On Saturday we took on a new section of the Rivanna River. The float from Darden Towe Park in Charlottesville to Milton Boat Landing near Shadwell is about six miles and according to all sources is rated intermediate, having "several" class II-III drops. We were very excited to do some more interesting rapids. I had checked out the section that runs along Riverview Park and found that for that two miles the river is pretty constant riffles, which looked extremely fun.
We put in at Darden Towe Park, which has a nice ramp and good parking. We had wide, deep, quiet river for the first mile or so, although the water was moving along nicely.
Not long after the put in we came around a bend and saw this.
When we got closer, it became more familiar looking, although we'd certainly never seen Free Bridge from this angle.
We passed quietly under Free Bridge and kept going along the Rivanna Greenbelt trail toward Riverview Park.
There were some interesting boulders in various places along the river.
This heron just hung out and watched us paddle on by. I couldn't believe it didn't care about us at all!
Other than the requisite turtles, he was the only real wildlife we saw this trip.
It was simply beautiful and idyllic. The weather was lovely. It was just barely not too hot, with a soft breeze. I remarked to Dave that the only time I really feel like I can just relax and be quiet, instead of having to rush and do constantly, was on the river. This was the perfect place to exhale.
Shortly I recognized the river section I'd checked out from Riverview, so I knew where we were and that there was a sandy place coming up to pull over and have lunch.
We rolled through the riffles along Riverview and as we passed the boat landing I told Dave we were entering uncharted territory and I had no idea what was coming next.
We entered the area that once was Jefferson's mill. There's an old water tower and the C&O Railroad bridge across the river.
There were several sections through here where the water was moving fast and throwing up a lot of waves, but there didn't seem to be any rocks in the way so it was like riding a log flume. That was very cool!
We came along to the I-64 bridge, which cast a lovely shade on the river. Dave thought this would be a good place to do a little fishing, so he did, and I just paddled around and enjoyed the shade.
Once we stopped playing around under the bridge, we paddled on down the river and entered the "several Class II-III" stretch of the river. It must have been about 3 miles or so and it had probably three big Class II's with plenty of Class I's.
They never look very big when you're taking pictures from the bottom, but looking down them from the top they look HUGE.
Everything was good until the very last one, which was the Class III. This doesn't look like anything but it's just the end, at the wrong angle. It had several good drops together and Dave and I both swamped our kayaks by the end of them. I couldn't get a real picture of the end because we were on the side of the river trying to pull two kayaks full of water up far enough to dump them! But since the river is so shallow it's no big deal.
All in all it was a very interesting and fun float. We got the yaks out, went and picked up the truck, and not five minutes after we got them loaded and headed home, the skies opened up and there was a huge thunderstorm. Our luck is still holding on the weather front!
No comments:
Post a Comment