Monday, October 27, 2008

Yahara River, Sept. 26th


The day dawned bright blue so my wife and I decided to try to get one last canoe trip in for the year. We've been looking at the Yahara River just south of Madison that was within an hr. drive from home.
We got the Jeep loaded with the canoe and the 29er and arrived at the put in within an hour. We got there at the same time as another party, a young family of 4 with a canoe and kayak.
The river flows mainly south and we had about a 30-35 mph wind coming from the west. I didn't feel it would affect us much on the river as this river is fairly narrow with only a few turns that would direct us directly into the wind.
The other party did pretty much the same as I did, used a bike for their shuttle vehicle. The husband/dad did not want to fight the wind on the bike, so he asked for a shuttle ride back, so we followed him down where he wanted to take out and we brought him back.
We started down after we got back to the put in and had a great float.
We were on the water a about 3 hrs. and it took me just over an hour to get back on the bike. Into the wind I made about 6-7 miles per hour and crosswind around 15 mph.
Took one pic, of a chair that had obviously been there for a long time as one leg was exposed to the river due to erosion...interesting.
We saw an otter, and deer and a farm cat checking each other out along the bank, many woodducks and mallards and a few blue herons.
Temps dropped from the mid 50's to the high 30's by the end of the day. Snow possible. Guess winter is coming!
This is the first time I've used the helmet cam on water.











2 comments:

Unknown said...

Mark,
You mentioned the Yahara when we talked at Canoecopia. I saw the helmut cam video. Looks like a good family river trip. We'll have to talk more about it.
NickerDocker

mark scotch said...

Nick,
it was a lot better than I expected it to be. You mentioned the Rock I believe? we can try that as well!