Lehigh Advice

Attention Lehigh Rats: I’m looking for advice on the portion of the Lehigh between the Walter Dam and White Haven (open canoe). Gertler includes this stretch with the more well-known portion below White Haven, so it’s difficult to distinguish. Is it worth running? Can anyone recommend an outfitter that would run a shuttle on this stretch? I’m having trouble finding anything online other than rafting concerns based in Jim Thorpe.

Never ran that section
although I had friends who had. I was told by them that it only had a couple of Class II rapids on its 6 3/4 mile length. The general consensus seemed to be that if you wanted to do a whitewater run the 9 mile stretch from White Haven to Rockport was much better. I also heard a couple of stories about hostile fishermen.



There is what seems to be a reasonably good description on the American Whitewater site: http://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/River/detail/id/3582/



Note that as of 5 years ago there were access issues for this section. I don’t know if that has changed or not. You might consider checking with the Park rangers at Rockport.

Never ran it
I don’t know anyone ever talking about that section. You might want to post the question at Lehigh VCC



http://www.lehighvalleycanoeclub.org/



On a release weekend, post on Getting Together & Going Paddling or the LVCC, and someone will probably offer a shuttle for gas $.

lehigh
I ran the section from below F Walter Dam to White Haven some years ago. I did it in my 14.5 ft. Prijon Calabria.



I am not an experienced white-water boater by any means. My buddy is however and he " coached " me through. It was mostly class II with maybe a III here and there. AT least this is what my buddy told me. I did a few impromtu fish inspections but came out unscathed.



It was a beautiful scenic paddle with no major problems outside of my incompetence and my bike helmet skull cap.

link to lehigh water trail
http://wildlandspa.org/lrwt/introduction.html



see if this helps