New England Part 3: What creek am I describing?

Well...its a one mile long rapid that drops 600ft. Not specific enough for you? Ok...here we go.

1) Hike one mile up well worn trail on river left with boat. Scout well as you hike because you may not be getting out of your boat till the bottom.

2) Put on and run manky double water fall.

3) Dodge strainer

4) Run class V bolder garden while dodging strainers

5) Run the "notch" (Green narrows) twice in quick succession and then duck under log as you go over lip of "Big Boy" (Ravens Fork). Recover gear in boil below.

6) Run class V bolder garden and dodge strainers.

7) Run more class V with lots of strainers.

8) Run "Mike Tyson's Punch Out" (Ravens Fork) leading straight into slide even bigger and longer the "Mike Tyson's Punch Out".

9) At bottom of epic slide, do not stop (because you can't there is no pool or eddy), and run class V bolder garden.

10) End

If you guessed Cascade Brook (I scouted it at HIGH water) in NH, You are right!

Tell him what he has won Johnny!

Congratulations! You just won a pair of broken legs and testicles the side of globes!

In case you were wondering, I did not run it. But I guess people have run it. I really doubt they ran it at this level though. Here is the AW link. It does this creek NO JUSTICE!

Cascade Brook

Here are some pics from that day



Peace
Toby

New England Part 2: Upper Pemigewasset

One week after our Big Branch trip, the temperatures in the North East shot up. Any drainage with snow left was gonna shoot up. That is exactly what happened to the Upper Pemi.

I highlighted our Monday water level in yellow and our Tuesday water level in green.

All I can say is "Wow". What an incredibly awesome river. Maybe the most unique river I have ever paddled. If I took a picture of the put it, the half way mark, and the take out you would NEVER guess they were the same river. Such a large variety of of rapids including long bolder garden rapids that remind me "The Gauntlet" on Tallulah only these were longer and in some cases steeper.

The water was all snow melt, meaning it was incredibly clean and the geology is very unique. Our first run started out with a little excitement.

One of the first rapids is called "The Basin". It starts with a six foot drop leading into the actual basin drop. The Basin drop has a very awkward and narrow approach, making it hard to get a good stroke at the lip (if you can even call it a lip).

When you land at the bottom, you are now in "The Basin", a 40 foot diameter granite pot hole. I landed flat off the drop, but flipped in the boil at the bottom. After rolling up, I began to paddle toward the river right channel that flushes the basin. I guess I did not paddle with enough urgency because I got pulled back into the eddy. The walls of the pothole are totally smooth and overhanging.

Here is what I saw (Left the audio in place and included some footage of another rapid)
To see a higher quality version of this video, click here






Anyways, I lost my Lendal breakdown paddle, and a little chunk of my ego. I did go back the next day (higher water) and style the drop. So I feel a little vindicated.

But that was not the only carnage I encountered on that first run.

The most intense rapid on the river is called "Wham, Bam, Thank you Ma'am". Here is a picture taken on that Tuesday.

The first 1/3 of this rapid is rarely run due to some serious mank (I guess you could say nobody runs "wham").

So we seal launched off the a rock on the river right bank and ran the "bam, thank you ma'ma" part.

Here is the same picture depicting Travis line.Notice the gap in the red line...that was his down time. He described it as having his whole body squeezed by a giant.


Here is picture of my line...green means I was upside down.



I took a really hard hit to the head and lost the skin off most of the knuckles on my left hand.

I walked all of Wham Bam the next day. Less so because of the bad line from the day before, and more so because I had gotten beat down in a massive hole in the rapid just upstream of Wham Bam during the second run, and my nerves were shot.

With all that said, THIS RIVER IS INCREDIBLE.

Peace
Toby

New England Part 1: Big Branch, VT

Let me rewind a bit. If you have read any of my previous post, you have heard me bitch about going to school in FL. Well that phase of my life is over! I graduated in December, and moved back to NY.

So I will briefly describe the events of that move, and then continue on to the main topic of this post, the Big Branch in VT.

My brother flew down to Orlando to make the drive up to NY with me. My car was packed with everything I own including all my kayaks and gear. Although I was happy to have him joining me, I was a little disappointed because there was a lot of rain falling all along the eastern seaboard, and everything in TN,NC,WV,NY, and PA was running or would be running in the next two days. If my brother was not with me, I could have stopped in every state along the way to paddle. Unfortunately he had to get back to NY to work.

No worries though, we could just book it back to NY, and I could get some paddling in the Delaware Water Gap in PA.

My car broke down an hour after we started driving. Six hours later we had a Uhaul with the car in tow.

Its raining hard the whole time we are driving. I speak to Dave on the phone, and he describes all the awesome stuff he is going to be paddling in NC/TN/GA.

We get to NY very late at night. Every creek in the Delaware Water Gap is running high. I beg my dad to borrow his car the next day. I meet up with people I have never me before and run Adams Creek.

Pictured above is the first drop on Adams Creek. I wont take the time to describe the whole run, just know that it is epic. Here is are links to a video with some footage of that day, as well as a blog write up about the run.

Blog Post

Video

Fast forward four months.

I meet Travis on North East Paddlers Message board. He shows me down the Beerkill in the Catskills at low water. Really fun run. Can't wait to get on it at higher flows.

A few weeks later we drive up to run the Big Branch in VT. The best comparison I can make to Big Branch would be if you took everything on the Green River Narrows below Sunshine, took away all the flat water and made it steeper.

Here is a little video I made of our low water run down Big Branch. Only the first few rapids are shown. My camera quit on me.





Well that is all. Stay tuned for New England Part 2: Upper Pemi, and New England Part 3: Guess What Creek I am Describing...

Peace
Toby