A bit of New England whitewater

Today I went over and ran a section of the Deerfield River near Charlemont, Massachusetts.  I was very tempted to skip it: after yesterday's exhausting race and the ensuing soreness, I could very easily have spent today lying around like a slug.  But there's no telling when I'll get to this part of the country again, so I decided to take advantage of the opportunity.

As luck would have it, there was a water release on the "Dryway" section today.  The Dryway is a de-watered section whose flow is diverted by canal and tunnel to a powerhouse downstream.  For decades there were never scheduled releases on it, but thanks to the work of American Whitewater the power company now provides a few each year.

So, I ran the Dryway.  It's a nice four-mile-long section of Class III-IV whitewater.  I paddled my old Superglide slalom C1, the only viable whitewater boat I have at the moment since my plastic Atom C1 got stolen back in April.

I'm pretty sure the C1 paddlers who raced down in Rio this past week would have had nothing to worry about if I'd shown up to race there.  To say my whitewater skills are rusty is an understatement.  But I had fun doing a few ferries and eddy turns and using a slightly different set of muscles.

Here's a shot of the Deerfield River looking downstream from the Dryway putin: