Housatonic 2

I set out for a short trip, starting from the Eagle Scout put-in on Housatonic-2, the second reach of the river from Long Island Sound.  I've added a number to each of the sections, counting from the sea as I live near the coast.  Housatonic 1, 2 and 4 make for good paddling.  Housatonic-3 aka Lake Zoar, is somewhat gross, often being a soup of toxic algae surrounded by all too many shoreline houses that look from the water to have all the design sense of a low grade trailer park.

It is a beautiful, but windy day.  The north wind is somewhere around 15 mph, and paddling out in any of the open marshes that I frequent would be a good amount of work. This section of the river is down in a forested valley. The put-in is on a tiny, almost dry creek about 50 yards from the river.  While it is windy when I first emerge from the creek, I hug the shore where the wind is much reduced by the nearby trees.

The water is a little lower than average, but not by much. The current over the shelf, a shallows that runs across the river about halfway up, is easy to beat.  In high water, the shelf current can be powerful enough to stop further progress. 

As I am watching the boulders in the river, as I am supposed to, a mature Bald Eagle drops off of an overhead perch and moves up river a short spell. It makes a small flock of Common Mergansers a bit nervous, but soon enough, they go back to fishing in the fast current. 

I get up to the little rapids about a quarter mile below the dam.  I have been able to eddy hop my way up past this rapid many times, but it depends on the river level.  Too high and, if I can get past the shelf, this will be a long series of canoe swamping standing waves.  Too low and the only deep channels run too fast to beat.  I have not gotten past the rapids since last year's flash flood, which deposited a large bar of gravel and boulders from a dry ravine that I never really noticed, until the flood.  In fact, it blew out the bridge that spanned the dry ravine.  My guess is that the new deposits altered just enough of the rapids so that I can't find a way up through it.  I give it a go, and then turn back about halfway up.

I flush a couple of Great Blue Herons on my way out.