Raquette 8-21

Another summer weekend, another trip to the Raquette…This time, Ben had had an unfortunate fight with some pavement at 2am the Thursday night prior and had 15 stitches in his forehead. But, we figured it’d be fine and he came along anyway. We encountered a moose on Midd Gap who seemed pretty unamused, but stood there while we took his picture:

Moose. (Photo Ben Peters).

We also took a new route to the Raquette with my apparently amphibious Outback:

Ben’s new toy thinks my car is a boat. (Photo Peters).

Unfortunately, it turns out that having fifteen stitches and a badly bruised shoulder is not conducive to class V, so Ben didn’t make it more than one rapid, though his boat continued right on through to the top of the next rapid, Colton Falls. It pinned pretty solidly in the lead-in and we couldn’t get it off, but a heroic young Middlebury student named Morgan came by, pinned himself on the boat, unpinned it, and then ran the horseshoe boof in Colton from the wrong side backwards, freeing the boat.

Me (Nick Gottlieb) airing it out on the horseshoe boof at Colton. (Photo Chris Zentner).

Later on lap one, we get to Particle Accelerator and Alan explains the line to Chris as, “Don’t flip over.” Moments later, upside down, it was clear that Chris had forgotten the line and rolled up at the bottom with a badly scraped up arm. Meanwhile, I almost swam in the eddy at the bottom of the drop after washing up onto a rock and falling over.

Me driving over the boof on the slide on Colton (Photo Peters).

By lap two we’d already lost two paddlers (Chris and Ben). Lap two went well for most of us but Simone had a wicked piton in the Tubs followed by a missed line (he flipped over) in Particle Accelerator that left him bracing in the pool with two half paddles.

Alan Panebaker with some airtime over the horseshoe; me in the eddy. See if you can scout the beer bottle in the photo (Photo Peters).

For lap three we lost another three paddlers, but fortunately gained three more. One of them flipped on the slide in Colton. Then Christian Woodard (who was more drunk than he should’ve been from the takeout beers he’d been consuming when we found him) tried to freewheel the 3′ boof at the nothing rapid two after Colton (Mushroom?) and pitoned, getting worked in the hole and losing his paddle and swimming. A quick regroup and we routed through the Gnarrows only to have Christian and Morgan both get surfed in the middle hole of the Tubs but manage to sneak away OK. Clean lines through Particle Accelerator and that last little drop. The Raquette can certainly dish it out when it wants.

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