Nick Gottlieb- IR Ambassador, sends in a little report of what he’s been up to this spring- thanks Nick!
“This spring in New England has been phenomenal. I’ve been boating almost every day since I got back from the Grand and exploring tons of new runs, as well as lapping the old classics. Among other things, I’ve lapped the Big Branch, raced the New Haven, raced the Wells, run Joe’s Brook, and tons of others.
I’ve also spent this spring scouting and running a lot of Vermont and New Hampshire’s little-known waterfalls, and I’ve found a lot of gems within 20 minutes of my house in Hanover, NH. Quinn Connell, myself, and Alex Toth snagged what we believe to be the first descents of Dewey Mills Falls on the Ottaquechee river a few weeks ago, and have been running many other great waterfalls in the area since then. I even got in a bit of playboating while the White River was in flood a few weeks ago. Surfing is an entirely different beast when you need someone on shore to scout for incoming icebergs.
This past week, I attempted to run the North Fork of the East Branch of the Pemi from its source all the way out to the normal East Branch run. This involves a 2.5 mile hike straight up of Crawford Notch into Ethan Pond and then a ~15 mile run out through the Pemi Wilderness. Unfortunately, the river was less runnable than we expected at the source due to wood and ice bridges and we had to posthole 2.5 miles further downstream before we could put on, which took a good bit longer than expected. We ended up spending the night at the Zealand Falls AMC hut and paddling out in the morning. Much to our surprise, as we were putting on the next morning, an Army Reserve helicopter came down and hovered over our heads…turned out some friends had gotten worried and called search and rescue. We were fine, and once they realized that, they let us paddle the river out which turned out to be a pretty great, long wilderness class II-IV run, something of a rarity in New England.
Anyway, the water is slowly starting to run out in Vermont, but NH still has feet and feet of snow in the upper drainages — I know first hand — so paddling season is nowhere near over here. I’m excited to do some more exploring and get on some more NH classics in the next few weeks.”
Enjoy the Photo’s!
Myself, boofing the top half of one of the most photogenic drops within 20 minutes of my house: Trout Brook, NH. Photo by Quinn Connell.
Myself running the slide side of the North Hartland dam on the Ottaquechee...~15 minutes from my house. Photo by Quinn Connell.
Myself on either the second or fourth descent of Dewey Mills Falls on the Ottaquechee...it was so fun I had to run it twice. Also 20 minutes from my house. Photo by Brian Seitz
