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Elmore Pond what?
Friday Jun 12, 2015
Participants:
Kayak: Scott, Clay, Ben, Billy, Mike
Organizer: Scott
Difficulty: other
Level: medium low
Author: Mike M
It took quite awhile for the 2015 rains to arrive, but when they did around the start of June, they did so with vigor and stuck around for awhile. By the afternoon of June 12th the New Haven was headed north of 3000 and Billy was kind enough to get a Ridley visual, finding it too high... and there were at least two more heavy bands of rain waiting to nail most of northern Vermont. We made plans to head north and find something to paddle... maybe Sterling, maybe the Green... but hopefully not getting flash-flooded in the process.
Heading up through Stowe Scott called and told us Elmore Pond Brook was in and did we want to check that out?
Elmore Pond what?
Elmore Pond Brook is the tiny creek that drops from Elmore Pond down into the Lamoille, right across from the Green. Back when the Green first came onto everyone's radar, Ryan pointed out that there was potential for dam control here, and that there was gradient and maybe someday this would be a dam-release run. Then I think Dave mentioned two clean waterfalls... but I may have imagined that. Then everyone promptly forgot about it.
Heading up through Morrisville the skies really opened up and it just kept pouring. We put in right above the bridge and found the first half-mile to be fairly flat and choked with (fortunately pliable) Dogwood. Once the creek entered the woods the brush thinned a bit, and things steepened into some decent class II-III, which persisted for quite a ways with a lot of wood. I think in the first mile of real creek we might have been in and out of our boats 4 or 5 times to carry around wood, and probably squeezed under twice that many logs. Without the wood it would be pleasant enough though there weren't really any defined or memorable rapids... sort of like a slightly wider, slightly shallower, slightly less steep, somewhat less twisty Patterson-Martins.
After another mile or so of this we came to a surprisingly sweet, somewhat out of control boulder garden. Not far below was another steeper one that Ben ran quite smoothly... but had sketchy wood in the last drop so the rest of us carried. Below this was a more bedrocky drop that had either a sieve or rib-smasher rock that we carried, and then another boulder garden with more wood. We ran (as in, paddled) a sneak through the woods on the left (yes, through the woods), plunking into a big mud puddle where there was just a short carry back into the main channel. Below here things relaxed with a half-mile or so of wood-free boogie that was actually decent enough before we hit the large, muddy Lamoille and paddled out a mile to the takeout.
After this Scott bought us beers in Morrisville so we wouldn't hate him... not that we did but pretending to is a great way to get free pints.
