Hot days do great things to mountain snows

You know if it's 80 degrees and John's Brook is running you will most likely be able to find people to paddle with. Today was no exception. Bill, Scotty, Eric, Duggan, Bagel, Justin, Dan, and myself all put whatever commitments we had aside to run the gem of the Adirondacks. A few of us had some different desires so we split up into two groups.

Not much to say, John's Brook rules. Scotty, myself, Bill and Dan Hays hiked up the trail a ways to find the river at a nearly perfect level. I stopped quickly to snap a couple of pictures. Our run was not without incident, but everyone floated under the Bridge at the end safe and sound.

New England Whitewater Triple Crown

The New England Whitewater Triple Crown was held this past weekend at T'Ville. Never before has an event been organized where slalom, wildwater, and freestyle are contested for combined points to determine an overall champion. By the second day of competition the triple crown turned into somewhat of an endurance event. After our second runs of wildwater for the competition we were all feeling pretty tired. After the dust settled I'm pretty sure EJ won. I think I finished somewhere amongst the top ten men. Highlights for me were a 5th in the Wildwater on Sunday, and two clean slalom runs. I need to practice freestyle more if I'm going to compete in it.

Wells River Rumble/Ledyard Fest.

This weekend was the Wells River Rumble/ Ledyard River Festival. The race was fun, I wish I would have been a bit faster than 4th place but I had a blast. I also competed in my first freestyle competition in a really long time. Needless to say I was a bit rusty. The fun stuff planned for Sunday got canceleed because mother nature just does not seem to be cooperating. Dartmouth College is great. Ledyard Canoe Club is great, I'll be back next year.

My Favorite Season?...Spring For Sure

There is no other season of the year that offers so many fun things to do. Spring Break 09 has been truly amazing. Over the last two weeks I have done some great skiing, gone on some fantastic bike rides (both mountain and road), and paddled a bunch of amazing rivers.

Mybreak began by doing some skiing with Marge and the family at down at Gore. From there I headed straight to West Virginia where I got a great run in on the New River Dries and and a high water run on the Lower Meadow the following day. I continued south down to Asheville, where I rode the mountain bike a little bit, but most of all paddled. We got one run in on the Horesepasture and the Raven's Fork each, along with 2 runs on the Green at awesome flows.

I kidnapped Andrew, made sure he had his dry-suit, and took him up North. Once there, we hit Vermont hard. 2 runs on the Big Branch, 2 on the New Haven at a perfect level, and we topped the VT tour off with a perfect run on the lower half of the Middlebury ( I hope that log comes out of the gorge soon).

In the middle of the week I made a little mistake with the weather, and did a lot of unneccessary driving. We got redemption on the Grasse the next day, and finished up the big tour with a great day at Whiteface. I dropped Andrew off at the airport this morning, and then chased Donald to Paul Smiths and back on my road bike.

I still have one more full day of spring break. I think I'm going to do some serious relaxing and then go see if the Wilmington trails are rideable.