Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Bulls Bridge 1 1/4 on the painted gauge (and some basic Flume info)


Painted boater's gauge:  1 1/4

Beware of stick in the last small drop of Stairway (river left)

Housatonic at Gaylordsville gauge:   4.21  (2300 cfs)
Tenmile River gauge:  2.42  (413 cfs)
Falls Village gauge:  3.83 (1570 cfs)

This is the level at 12:00 pm today
http://waterwatch.usgs.gov/?m=real&r=ct&w=map





photo of Stairway taken from the bridge



Normal Lines for running the Flume (my observations, not intended to guide anyone.  As always, when in doubt, get out and scout, and make your own decision!)  The view in this photo is from the observation deck next to Dead Horse.



This is the normal, direct approach line for the flume.  Start crossing Dead Horse, then turn down to bite off the right corner of the guardian wave (if you try to go around the wave, then you'll have trouble getting back on line).  Once through the wave, look for the cleft in the horizon.  Most of the water gets funneled to the left (some people call this rapid "funnel"), and you want to take a few strokes to get on that left moving water.  Allowing yourself to drift right puts you into a steep hole and shallow water.


This low angle approach starts from the river right eddy.  You can ride one of the two angled breaking waves that help you move from right to left, into the flume as mentioned above.  Or, you can thread the needle between the two waves to get on line.  Either way, the idea is to end up in the same position as the line mentioned just before.  

The eddy is pretty long, and many people use the eddy to stage a hybrid line between this low approach and direct approach.  Start high in the eddy and ferry out towards center until you are back on the direct approach line.




The boof line starts to open up at this level, but probably only to those with local knowledge.  The red arrow on the right shows a part of the ledge that is exposed at 1 (but just barely under water in this photo).  Once that is exposed, then a crossing move that starts from a last chance eddy river left, and ends up boofing, cross grain, landing in the eddy below the red arrow.  It is super super shallow, and not very friendly to those who miss the move.  I show this mostly to demonstrate that the level is not quite down to 1 (since the rock on river right still has water going over it).

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