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What an amazing two weeks that 11 Ledyardites had down in Ecuador this winterim. Here's to many more adventures youngins.
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It was another wonderful weekend of paddling for Ledyardites in the Northeast. Due to weeks of dry weather, it seemed like nothing was going to run Saturday so we were scrambling to figure something out. Luckily, at the last minute we got the message from the Vermont Paddlers Club that the Missisqoi (III-IV), a river way up north in Vermont would Release at 1300 cfs (lowish but still fun enough for 3 laps) and we came up with the master plan of combing that with a trip to the often running, but little run, Ausable Chasm (IV) @300cfs just over the state line in New York, and circumnavigating Lake Champlain in the process. At this level the Ausable was scrapey, but still awesome (any lower would lead to major pains in carrying boats over the shallow sections at the end). (Note: The biggest rapid on the river, Elephant Rock, is usually run river left of the boulder due to a dangerous undercut pocket at the bottom of the waterfall on river right, but at 300 cfs the left side is unrunnable so all except Esteban walked this rapid, Esteban had a clean line skirting the waterfall on a slide on river right. ) We paddled all day, narrowly escaped a thunder storm on the river, battled off mosquitoes and got home in the wee night hours. It was a fantastic day spent with Esteban Castano '14, Ari Koeppel '15, Isaac Green '17, Alex Lochoff'17 and Jesse Feldman-Stein '18. And while it seemed like the weekend couldn't get better, with night came rain. At 2:00 PM the next day, the same crew (except with Jon King '15 and not Isaac) headed to the famed New Haven River (IV+) in Vermont at an amazing level around 800-950cfs. It was big and fun. All was well, except for a harmless swim in the rapid before Toaster (an 18' waterfall) which led to the retirement of our yellow Nomad 8.1 as it went over the falls :,(. (Jon was unscathed). Cohaereamus, Ari Quick edit from two days of Spring Trip 2015. On a beautiful sunny day, 5 Ledyardites went to the Took to paddle it at high water. The West River in Vermont only runs a few times a year, on a dam release. Plenty of Ledyardites were able to make it to the fall release on September 27th. For over two weeks at the end of each summer a group of Ledyardites caravan up North to Dartmouth's Second College Grant. Here they operate as the support, safety and logistics team for the 30 some freshmen orientation trips that come through. Here is a video that covers some of the best moments from that special time in the Northern Woods.
In case Video doesn't work, find link here: https://vimeo.com/105553292  Six Ledyardites headed out to the Wells on Tuesday to attempt to clean up the areas along the put-in and take-out. Despite limited time and last-minute notice, the outing was a success! Trash was removed and rivers were conserved. Among some of the more substantial items found was an old television that had been lying broken along the bank for some time. After carefully bagging the broken glass, Alex and Dave hauled it up and out to the truck bed. There was also a significant amount of scrap metal buried in the ground, so beware if you plan on walking around barefoot. While scouting the river, we found a new downed tree upriver of the one that is currently blocking Tantric. Both still need to be removed. See Jesse Harris for more info. 
A classic ledyard gnarmada was at the dryway this sunday. A sunny day, a full van, a bunch of kayaks, one raft, and a really good time. Photo by Cat Mejia: 
We went over to the Sharon Dam on the white on Saturday. Flow was around 4000, which wasn't ideal, but it was still fun. Getting into the main feature on surfer's right was really difficult, though once in it you could do some spins / - I think 5000+ is probably the good zone (as UV Surf says...). The wave on surfer's left was interesting at this level too - you
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THE LCC BLOG
Where Ledyardites practice their hasty writing skills and show off sweet pictures of fun boating trips. Archives
December 2015
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