August 4, 2007

August 4, 2007

It has been a whole month off the Susquehanna River. Sue and I both had other plans for four weekends in a row, but we're back! Our plan is to paddle for two days, staying overnight on an island somewhere at the halfway mark.

Bill and I stayed at our campsite in Homets Ferry where the kayaks were, and Sue met us Saturday morning there. Bill drove us up to Grippen Park in Endicott, NY and we launched at 9:00 am. For the weekend the daytime temperatures should be in the mid-eighties and there will be some humidity but no rain. The river is lower than before because there's been so little rain.

Very shortly after starting off, we watched a plane doing “touch and go” at a small airport. He would take off, circle the airport, and land on the runway, but then lift off immediately. We saw him “touch and go” four or five times before we paddled away from the area. Route 17, which is a four lane, 65 mph highway, followed the river for around ten miles, so we had traffic noise for hours. We did see several groups of mergansers and occasional great blue herons. We had to watch for changes on the surface of the water because large rocks were hiding just below. In some areas the river was so shallow that we couldn't paddle through. We had to wade, pulling the kayaks behind us. Sometimes we dragged them over river rocks. The kayaks were heavy, also, because we had packed for an overnight stay with sleeping bags, a tent, a tiny stove, a mess kit, food, etc.

At lunchtime we entered the Owego, NY area and would go under a bridge. The river was wide but so shallow that we climbed out several times to walk through low areas. In fact we walked under the bridge. Finally about a quarter mile past the bridge the river got deeper so we floated along and ate lunch. Sue had the small cooler mounted on the top of the back end of her kayak, held in place with bungee cords, and I had a plastic box with snacks located on the floor of my kayak right behind my seat. So we moved next to each other and got the food out. I was able to open the cooler and unload what we wanted. There was a slight downriver breeze, so we even floated in the right direction while we ate.

The maps from the 1980's stopped right after Owego so we felt like Lewis and Clark, not knowing anything about what was ahead. We had somewhere around ten or fifteen miles until we got to the Pennsylvania border. Actually it turned out to be a rather boring stretch of river—not a lot of twists and also not a lot of houses. Finally the river has turned from heading west to southwest. The hours passed and we still hadn't reached the border. We also had some head winds which slowed us down since the river didn't have much of a flow.

Our goal was to reach an island in Athens, PA that was privately owned but donated to the PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources for use by paddlers. It had no amenities; it was just an island in the middle of the river. Our next choice was a campground in North Towanda right on the river that was about 12 miles past the island in Athens. I had bought new updated river maps of the North Branch Susquehanna River from Dave and Melody Buck who run Endless Mountains Outfitters in Sugar Run. They sell canoes and kayaks and all accessories, and they also rent kayaks and canoes and drive people to drop-off points so they can paddle down the river and back to the EMO site. The maps cover the river from the Pennsylvania border near Sayre, PA to Sunbury where the West Branch joins the North Branch. The maps are so informative. They show danger areas, boat access points, parks and campgrounds and their amenities, food locations, restroom locations, and much more. There are mile marks on the maps at each mile. There's even latitude and longitude shown.

When we finally got to the Pennsylvania border it was already 7:00 pm. There were lots of people standing in the river fishing. Sundown is a good time for that. We talked to some and they were catching small mouth bass. We saw more great blue heron and mergansers and an occasional egret. Since it would be getting dark soon, we decided that the island in Athens would be our stop. We had five miles to paddle. There was more interesting scenery because we went through Sayre and right into Athens.

We finally got to the island at almost 9:00. The kayaks were brought into the island somewhat so they weren't right on shore. The tent was set up higher up into the island on a flat spot that was covered with small, smooth river rocks. We both brought sleeping bag pads so the rocky spot was okay. Sue started heating water to reconstitute our dehydrated lasagna meal while I brought stuff into the tent. We had eaten, cleaned up, set up beds, washed up and gotten into bed by 10:00. Since the island is right down river from the Athens bridge right in town, we had lots of noise to contend with. Someone was playing music so loud that we could hear the words of the songs, and that went on until 2:00 am. There were fire truck horns, train rumblings, traffic noises and voices. I guess it wasn't too bad, though, because I couldn't hear any rustling in the bushes right outside the tent. We slept poorly and woke up feeling stiff from all the physical effort of Saturday.

After a breakfast of cold cereal and coffee and a sweet snack, we packed up and launched by 8:30 am. There was a mist on the surface of the river that was just rising and dissipating. We tried to get a picture of this mist, but it didn't show up. The paddling was very pleasant. The river goes through a slight gorge for a while so there was nothing much along the way except trees. We saw occasional houses built up on top of a ridge on the right side of the river. About 7 or 8 miles downriver we had reached the Ulster Bridge. In June of 2006 there was some major flooding in northeast Pennsylvania and the Ulster Bridge was damaged. We didn't know if we would have to portage around. When we got there, we pulled out at a boat access on the right side right next to the new bridge. We climbed up to the roadway and walked out on the new bridge to figure out how to get through. The bridge wasn't open yet. The cars were traveling on a temporary bridge. We saw that we would have to immediately paddle over to the other side of the river and follow that edge until the river got deeper.

The next town was Towanda. There was a small bridge, then a railroad bridge, and then a large bridge all within two miles. That area was also riddled with islands. It was very slow going because of gravel bars and low water. Several times we walked the kayaks. No sooner were we back in them paddling, then we were back out walking them. The river is very wide at the large bridge, and it was hard to figure out the best way through. We decided to stay in the middle.

Everything was going fine until about a quarter mile below the river Sue shouted to me, Don't go this way.” But I was directly behind her and had no choice. She was grounded on rocks and could not move. I passed slightly to her left and slipped by her and then saw that we were on a gravel bar and that I was going over the edge. There was a six inch drop that luckily took me into a pool of water. If I had gone over the edge into shallow water, I could have ended up nosed into the bottom of the river still stuck on the edge. I looked back and found that Sue's kayak had turned so it was parallel to the gravel bar edge. She climbed out and tried to move it. The water was very shallow, but also flowing very strongly over the edge. She couldn't move it. It tipped down on the upriver side and quickly filled with water. She started to bail and it again tipped and refilled. I pulled up to shore and ran upriver to where I could cross the deep pool area. In the meantime she somehow got her kayak over the edge and into the deep water. I was trying to walk toward her on the rocks in the flowing water, and she was trying to pull her kayak upriver in the deep water while walking along the edge of the bar. She couldn't pull the mostly submerged kayak against the current, so I told her to just let go of it. She did and we saw that it was moving toward shore where my kayak was. We scrambled upriver over the rocks to get to a shallow area to cross the deep pool to get to shore. Then Sue ran along the rocky shore and reached the kayak and pulled it onto some rocks. She then chased down her paddle which was a little further down the river by the shore. We do have a hand bilge pump, but left it home because we thought we wouldn't need it with the river being so low. We won't leave it home again! We used a cup and a one quart water bottle to bail the kayak. After bailing a little while we were able to pull it up further on shore and then tip it sideways to remove more water. We bailed, moved, and tipped several times until we were able to roll the kayak upside down on the rocks—after we removed the cooler. Once it was empty, we repacked the dry bags and cooler. She had a vinyl bag of things that could get wet, and that looked like a giant water balloon. So we drained it and repacked it also. We were on our way again.

Two miles downriver was a boat access in Wysox. Again, several places in that two miles we were walking the kayaks through low water. We also noticed that after that incident in Towanda, we really felt exhausted and our arms were sore. There was a seasonal snack shop a half mile walk from there. Sue volunteered to get us some hot dogs and drinks for our 3:00 lunch, and sat at a picnic table and watched the boats. We talked to some people there and ate. Our final goal was the campsite in Homet's Ferry where my husband Bill and I keep our camper for the summer. We looked on the map and realized it was twelve miles away. We figured the earliest we could arrive there was 8:00 pm. I called Bill and asked him if he would meet us there to help haul the kayaks up the beach and the 25 step stairway to the campsite. He said he would.

That twelve miles was an exhausting trip. The boat access in Towanda was not even out of sight, and already we were out of the kayaks because of low water. That happened several times along the way. We were exhausted. At one point Sue paddled right into the side of my kayak. She said she was in a resting trance and had her eyes closed. That's exhausted! Also, both of us had traveled that stretch of the river a couple of times previously so it wasn't new. Once a fish leaped out of the water and almost ended up in my kayak. That woke us up.

About two miles upriver from our campsite there was a large island and I told Sue I thought it was the one right before a boat access in Homet's Ferry. I said that we could go up the left side of the river. It should be deep enough, and the other side had very large boulders scattered around that didn't look very promising. Well, we ended up walking out kayaks about a half mile through low water. A lot of the time we literally dragged them over the rocks in the river. The water got a little deeper finally and we decided to try to paddle through it. While we were getting back into our kayaks we looked ahead downriver and saw three deer crossing from the island to shore. They were knee deep in water. We got in our kayaks anyhow and were able to paddle to the end of the island where we noticed that we were joining a very strong flow of water coming from the other side of the island. Maybe the other side of the island would have been better after getting past the boulders. Who knows!

The paddling the last two miles was easy. No shallows. After we turned the final bend before the campsite, we saw a light up ahead. Bill had put a light on shore at our trailer site! What a wonderful sight! We got out of our kayaks at 8:10 pm. It was a long day.

Sue and I decided that we're not getting back on the river until the water rises some. I don't know when that will be. Our goal for this year is halfway down the 444 mile length. According to the maps we have 255-1/2 miles to go. We plan to paddle at least to Tunkhannock, where Sue lives, which will bring us just past halfway. Now we wait for rain to raise the river.