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| At the put-in |
I was up at 4:00 a.m., and
met Paul at the MacDonald’s at 5:00 a.m. for the early morning drive up the Westfest
on the West River in Jamaica, VT. We left early so we could meet a CTAMC group at
8:00, but those plans went awry when I took a sleep-deprived wrong turn on to Route 35 in
Townshend.
By the time we
reached Jamaica State Park, the CTAMC crew had already taken the shuttle up to
the put in. No problem. Charlie
Sweet was waiting in the shuttle line, so we paddled with him
for the rest of the day.
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| Charlie |
The shuttle started
at 8:30, but the release wouldn’t ramp up to its full release level of 1500 cfs
until 10:00. The river on the first run was a
little lower, and a little more technical with more rocks to dodge, but I liked it. I did the S-turn at the Dumplings - hugging the rock at the top, and then sneaking down the left side.
As I pulled my solo
boat into the take out, I saw Dave Draper waiting. The plan was for at least one tandem run with Dave in his
Caption – we ended up doing two.
By the time we got on
the river for our second run, the river had reached its full release
level. The Caption is a great
boat, and very stable, but we had a hard time keeping water out. Maybe it was just poor route selection
by the bow paddler (me), but we had to pull over to empty the boat after pretty
much every big rapid.
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| Paul |
At the Dumplings, we
took the left line, and were able to eddy out behind the second rock before
heading down the left side to avoid the big waves.
With a little
confidence after a successful second run, we decided to hike up to the dam to
run Initiation on our third run. The line is just left of the small rock at the top (to avoid the rocks
at the top on the right), then go right to avoid the big hole, and then catch the
eddy right side. We filled up with
water in the big hole and got spun around backwards, but made it to the eddy
before tipping over.
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| Dave and Erik |
After the third run I
knew I was done. The shuttle line was short, so Paul headed back for one more
run – a 15-minute shuttle ride up, and a 17-minute bomber-run back down.
As tough as it was to
get up at 4:00 in the morning, I did like getting an early start. We got two
runs in before 11:30 with no lines at the shuttle - including the lower water run. Unfortunately, there is always too much going on to take many pictures.
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