BEST CAMPING TRIP EVER was the most prevalent comment heard during and after this trip. The Troop and Venture Crew took a trip at the end of May to raft the Upper Hudson River, north of Warrensburg, NY for a high adventure outing. We camped at the outfitter's campground on Friday evening, suited up in wetsuits, helmets, booties and PFDs Saturday morning after a hearty breakfast (well the Troop ate hearty, the Venture Crew decided to go the instant oatmeal and apple route) and boarded the deluxe transport provided by the outfitter to the put-in site just below the Indian River dam. We put in and took on the white water after a quick lesson in paddle forward, paddle right, paddle left, paddle back and GET DOWN, provided by our guides Josh and Shaggy (well his real name was Tom, but the Venture crew thought he laughed like Shaggy from Scooby Do). Interestingly enough we had 2 guides named Tom, and two Tom's on our trip. So we nick names were in order (we also had two Nick's but that's another story). We had T, Big Tom, Little Tom and Stokes.
Saturday we cruised, bumped, crashed, and paddled through 13 miles of Hudson River White Water(Class III and IV for you technical types), to our campsite at the junction of the Boreas and Hudson Rivers (Check out the pictures upper right). During the day Saturday, we had a few spots to swim, jump off a large glacial erratic called Elephant Rock, and generally have a great time. We arrived at our Saturday evening campsite around 3:30, helped bring our gear up from the two equipment rafts the guides rowed ahead of us and were already at the site, and found that lunch was already being prepared by those same guides. After lunch, we gathered wood for a cooking fire for dinner, put up our tents, and generally hung around the rest of the day.
A few scouts explored the two rivers and found some native wildlife, which included some type of bug called a helgramite, which really freaked out our guide Kristal, who coincidently had just finished telling us about the various animals that may be around our campsite if we leave food out or in our tents.
Dinner was awesome, with bbq chicken, baked potatoes, beans, peas, and smores to top it off. There was way too much food, but we made a pretty good dent.
After a restfull night, with no sightings of animials, except for the sound of the wild boar we brought with us in one of the tents, we awoke around 8am and started a fire for breakfast. The guides cooked us sausage, bacon, eggs, home fries, and of course coffee. We projected to get back on the river around 2pm, since we had to wait for "the bubble" to reach our campsite. After the snow melt, the Hudson water level is too low to raft, so the rafting companies have contracted with the town on the Indian River to release water for 2 hours a day from 10 to 12. Since we were 13 miles downstream, the water takes 3 hours to reach our site, at which point we could continue our journey to the take-out. The term for this is "the bubble" and you can actually see the water rise about 2-3 feet in about a minute.
In the mean time, we went for a short hike on an unused rail spur, packed up our gear, had lunch (No one was hungry since breakfast was huge), and loaded up the rafts. We put in the river, and had one more set of rapids to run. The Bus Stop, is a large smooth rock face across 3/4 the width of the river, and if you hit it just right, you'll flip out of the raft. The Venture Crew took this challenge, and all flipped out, except for Margaret, who said she forgot to let go. Then it was paddling against a head wind, which put us behind schedule. We arrived at the take out around 4pm, headed back to the outfitter campground, changed, showered and loaded up for the 3 hour ride back home.
Best Trip Ever.
