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There has been a hole in my fleet for a while now. I have a Kevlar Spirit II with bucket seats that is a great lake cruiser and will carry a lot of gear. I also have a Mohawk Whitewater 16 that is great for poling and moving water, but really isn’t big enough for tripping (at least the way I...

It has become a summer tradition for my local club - our annual overnight camping trip on the Pawcatuck River. We load up big canoes with lots of wood and way too much food and gear, and head out to a riverside campsite in the Burlingame Management Area for the night. This year we had 11 campers...

I have done many runs on the Fife Brook Section of the Deerfield River in my WW solo (22 to be exact), but I had never done a tandem run until this weekend. Some friends are doing a Canadian trip this summer on the Mountain River and wanted to get some whitewater practice. Unfortunately, I...

Until my trip on the West Branch of the Penobscot this was a theoretical question. This is not a place where you would expect to have a swim since it is almost all flatwater, but we did. There is a short section of quickwater toward the end of Big Island. We went up on a rock, and over we went...

Just back from my first trip on the West Branch of the Penobscot. We put in at Lobster Stream and took out at Umbazooksus West in the northeast corner of Lake Chesuncook - 5 days, 4 nights with a stop at Lobster Lake. Weather was fine - sunny and windy during the day, chilly at night, but very...

I live in RI, but I love paddling in CT. There are so many nice rivers in east/central CT. The big ones get paddled a lot – the Quinebaug, the Natchaug, the Willimanitc, the Farmington. But there are lots of smaller tributaries to these bigger rivers that don’t get paddled as often. I got on...

The good thing about living in southern New England is that we can usually paddle all winter. The bad thing is that we rarely get enough snow for snowshoeing. This year, the temps have been too cold for paddling, but we’ve had snow on the ground for the last few weeks. Last weekend we got about...

How many days with temps in the teens does it take to freeze a river? Based on this weekend’s experience, the answer is three. For the past couple of years, our local club has been doing a winter overnight at the Burlingame Canoe Campsites on the Pawcatuck River in Charlestown, RI. It’s been a...

Its that time of year when dam operators across the northeast drawdown water levels in reservoirs in anticipation of winter's snow and rain. A lot of these drawdowns are scheduled on weekends so whitewater paddlers can take advantage of the release. Yesterday was the second weekend for the...

Scheduled releases on the Fife Brook section of the Deerfield River end in October. With three weeks of travel for work coming up, I knew I would have to go this weekend if I wanted to catch one. When I saw a trip on the MOC Facebook group, I decided to join. We had a group of 6 - 2 canoes, 2...

https://www.americanwhitewater.org/resources/repository/AccidentSummary_Jan-June_2025.pdf?fbclid=IwY2xjawM6EbBleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFEM1U4NVI1ZmNTeDlPRXczAR4jBQ7WIli0XQHoLRkSs4TJYhCa8kClnE_f-Cek-pkB3LiqDhbNJe6p8naRTQ_aem_0khzxXAAzKVK1sk1jBMlOg 25 fatal accidents reported 14 involved...

We had a great trip last week on the Allagash. We did the section from Churchill Dam to Michaud Farm with a day to explore the lakes. The weather was great - sunny days and chilly nights making for misty mornings on the water. Water level was a little low, so we spent a lot of time dodging rocks...

I'm off to the Allagash next week, but really didn't have the right boat. My Mohawk Whitewater 16 is a barge, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to paddle my composite Spirit II down Chase Rapids, or drag it through the shallows that we will probable hit next week. Fortunately, we were able to...

There are rivers that aren’t too difficult if you take the right lines, but can be brutal if you don’t. I was on one of these rivers on Saturday – the Dead in ME, and I paid the price for a bad line on the last rapid - Lower Poplar. My first swim of the year. The Dead is one of the longest...

On most of the trips I do, everyone takes turns cooking groups meals. Just curious how common that is.

How is this for camp food: Saturday night dinner Salsa and chips Charcuterie and cheese Cedar-planked brie with crusty baguettes Italian sausage with spicy zucchini Steak Frites (steak and fries) Watermelon Carrot cake Sunday breakfast Dutch oven cinnamon rolls Bacon, eggs, sausage and...

It has been a while since I have been out on a real camping trip. This one was short (4 days, 3 nights) but it had a little bit of everything. We did the section of Baskehegan Stream in Maine from White Farm Road in Topsfield to the dam in Danforth. The original plan was to go down to Bancroft...

We got some rain on Saturday that brought my local rivers up, so I decided to stay local and paddle a section of my home river – the Blackstone. At one time, the Blackstone must have been a pretty good whitewater river with a 400-foot drop over 40-miles. Pretty much the entire river got dammed...

Why not. Here is one of my local paddling friends running the class III Gorge Drop on the Knightville section of the Westfield River. Asked him if he thought he could do it loaded with gear - he seemed pretty confident.

I'm not much of a racer, but there is one race in CT that I have done several times - the Scantic Spring Splash downriver race. Its a 5-mile race - mostly quickwater with 4 class II+ (maybe III) rapids in the second half. I've done it many times in my solo boat, so this year decided to try it...