Ice Cubes

Location: White River – 116th Street to 82nd Street
Distance +/-X
Date: 1/30/08
Gauge: 3.1 (Nora)
Paddle Time: 1.5 hours
Paddlers: James Nichols (Current Designs Breeze), Doug Mark (Liquidlogic Zirconia)
Weather: 20 degrees & calm

In spite of the low temperature this was one of the nicest trips we have done. The day before it had been cloudy, rainy and the wind was 60+ MPH. Fortunately for us it was clear and calm and the river was at a nice level.

Unfortunately we didn't get on the water until close to 6PM, so the sun was already starting down. We knew we would be finishing in the dark, but figured there would be enough ambient light from being in the city that we would be able to see fairly well.

As we started out from the 116th Street boat ramp we were running through a lot of small floating ice chunks. Most of them were not very big but every once in a while one of us would hit one that would deflect our boat a little.

Overall this trip was pretty uneventful. We saw a really nice sunset, and there was enough light for most of the trip we didn't have to worry about hitting anything. There were a few low-hanging branches that we had to dodge. I hit a rock ust past the 96th Street bridge, but fortunately it was fairly small. Due to the temperature we were being very careful not to go in the water...that would have been bad.

Just before the takeout was really dark and we were paddling along talking when a group of geese took off from the water very near us. They were really loud and really startled us; we started talking about how it would be pretty bad to make it down the river and then tip over from being scared by geese.

I don't know if you can see it in this photo, but there is a whole lot of ice around the drip ring on my paddle in the last photo. They don't work so great when they have 1/4" or so of ice covering them.

Location: Eagle Creek – SR 32 (U.S. 421 & S.R. 32) to Turkeyfoot Park
Date: 12-30-07
Gauge: 3.1
Paddle Time: 4 hours
Paddlers: Doug Mark (Current Designs Breeze), James Nichols (Necky Looksha) , Tucker Mark (Perception Dancer)
Weather: Cloudy & 31 degrees

Our December trip, that makes a trip at least once a month in ’07. This was a new stretch of Eagle Creek for us. The put-in is very easy, we went in on the east side of the bridg. You could enter either upstream or downstream of the bridge, with an easy walk down to the water. One thing about parking; we had planned to park in the large gravel lot on the NW side of the intersection, but there were some fairly new "No Parking - You Will Be Towed" signs around so we ended up on the county road to the east. It's about a 1/4 mile walk, but better than being towed.

After about a quarter mile the creek runs through Wolf Run Golf Club. Since this is a very exclusive club I’m sure we would not be welcome during warmer weather. Fortunately no one was out golfing or working. Since it was Tucker’s first outing in his new boat I told him to stay ahead of or near us so we could keep an eye on him. The first mile or so went fine, we went through several small rapids with no trouble. Tucker was about 75 feet behind James and me when I heard a splash & turned around to see that he had tipped over. He says he doesn’t know why, we were in flat water, but over he went. He almost made it back up, which I thought was pretty good since he doesn’t know how to roll yet, but he didn’t quite make it so he popped the skirt & got out. The good new is he can wet exit OK, the bad news is he found out when the air temperature was 31 and the water was really cold.

I had brought extra clothes so he got changed & back in the boat. Unfortunately we weren’t able to get all the water out so he was still pretty cold. We stopped at County Road 100 South and waited at the bridge so Julie could come & pick him up, he was just too cold & wet to go on.

Between there and CR 200 S we must have had to carry over or around logs a half a dozen times…it was getting annoying. At one point James got out on the bank where it looked soft, but not excessively so…looks can be deceiving. He sunk in up to his knees, it was really boggy there. We finally got past all that I had a nice run down to the park. Even with the water at 3 we still had several low spots, but overall this was a nice mix of flat water & riffles to make things interesting.

We did see a hawk, a deer and a couple of herons as well. This run didn’t have as many houses along it as the other parts of the creek do, probably to starting in a more rural area and the fact that the creek bottom is fairly wide and flat in most places. In warmer weather we would probably start from CR 100 S to avoid the golf course. Access to the creek is easy there and you can walk down right next to the bridge.