2017 Year End Review

Thursday Night Tville

2017 started off with a New Year’s Day run on the Housatonic, and ended with an early December trip to the Slatersville Reservoir. In between, it was another great year for paddling.  

I did 56 trips this year, which is a little below my 7-year average of 58 trips. I did a few new trips including the Housatonic, the White, and Great Swamp. As always, I did a lot of RICKA trips, and helped to organize the Flatwater Training at Stump Pond and the SUP Night at Lincoln Woods. I also did several trips with the CTAMC including the Upper Millers, Westfest, and several Thursday night runs at Tville; and one with the NHAMC - the White. Here are some of the year's more significant trips:

January - New Year’s Day on the Housatonic, Assabet – Maynard
February - Fife Brook
March - Branch Rive Icebreaker, Assabet – Acton to Concord
April - Upper Millers, Otter Brook
May - White – Granville to Stockbridge, Tville, Great Swamp
June - Thursday Night Tville, and more Thursday Night Tville
July - Lower Deerfield, Pawcatuck – Shannock to Richmond, Point Judith Pond, Wickford
August - River Bend Farm, Lower Deerfield
September - Pawcatuck – Alton to Bradford, Seekonk, Westfest
October - Lower Pawtuxet, Piscat Drawdown
November - Upper Millers, Assabet – Acton to Concord
December - Slatersville

Here are some of my favorite trips from 2017 from RICKA Movie Night.

RICKA Movie Night - Erik Eckilson from Erik Eckilson on Vimeo.

I got to paddle almost every day of my summer vacation in Narragansett. 


Scenes from a South County Vacation from Erik Eckilson on Vimeo.

In  addition to the RICKA Wilderness Overnight, I also did a great Columbus Day Weekend camping trip on the Upper Connecticut River with Bill, Tommy and Mena.  


Camping on the Upper Connecticut from Erik Eckilson on Vimeo.

I did a little more hiking this year, mostly with the Papa Joe Hiking group:

Mass Central Rail - Holden, MA
Nonet Woods - Dover, MA
Bearsden Conservation Area - Athol, MA
Mount Pisgah - Berlin/Northborough, MA
Noon Hill - Midfield, MA

In terms of my resolutions from last year, I didn’t do so well on rolling practice, but I did get some camping in. Resolutions for next year;

Practice rolling – I’ll keep including it until I do it.
Do at least one camping trip – hopefully two with one in the spring and one in the fall

Overall it was another great year, and there are still plenty of rivers to paddle, plenty of trails to hike, and plenty of places to go camping. Bring it on! 

Noon Hill - December 30, 2017

At the top of Noon Hill

I was off this week, but due to the cold weather I didn’t do any hiking or paddling. After a week in the house, I was looking forward to getting outside for a little exercise. When Hiker Joe cancelled the Noon Hill hike due to frozen pipes, Bill, Jonathan, Conrad and I decided to go anyway. Noon Hill and the adjacent Shattuck Reservation are Trustees of Reservations properties in Medfield  MA. 

Temps were in the single digits as we headed west out of the parking lot toward Noon Hill.  At 370 feet, Noon Hill rises gently over the surrounding landscape with views south over Walpole and Norfolk. From there we headed north and then west across Causeway Street to the Shuttuck Reservation and a trail along the Charles River. Nice trip - not paddling, but still a nice way to end the year.

The Crew - Bill, Conrad, Jonathan and Erik

Links:

My Pictures

Noon Hill –Trustees of Reservations

Too Many Boats - December 25, 2017

I don’t know that too many boats is my problem. I have 8 boats, and regularly paddle 5 of them.  I do tend to hoard pictures though. They end up on my desktop or in the download file, and I just can’t seem to delete them, even after I have copied them into a trip file somewhere else. It drives my wife crazy and slows down the computer, so yesterday I started to clean things up, but I ended up making a video instead. 

Too Many Boats? from Erik Eckilson on Vimeo.

The pictures are still on my hard drive - haven't deleted one of them. Thanks to Cheryl, Bill, Chuck, Jonathan, JoAnn, Ed, Steve, Denise, Doug, Paul, Tommy, Mena, Mike, Joe and others for taking them.  Great song by Jerry Vandiver, even if it isn’t true in my case.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Slatersville Reservoir - December 2, 2017

It has been a while since I have had my Wildfire out, so I decided to stay local and paddle the Slatersville Reservoir with the RICKA crew.  The day was cloudy, but otherwise not bad.  We didn’t make it far up the Branch River due to a river-wide strainer, so we just paddled around the reservoir instead.  Nice trip.

Links:

My Pictures
Slatersville Reservoir from RI Blueways