After constantly monitoring the weather forecasts, and agonizing over our trip choice, we made the call to go for Lake Champlain to take advantage of a “ginormous” (NWS terminology, not mine) “ridge-o-saurus” (again, NWS, not me – those wacky meteorologists! Those madcap scientists!) of high pressure that was coming into the northeast. Jim and I met up at Mike’s house, each with an extra canoe in tow. Mike, not wanting to solo paddle his 17-foot Mad River Explorer across the sixth largest freshwater lake in the US, and also not necessarily wanting to tandem this trip, was going to look over both my 16-foot Explorer (which was set up to paddle solo) and Jim’s 16-foot kevlar Prospector (which was obviously lighter than my Royalex tupperware tub, and likely a more efficient hull) and decide what to paddle. After some deliberation, Mike decided to take my boat, so that even if he wasn’t in his Explorer he at least was still on target for doing the whole trail in an Explorer.
After we loaded the boats, and made a quick stop to grab some Mickey D’s to go, we headed out on the road to drive to Swanton, VT, where we planned on meeting Tommy at the “Louie’s Landing” boat access on the Missisquoi River.
The drive up was uneventful, but seeing the damage in Vermont left behind by Tropical Storm Irene was pretty sobering. We saw a lot of erosion, rivers that had been turned into rip-rap channels, washed out bridges and roads, and damaged homes and businesses. It was pretty amazing how much damage a tropical storm could do that far north. Vermont has definitely had to deal with more than its fair share of damaging floods in 2011.
We arrived at Louie’s Landing a little before 6:00 and found Tommy waiting with his Bell Magic. We discussed the upcoming latest forecast, which called for northerly winds the next day, and briefly pondered the possibility of running shuttle now and starting on the Missisquoi, to take advantage of the northerly winds as we headed south to Plattsburgh. Ultimately, since the following days would see a wind shift to the south (although the forecast was not predicting any significant wind), we decided to stick with our original plan. This turned out to be a great decision.
Loading up the boats for the ride to Plattsburgh
Jim loaded up his kevlar Mad River Guide onto Tommy’s car and left his car behind, and they followed me (with my Explorer as well as my kevlar Hemlock Canoeworks SRT on my rack) over the north end of Lake Champlain, and then south to Plattsburgh, where we holed up in an Econolodge for the night after dining sumptuously at the Butcher Block steak house next door. We made plans for an early rise the next morning.
