Did you go yet? I am just getting into kayaking in the last few weeks so sorry so late. Don't know where you will be but Susquehanna River has a lot of tours and events daily and Endless Mountain area around Laceyville and Tunkhannock has trips. I am renting one this weekend for 45 bucks for Saturday through Monday afternoon to try it out at our state park and then a bunch of us are planning a trip down the Susquehanna. Show us picks and let us know how your trip was!
Water levels held up and we did in fact get to do approx 54 miles of the West Branch of the Susquehanna last week, 8/11 - 8/13. We started our trip in Shawville and paddled to Keating. Today is actually my first day back in the office and I tend to avoid computers when I am on vacation so I will have a few pics to post later this evening.
I certainly underestimated the amount of ground that we could cover in a day because my previous trips have not been so gracious for constant river speed. We actually almost finished the trip a day early because of some ambitious paddling to make up lost time after waiting out some pretty nasty rain. Our daily mileages were about 21 on Tues., 27 on Wed., and the final 6 on Thurs. There were very few flat water sections and for the most part we could have bobbed along at about 3mph by only paddling to correct the direction of the boat.The river was about 2.4 ft at the meter at Karthaus meter (about the half point) and the same meter was just above 2.6 when we finished. Any lower and I think we would have been dragging along for quite a few sections of the trip. Conditions being what they were, we only had to carry through one section that was just too low to run, but that was really only about 50yds. We traveled pretty light in an attempt to keep the boat higher in the water and I think that may have reduced the scrapes as well. The guy/shop that we rented from (
http://www.mccrackencanoe.com/rental.htm) said that their season is often over by now but the river levels have really been holding up well this year. I highly recommend this shop if you are planning on doing anything paddle sport related in that section of PA. The owner is a wealth of knowledge and an all around nice guy to deal with. He was extremely flexible about arrival/pickup times and he takes meticulous care of his rental boats. We rented a
We-No-Nah Northfork which is a 16'9" rotomolded canoe that was stable and had more than enough capacity for our trip. It looked like it had only seen the water a handful of times. On the drive back to the shop he told me that they have a few of the 15'9" models on order for next season so it sounds like they turn over their rental fleet frequently.
The trip was an overall success for determining if my wife would enjoy multiple days on the water and primitive camping. She had a great time, despite the rain, and by the end of the trip was contemplating the pros and cons of buying a single canoe vs two kayaks even though she has minimal seat time in kayaks. I will post some pics when I get the chance.
. (I probably should have specified that in my first post.)I wish that I could schedule earlier in the season but the flow of business does not usually allow it.
