After three straight days of rain, I knew the call would come.
“I wanna try out my new Outlaw IK.” He said.
"Great, " I replied. “How 'bout the Esopus?”
“Hell no…The Esopus is at 3000 feet right now. You wanna do it, be my guest. I’m a Grandfather now, you know.” (I hadn’t checked the USGS gauge, lately.)
We settled on the upper Schoharie in Hunter, NY. Usually at high water, a Class II+ with a couple of dicey Class III sets, just to keep things interesting. Beautiful scenery, abundant wildlife, a 12 mile run of sparkling water with a more reasonable 700 cfs… I dropped my waterproof Nikon getting out of the truck
–Oh well, no on-water shots in the rapids today. The nice thing about self-bailing IKs is that although a tad slower than hard boats, they’re much more forgiving when one makes a mistake. So no worries about blowing your roll, losing your skirt or pumping out a swamped canoe. At one point, my attention was preoccupied watching a bald eagle and I broached a submerged pillow that would’ve pinned and folded-up my canoe like an origami Royalex tulip. A little shimmy this way and that, and I was soon free.
No swims, either me or Grandpa. But I did socially distance him to the open aired back of my noisy old pick up at the day’s conclusion.
