The Vermont Paddlers Club

Several emails and message board posts later, we still hadn’t decided where to paddle – whether in VT or NY - on the Friday Jamie, Tina, John, and I had set aside to ski Tuckerman’s. The whole Tuckerman’s idea was something my daughter Katy cooked up: “Let’s ski Tuckerman’s, dad, before you’re too old to do it”. Bah! But the conditions in the ravine sounded too treacherous for everyone’s taste, and still undecided about VT or NY we found a river to split the difference, so to speak.

It’s been years since I’ve run the Poultney below Fair Haven, but I remember it fondly. It was after noon when we arrived at the Vermont Welcome Center, the usual put-in for this ledgy class III-IV run that holds water better than a lot of VT/NY rivers after a heavy May rainstorm (like the one we had on Tuesday). The lip of the first drop on the Poultney is visible looking north from the US 4 bridge between Whitehall NY and Fairhaven VT, but to our dismay precious little water was disappearing over that lip.

In contrast, when John and I drove a few minutes earlier to leave his car at the take-out at the Carver Falls dam, a TON of water was spilling over the 120+ foot series of waterfalls cascading below the dam. Scratching our heads, and braving the poison ivy at the put-in, we picked our way downstream, scraping down the first ledge drop with the only casualties being to plastic. Moments later we had a really fun time accelerating down the big slide below the RR bridge, despite the fact that this was the lowest level I’ve ever seen this feature. After Eric (going first as usual) got spun around backward on some exposed pointy rocks on river right below the slide, Ken (admitted later) he had visions of a detour through the ER on the way home from close encounters with exposed riverbed. But instead, the 3 of us in hard shell boats came through the tailrace of the big slide without incident.

By the time we got to the confluence with the Castleton River, it had dawned on me that inflow from this tributary (which drains Lake Bomoseen) was the wildcard that accounted for the 575 cfs real-time gauge reading on the USGS “Poultney Below Fairhaven” website. From here down, the flow on the Poultney was easily quadrupled, and all the remaining ledge drops and rapids were challenging and/or delightful. I was happy to have brought the Phat (my c-boat) because in the open canoe I would have had to stop and empty out repeatedly, the waves were that big.

Until the last big feature, everything was read-and-run, but the terminal hole just left of the island on the final drop gave everyone pause, in part because a submerged tank-sized pillow rock just downstream of the “frowning” hole made swimming out of the feature seem iffy. Eric, in great spirits and good form, looking the most confident we’ve seen him since he started paddling the Thrill Seeker/Duckie, cleaned the opening ledge, hugged the right bank to get right of the island (safely avoiding the big hole), and then managed to strand his TS on the slippery island where he set safety in case one or the other of us got pushed (or sucked) into the hole. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad a hole as it appeared, but thankfully one by one we all took various routes above - over the first pourover - and then all managed to get right and stay right, avoiding the hole completely.

The new chain link fence at the take-out has a break at one end so that if you are careful you can paddle right up close to your shuttle vehicle, but whatever you do don’t get too close to the dam or it will be the last thing you do. We went for a little exploratory hike down below the dam once in dry clothes with boats all on John’s car, discovering that OMG Carver Falls is a sight to behold, particularly with several hundred CFS of water coming down, around, over, and through.