West

The West River in southern Vermont near Stratton Mountain, runs every September during a reservoir drawdown. There is a class III section followed by a short class II section. With no formal class II trip, I arranged to meet some of the class III trip boaters at the end of the class III section and continue down. An open boating couple, the Hayeses, did this too and we carpooled.

Because we were meeting the class III group midway through their run, we did not have to arrive at the put in until noon, meaning I could get up at a reasonably late hour, which was nice. The drive was almost entirely backroads and very nice.

We arrived at the put-in/takeout and tried to find someone to shuttle us down to the class II takeout to no avail because everyone there was proceeding back up to the start of the class III section to either run it again or get their other cars. This development meant that we'd be hitching back to the parking area, easy enough to do with the horde of boaters at the West today.

The group from the class III section was about 20 minutes late and we got going pretty quick after they got there. The river was noticeably high, washing up onto grass on the sides and brown in color (but not in a polluted way). When I pealed out, I noticed it was quite pushy and that if I hesitated for a split second in deciding whether or not to ferry over to an eddy or wave, it was already too late. The first quarter mile or so was pretty much continuous rapids, solid class II, regular waves all the way across the river. Pretty quickly, I managed to hit a pourover; my boat lodged on the rock just beneath the surface and I got spun off of it at an awkward angle, flipping. I ended up swimming, but not for very long as I quickly got into one of the few eddies on the shore. (Stopping in an eddy on this run sometimes meant paddling over to a place on the side with a slower current and grabbing as big a handful of grass as possible). I got back in the boat and promptly hit another pourover, but this time I rolled. It was nice to just continue on down after rolling instead of flipping right back over as in The Gap.

After some more heavy water, we came to the biggest rapid on this section, Ducky Dump. We pulled out on river left just before this II+ rapid and scouted. There are some huge waves, and three large holes, two on river left and one on river right. There is a very easy sneak route hugging the left shore, which is how I went down the first time. After debating for a few minutes, I decided to hike back up and run it down the center, between the holes, over the big waves. Despite a near collision with an open boat, I made it unscathed. Going over the big waves was fun, as was seeing the big holes go by very quickly. There was one kayaker attempting to play in the river left holes; he rolled several times. We then paddled a short distance to the take out and we were done. The run was very quick, less than 2 hours, but it was fun to go in the slightly bigger water and get a roll kept me up for the rest of the trip instead of 3 seconds.