopped at the bottom island to scout the left channel. As rumoured the first drop on the left side looked a bit nasty with a rock in the middle channel of a 6 foot drop. What was more unnerving was to see water disappearing into a gap between rocks on the left side just above the drop. Also at the bottom a flow of water disappeared into a cave on the left. The rest of that side looked pretty manky with significant wood in the second drop. It was pretty clear to us why the right side is preferred.

We agreed that this level is about a low as any of us would care to run this but everything went and there were no significant difficulties. All in all a great day paddling with great people.