Housatonic River paddle

[Jay H]

The intent this morning was to spot a bike at the New Lenox road launch site and launch from Pomeroy at the park there on the Housy but after scouting out the launch site, the only thing that looks like could be safely launched there was a rubber ducky. Great Barrington's gauge seems to be running at 206 cfs, whereas for mid april, it seems the median CFS is like 1040, 5 times greater..

The recommended bare minimum is 150cfs so without knowing the section around Pomeroy south, I decided to forgo the bike spot and just launch at New Lenox which I know looks to be a more wide section (after the west and east branch of the Housatonic merges). So I launched and headed south towards Lee, passing Mallards, Canada Geese, lots of small box turtles.. and a bald eagle(!). Very regal and was happy to be able to get fairly close to it with my cheap PnS camera to get some decent shots with only the optical zoom... Made it all the way to the next put-in, which is Crystal street, towards Lenoxdale and the entrance to October Mtn. This part of the Housy is more like a large pond, aka Woods Pond rather than a meandering river...

Ran into two ladies on touring kayaks, this section is doable in a sea kayak but this was the inaugeral run of my rec Pungo 120 I bought from the Arc shop as their rental.....

https://picasaweb.google.com/1048270...nicRiverPaddle

Paddled past the put in and made it to the EPRI power station just north of New Lenox road...

http://my.epri.com/portal/server.pt?

before turning back and taking out...

Jay