August Trip - 23 Consecutive Monthly Trips - One to Go

Location: Fall Creek – S.R. 13 to Florida Road Park
Distance: +/-4 miles
Date: 8-27-08
Gauge: 1.6 @ Fortville
Paddle Time: 1.5 hr
Paddlers: Doug (Pelican Break), James (Necky Looksha), Mark (Breeze)
Weather: 82 & partly cloudy

I'm just now posting this because it was part of the Indianapolis Sprint ADventure Race on September 6 & I didn't want to put it up on the off chance that someone might see it.

James told us ahead of time there would be three or four portages, so I brought our smallest boat in case we ended up shoving them through trees or something. Having a total brain fade James removed his Dagger RPM (10’) from his trailer in order to bring his Necky…an 18’ boat. Just looking to add to the level of difficulty, I guess.

In spite of a lack of rain for the last couple of weeks the water level wasn’t bad. There was one gravel bar with only about 3” of water that we had to walk over for 50’ or so, but it was a nice day to do that.

The first place we had to cross a log we decided we didn’t really want to chance running into nettles by carrying around so we pushed them through, not too difficult. There were a few other places we had to slide over logs, but no major obstacles until just past S.R. 238. We had encountered this on our way upstream on a previous paddle, and James had crossed it a couple of weeks before, but the water was a little higher then. Keeping to the no-nettles policy we decided we could walk between the logs to get to the second one. I stayed to the right where the water was only a couple of feet deep, but the bank was steep. James decided to try the middle where it was a little deeper, but the bottom was level. Mark positioned himself behind us where he could watch us both fall in.

I had just crossed the first log & was getting my footing on the far side when James took one more step and instantly went from thigh-deep to more than waist deep. I decided if it was that deep I would just sit on the rear deck of my boat and float over. James backed out of the deep spot and managed to get himself on the rear deck of his boat, but was a bit off-center and almost went over. I was laughing so hard I almost fell off the boat, and I was really wishing I had my video camera. He got the bow up on the log & was making pretty good progress over it when he decided it was better to stand on the log. He did make it off of the boat and onto the log without falling in. I was able to slide over with a little push from him, but Mark ended up getting out as well to get the Breeze over. After that he got the chance to practice his newly-acquired boat entry skills while balanced on a log in about 5’ of water and came through with flying colors.

We expected another log carryover just around the bend, but a portion of it had evidently broken off in the interim because the way was clear. The rest of the way down to the park was also clear and just a matter of paddling through the slower water at the head of the lake.

I think this could be a real challenge if the water was a couple of feet higher. You could probably still carry boats over the logs closer to the bank or up higher in the nettles, but if it was moving very fast there would be the possibility of getting swept into one of these obstacles before you were able to stop & prepare for it. Not a good thing. The adventure racers will mostly be doing it in the dark in September, so if it doesn’t rain in the next couple of weeks, or if it rains a lot between now and then they will have a really challenging paddle section.
We have talked about paddling down from Pendleton, but that could be a long trip if there are as many trees down upstream as there are in this section...something like our trip last December on the upper part of Eagle Creek.

So, one more trip in September and we will have done 24 monthly trips, with a few others thrown in for variety. We plan to work on 25-36 with an overnight trip on the Vermillion River from Danville, IL to near Cayuga, IN. Stay tuned.