Excellent fall river trip...

Sunny blue skies and a perked up river made for the ultimate fall colors river trip.

The much needed rain overlain upon the lake release gave us perfect conditions for the Hampton to Bloomsbury stretch of the Musconetcong River. The brilliant sunshine and warm temps made for a memorable day with a dozen paddlers who came out for the second Musconetcong Watershed Association canoe trip.

The river level was dropping all day but was at 2.38' when we paddled by the USGS Stream Gage at Bloomsbury (it was 2.85' early in the morning and 2.45' when we launched).

We had two sets of tandem canoeists, one solo canoe (me) and and seven solo kayakers.

Highlight of the trip was a brief tour of the Musconetcong WA's River Resource Center, which is under construction. President Bill Leavens filled everyone in on the many hoops involved with obtaining a LEEDS certification - the ultimate blessing from the Gods of Green.

Delaware down and running....

Lucky souls pose in front of Pohatcong Mountain during a Delaware River trip between Phillipsburg and Riegelsville.

The Musconetcong River is running low (around 1.54 cfs) and so the Musconetcong Watershed Association river trip was switched to the Delaware River, which always has enough water. A really nice of group of folks joined me for the Phillipsburg to Riegelsville run on a spectacularly beautiful day.

We had the river mostly to ourselves except for a few other paddlers and a few motorboats. This stretch of the river passes three New Jersey trout streams, Lopatcong Creek, Pohatcong Creek and Musconetcong River. At the end of the trip we found a fine surfing wave at the mouth of the Musky. I demonstrated the basic surfing technique and a few of the others got their first taste of facing upstream perched on a wave with swift current flowing by.

The trip scheduled for next week will likely be changed to the Delaware River as well since there is no significant precipitation predicted for the coming week. Loos like we'll have to wait until November rains to paddle the Musky.

Muchas gracias to Chris and Sue for running sweep and keeping me from being the only canoe amongst the ubiquitous kayakers.