It started with a trip to the pediatrician's office on Dec. 29, where we found that the antibiotics we'd been giving our daughter, Indie, for a week were not working. So, her single ear infection had turned into a double, and both eyes had followed suit as a result by contracting pink eye. Her baby brother, Otis, had naturally picked up her infestation and had a double ear infection as well. So, with no ethical way to actually see any of our friends or relatives for the next couple of days, we packed up the car and headed to my wife's family's cottage on French Creek near Utica, PA. And to make it a real holiday, we planned and shopped for a stellar feast for New Year's Eve.
Holing up in the cottage wasn't an issue because we'd be able to keep the kids occupied in the small space or outside when it wasn't too cold. There wasn't enough snow to ski, but rain in the forecast made an impression on me and so I strapped the creek boat to the roof and tossed in my helmet and life jacket. I was skeptical, but as it turned out I found myself in the right place at the right time for about four days in a row.
12.31.2010 -- From the cottage, it is my regular routine to paddle a rickety old wildwater boat (a fast and light, but extremely tippy whitewater racing kayak) upstream from the cottage. French Creek would probably be considered class B flatwater (the classes are A, B, and C; A is a lake and C would be small riffles) in the vicinity of the cottage, but it's wide and shallow so paddling upstream requires some work. I had to use an alternate launch because my typical put-in eddy was blanketed with thick ice. Staying close to the shore because that is where the current is weakest also affords me the best chances of sneaking up on wildlife. On this day it worked, and the highlights were a bald eagle within 50 feet, a muskrat swimming right up to my boat at my turn around point (near sleepy Carlton, PA), and evidence of a hard-working beaver near the Custaloga Town BSA camp (though no beaver, unfortunately). I was feeling risky for some reason, and on the way back I tried a few small channels around islands that had the potential of being choked with ice. I went 1 for 2, and had to gorilla walk across a 40-foot slab of eddy ice in order to get out the bottom of one of those channels.
The scenery was as remarkable. A very cold December meant there was ice everywhere. I was able to see that the creek had cycled through freezing over followed by the water level dropping several times because of the ice rings around the trees lining the shore. Big slabs of ice floated down the creek looking for the next place to be lodged. Large eddies were like skating rinks, and the geese had left footprints, feathers and droppings on them. The cottages I passed were dark and empty.
I got back to the cottage after only about 90 minutes and told Molly it was the best paddling experience I'd ever had while based at the cottage. Then it started raining.
The New Years Eve feast then commenced. A big, fat marinated roast went on the grill and scallops on the fryer. After dinner and once the kids were asleep, Molly and I spent the evening watching the fireplace from a cozy spot on the cottage floor covered in blankets listening to the rain. I cannot think of a better way to ring in a new year (and we slept right through midnight).
01.01.2011 -- The rain continued all night and by morning there were large, dead trees floating past the cottage in French Creek. On a whim I drove down the road with Indie to check out a tributary of French called Mill Creek (my new creek-finding partner joined me on three scouting missions in the four days). I found ts headwaters in a big marsh at the top of the canyon and followed it on a local map as it drops a couple hundred feet over a few miles through a nice little gorge that terminates at Utica. I expected it to be mild whitewater with a lot of portages over dead trees, hand-built footbridges, pipes, and power lines. Indie and I drove back to the cottage and I figured that if I could squeeze it in later that day, then great. If not, I'd still have a blast attaining the torrent that French Creek had become.
I found time to paddle it, and I was wrong about Mill Creek. Six pretty simple portages around strainers was not much, and the whitewater was fabulous. I put in off a county road called Foster Road just below bridge with insufficient clearance to paddle under. I was between farm fields in thickly vegetated marsh a hundred yards wide. It was hard to figure out where to go, and at times I became concerned I'd never find the actual current that becomes Mill Creek. In many places barbed wire lined the wash I was paddling (fortunately it never crossed, but this is not unheard of). I had to push through the thick brush, protecting my face from being scratched, and I even bounced down an enormous beaver lodge. As the current picked up, the marsh became a more well-defined waterway and a few rudimentary footbridges (presumably built by hunters accessing the adjacent gamelands) got me out of my boat. Then, just when it appeared that the creek was about to go under some impassible brush, it made a sharp right turn under a huge down tree. I dragged my boat across, and things went dark.
All of a sudden, I was on a rushing creek in a gorge that the sun could not reach. The fog steaming up from the water was thick, and there were rapids. Rapids! Not big ones. Not difficult ones. But, for a place that for several years had seemed devoid of the one thing that I have sought out more than anything else in this world, finding whitewater here was cause for jubilation. As the rapids steadily increased in intensity to class 3 (on a scale of 5), the portages diminished in frequency and I was smack in the middle of my own little slice of whitewater creeking heaven. With visibility still at a minimum, I came to a sharp bend in the creek only to discover a buck standing in the water, staring up at me. The water was only about 6 inches deep at the shoal he was standing upon. The buck's body length took up the middle half of the creek's width. His shoulders were broad and his antlers mixed with the branches behind him, camouflaging them in a way. As I floated toward him he did not budge, and so I shouted, "Yah! Yah!" kind of like how they do when they're rustling cattle in the movies. Either it worked or he decided that he didn't want me colliding into him, and so he splashed off, out of the gorge, when I was about 10 feet away. It was one of the more profound paddling moments I've ever had.
I'd seen enough at this point to be completely ecstatic about Mill Creek, but it kept getting better. After going under a bridge, the gradient of the creek increased even further and I was now in continuous whitewater. For over a mile it went on. Fortunately there were eddies to paddle into, because it was so dark and foggy in the gorge that I needed to use them to control my speed in case I came up on a low bridge or dead tree (which happened several more times).
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| The Mill Creek Gorge -- Foster Rd to Grant St |
Arriving in Utica, I didn't want the fun to end. I briefly contemplated just jumping in my car and running it again, but decided against it when I thought of the responsibilities awaiting me at the cottage.
01.02.2011 -- After the adventure on New Years Day, I was feeling like I wanted to keep things intense. The small creeks had run out of water, and so I got a ride to Cochranton, PA and paddled my wildwater boat 16 miles to Franklin on a severely swollen French Creek. After more than two hours of paddling in heavy swells at a balmy 25 degrees Fahrenheit, I'd gotten my fill. Ice coated the deck of the boat, my jacket, and my mittens. I could smell the faint aroma of ammonia that comes with long, continuous effort. Then I became cold. Freezing cold. On the ride home, my father-in-law gave me the best chocolate donut I've ever eaten, from the Shop n' Save in Franklin.
01.03.2011 -- With every intention of keeping things at minimal exertion as a means of recovering from the previous day's long trip, I found the icing on the cake by paddling the 6.5-mile stretch of French Creek above the cottage with my father-in-law. This was the coldest day, and there was a lot of ice floating around us, looking like somebody had dumped a huge amount of snow-cones in the creek around us. I was especially nervous about a swim in the 32 degree water, so I paddled my most stable boat and brought lots of extra gear.
Just putting on the creek at near-flood stage was tricky because the contrast of the heavy current with calm eddies at the put-in created a tenuous situation. If my partner for the day would flip in his kayak, he would be swimming a flooding creek, surrounded by floating ice, and the air temperature was in the 20s. Fortunately, after looking around a bit, we found a little spot under a bridge where it wouldn't be too hard to sneak out the bottom of the eddy, making the transition much milder.
Since safety was a primary concern, we stayed close to the shore and planned the safest route way in advance whenever it was ambiguous. But we couldn't stay too close to the shore -- thousands of trees stuck out of slackwater as half-submerged benches and patio furniture threatened to be swept away. The clearance under each bridge was half what we know it to be. Where islands typically split the creek into channels we saw only branches sticking out of the water marking their location.
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| Pop at the put-in -- Cochranton, PA |
I was able to relax after a short time, confident that nobody was going for a swim, and fully enjoy the time on the water. My father-in-law complained of cold hands, then of numb hands, and then he stopped complaining because even though his hands weren't working, it was the first time he was able to get on the water for months. We both arrived back at the cottage smiling, ear to ear, ready to start thawing out.
Git r dun!
